Amanda McHale
Third in our series of questions to women photographers, Amanda McHale lives and photographs on the banks and shores of the sunny river Tees.
photo credit: © Amanda McHale
1. What got you started in the photography world?
My dad, I think, when I was about 13, bought my a 110. I snapped away at pretty much everything and nothing until I became one of 3 students who took up photography in art class at school. . It’s been an on-off, love-hate relationship until I took it up again about 7 years ago, when I realised that it was the medium by which I could most successfully express myself.
2. What gets you started in the mornings?
Knowing that I’ll see more (and with more meaning) than I did the day before.
3. Who is/are your favourite woman photographer, and why?
Lee Miller, for her skill, insight, vision and breadth of work.
4. What are your specialisms, the types of photos you’re best known for, and what do you photograph just for fun?
Quiet studies of the industrial and urban north-east of England. Fun? Mucking about with various lo-fi, such as camera phones, disposable/toy cameras. Who wants to think about f-stops all the time?
5. The exhibition or gallery showing that’s moved you the most?
Undoubtedly Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s ‘Coal Coast’ exhibition at the Baltic in 2003. Probably the first time I’ve ever felt that I experienced photography, rather than being the audience.
6. What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
Try everything, ask questions of everyone, be afraid of nothing, be prepared to break things and be broken yourself.
7. Is there a women’s aesthetic in photography?
Yes and no. I think we share a baseline aesthetic but bring our own through experience, understanding, values and tastes; some of those will be shared exclusively amongst women, as they would be amongst any section of society, but it’ll ultimately be reduced to the individual.
8. Apologies in advance for this:
film/digital
Film. I don’t feel that digital has quite caught up with film just yet, despite what the the growth in sales of digital SLRs may imply. Film can still capture a quality of light that digital can’t yet begin to touch.
Nikon/Canon
No comment. It’s not discussion worth getting into!
Apple/PC
PC everytime for me, but then I love (have to) to tinker! Apples are outstanding for those who want to get on with it, but they’re so tainted with that ‘Cult of Mac’ image that I find it off-putting. Having used both for the last 20 years I can understand how Macs once had an advantage in the creative world, but I think that now it’s an attitude way well past its sell-by-date. I’ve been told that, in the commercial world, Macs are still perceived as being the creative’s choice and that use of one or the other affects the perception of you as the photographer. If I become that bothered about others’ perception of me, shoot me.
digital darkroom/ wet darkroom
Nothing compares to pulling a roll of developed film out of a reel, or watching a latent image develop in a tray, but a chair in front of a monitor is much more comfortable!
9. Where do you think the industry is going, given the rise of cheap or free ’stock’ and a camera in everyone’s hand?
A hard question to answer. Photography itself is in such a transitional state (but then has it ever been anything other?); the rise of digital cameras and the internet has encouraged so many more people to take up and learn about photography in a way that it was never possible with film.
I know that cheap cameras, film and high street dev shops revolutionised the use of photography to a point in the 20th Century, but you could argue that there was only ever three main user groups; the public (sharing personal photographs with family and friends), serious amateurs (sharing their endeavours with other members of camera clubs) and pro’s (selling their work to the world).
Digital technology has allowed so many more people to produce one, two or hundreds of reasonable images that it sometimes seems that everyone is a photographer and has the ability to successfully shoot stock (or other commercial) work. It has serious consequences for not just some professional commercial photographers, but I think the real questions are, will it last and does it really matter if it does (pro stock photographers aside)?
It matters in the sense that it should seriously be a matter of choice whether you elect to give your work away for pennies to the stock industry. The consequences are that there’s now a ‘getting something for nowt’ attitude that so many organisations now seem to believe that every image is up for grabs and for nothing/next to nothing.
For someone like myself, who’d like to share some of my work (and previously has) to be used as a basis of others’ creative processes, I feel backed into a corner by grubbing commercial groups who rather exploit that my collaborative gesture to help themselves to my work for free and save a few bob paying me or another working photographer or, just as importantly, remove every vestige of control over how, where and when my photography will be used. Creative Commons and other kinds of Copyleft don’t deter even the most (outwardly) respectable organisations. Before this rant goes any further, I think I’ll stop there!
10. What would delight you the most, if it happened this week?
Sleep.
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Thanks Amanda: this may be just the right week for sleep!
If you’d like to contribute one of these, obviously with links back to your work, and you’re photographing regularly and professionally on some capacity, please feel free to mail me your answers to the same questions. There are a couple currently in the wings, so there’s no tearing hurry, but I’d love to hear from you.
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