Category: website
It’s better to travel…
Over the years, I’ve visited many places: relatives in the West Indies; a camping trip around Europe; and cities, many cities.
On the way to Berlin
I remember my first solo trips: working through cheap film in Tokyo and Hong Kong at the turn of the century; crossing to Paris by Eurostar; photographing a roll of film a day in Manhattan, and many visits to European cities with friends and loved ones.
Pirate’s Bay, Tobago
The cheapness of Japanese film on my first visit to Tokyo in 2001 blew my mind. I subsequently photographed everything: people, architecture, overhead cables, even drains. My week-long exploration of Manhattan Island used ten rolls of film I acquired on eBay. I photographed as much as I could and now I’m reviewing them all.
Fernsehturm (Television Tower), Berlin
I wonder about my attraction to cities. Maybe it’s their transitory nature – anyone can visit a city – that attracts me more than a rural setting (although I greatly enjoy visiting the countryside). There is a familiarity to a city in its roads, buildings and transport. There’s never complete uniformity, even in airports; there’s difference in the details, languages, food and attractions. Searching them out is a delight.
An interesting hoarding in Paris
Right now, I’m working through a plethora of digital and film travel images. I miss using film and thanks to a recently donated 35mm camera, I may experiment with a roll or two on a forthcoming holiday. The travel section will grow in the meantime.
Performance
Thanks to encouragement from some like-minded friends, I found myself attending a variety of live music events over the past few years. I took photos at most of them; as I organise my photography files, I’ve been posting a number of them on my website.
A few SXSW out-takes: Meg Mac
The majority of images have been from the South by South-West festival in Austin, Texas, which I attended with friends in 2015. While editing the photos, I’ve been struck by the questions I ask myself to define an image’s quality: does the musician look dynamic? Is the image in focus? Does the performer look good?
LANY
Actually, the last one is a touch dishonest: I only asked myself when the performer was a woman, and I was looking for the shots that made them look most attractive; treating the image as a fashion shoot rather than music photography, something I never did when the performer was a man. Back to the drawing board.
Ibeyi
In these images, and those I’ve made since, I’ve stuck to only the first two qualifiers: focus and dynamism. As I improve, I may change to dynamism and composition, or dynamism alone. Music is about expression: beautiful, angry, passionate, sad; and I want my music images to reflect all of that.
On landscapes
A large amount of my photography is of landscapes. I have images of nature in parks, rivers and valleys, but also of man-made landscapes depicting bridges, roads and architecture.
I wonder sometimes, considering the subjects depicted, if the only thing that could be described as “landscape” is the frame, but I think that landscape can apply to every feature in our cities, towns and open spaces.
Landscapes feature on my website and in my stock photography. As I upload more, I may differentiate between landscapes of nature, cities and streets, but for now I’ll continue building the section and interpreting the term.
Medium cool
I was given a twin lens reflex (TLR) camera by a friend in my camera club some years ago. She’d had it repaired, but no longer used it: I was flattered to receive it and used it alongside my 35mm and digital cameras.
Since unearthing eight rolls of undeveloped 120mm medium format film, I’ve been getting them developed at various printing shops. The resulting photographs depict travels, friends, architecture and the odd sculpture: I’ve been scanning the results and posting them on various platforms. It feels like the first time that I’ve really considered the images this camera can take.
In about half the images so far, mottling has appeared, maybe because of the amount of time between exposing and developing, or printing techniques, or mistakes on exposure. The single roll of transparency film contains none of this, which may point to more use if this in future, but the compositions and detail have been fascinating.
This image from downtown Austin, Texas during the South by South-West festival in 2015 shows such mottling. I love the detail nonetheless.
This is from the same festival (and I have no idea how I found myself on this rather exclusive-looking part of the stage). I’m not sure about the quality of this composition, but the focus on faces and stage architecture are appealing.
Kitsch? Cliched? Naff? Maybe, but I like this juxtaposition of a mocked-up Checkpoint Charlie and the McDonald’s restaurant from a trip to Berlin in 2015.
More mottling, sadly affecting this print of Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin on the same trip. I’ll return someday and take this again, probably on transparency film.
Other images I’ve yet to scan in show at times hurried shots, blurred focus and skewed compositions. The TLR is not a snapping camera, at least not without practice: consideration and time must be given to exposure, focus and composition, which can result in some glorious images.
While I continue to develop medium format films and add their images to my website, I see myself using this camera more often in future.
2016
In a small victory for my organisation plan, I am approaching the end of editing every photo I took in 2016. Next on the to do list is every image I took in 2015: a task I’m looking forward to, as by now I’ve formed a technique for doing such edits quickly.
I’ll also be looking forward to completing 2017’s images and refining what I do this year; as I work through new knowledge on Photoshop, these edits will hopefully be more impressive than the more basic work I’ve done so far.
2016’s photos have taken in gigs, get-togethers, walks, demonstrations and holidays. They’ve also seen my change from regular use of my Panasonic Lumix compact to near-permanent use of my Fujifilm X-Pro1. Both are lovely cameras, but sticking to just one image maker has led to an enjoyable fluency that can only improve with future use.
Images will end up on the website, my stock supply and various web photo streams. I’m really looking forward to a completed filing of all my photographs.
Taking stock
Earlier, I mentioned that I was going through all my stuff; practically mining it for projects and ideas. Most recently, I’ve been working through photographs.
I have years of digital and film images to work through and my computer is currently crammed with images, so much so that my laptop warns me of an ever more worrying lack of free space. This is my own fault and simple to remedy.
If I look back, with my first used and abused compact and my used and cherished mirrorless follow up, my digital photo practise has been to take images, delete out-of-focus shots and upload the rest to my laptop, prior to image editing. I would cut the numbers down in Apple Photos before editing the images themselves in Adobe Photoshop and then… well, that’s where my workflow ended.
No methodical printing, display or file reducing: all would just sit on my laptop over the years; six to be exact. That’s a lot of images.
So now, I’m cutting them down, with number reductions, file size reduction and image display, partly on my website, but in larger numbers on Alamy, the photo stock website, through which I’ve had a few sales. I’m aiming to sell more.
I’m working my way through to the end of 2016’s pictures, while working concurrently on 2017’s. Marvellous amounts of space have been freed up and more will follow as I work backwards through 2015. Interestingly, while refining images, my digital darkroom technique has got more varied and capable, but I am intending to take the old images to the best point I can and finishing them, rather than tinkering with new techniques ad nauseam. The newest images will get the fullest treatment.
I seem to have a technique at last. With this order, I hope to join the dots between what I’ve made and learned to use on new image making. I will display and aim to sell accordingly.
On photography
Late last year, I read a tweet encouraging photographers to expand their skills over a year long challenge. I followed the offered link and discovered the Dogwood Challenge for 2017; a list of 52 weekly photographic challenges for people to get their teeth into.
Dogwood challenges fell into artistic, technical and story categories, covering lighting, lenses, composition and editing. Instructions were given on where to post images: most of mine have been on my Instagram (Facebook, Flickr and Twitter were also suggested); and photographers were encouraged to tag and post their photos every week.
This has been a fascinating exercise. I’ve experimented more with photography than the previous five years combined. Of the exercises, those using Photoshop tools have been the most exciting and I’ll be returning to them in coming photo projects. When first seeking advice on how to use Photoshop, I was encouraged to spend half an hour playing with a particular feature: I found this difficult without a particular aim. The Dogwood Challenge has given me a new aim every week.
Among the experimentation, this was a failure: my first attempt at a stitched panorama…
Right now though, I am building a new photo website, on which I am making an account of my work so far. Building the site has been great fun, but what comes next; the photos influenced by the past few years and by Dogwood’s exercises, is what really excites me.
There are a number of sections I would like to create in this site’s future. One is street photography: I’m not particularly practised, but I’ve been on a number of photo walks (and rides), I’ve admired street and observational photography for some years. Recent reads of How to take Great Photographs of Places and Magnum’s Wear Good Shoes has made me want to pursue this further.
Most importantly, the advice of Alec Soth in Wear Good Shoes chimes with me: “Try everything. Photojournalism, fashion, portraiture, nudes, whatever. You won’t know what kind of photographer you are until you try it…” I’ve struggled with my aims in photography: should I concentrate on beauty, architectural, observational or travel? I think that this advice, to walk, to experiment and produce, to be patient and observe, will get me closer to my groove.
Expanding
I’ve enjoyed keeping a website for some years now. It’s mainly shown photos, but recently I’ve started a new section showing films.
At the moment, the section has two films: Nod, a short I made some years ago that played at a few festivals;
and a scene from Fluid, my first feature film, which I completed last year and is currently being entered to festivals.
More soon…
New website
The Moonfruit website is now no more: I’ve just uploaded my new photography website, http://www.burningdetails.com. I am using it to display various groups of photos and it will be developed and expanded pretty regularly. At the moments there are just 15 images, but I hope to have some new photos up in the coming week.
Burning Details 
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