Laura Goodman
Intensive work-related photography-business-experience is what’s been happening over the Easter break, courtesy of Ms Goodman, with some obligatory chocolate and a superb lunch or two. Although the weather has been the biggest story here up north, with snow showers, 50 foot waves and gables rent asunder, making work has been so absorbing that all the wild howling winds have hardly impinged. Out for some post-industrial landscape work tomorrow, but here’s what we’ve been up to so far:
- sourcing, assembling and lighting with a table-top diffused scoop
- 1:1 macro photography: focus and depth of field issues
- using mini-reflectors and bouncing light
- experimenting with multiple flashes and fixed lighting combinations
- phew.
Great to have this in the repertoire, but much more experimentation is required for real polish. Although some way from Maxted standard, can now confidently make a passable small product photograph, thanks to Laura. Maxted won one of The AOP awards last week for his magnificent damp National Geographic mags photo, so there’s a way to go.
We have also been discussing the search engine optimisation of our respective websites, and routes to publishing. The full list of work experience activity will no doubt appear in due course, especially since it’s the subject of a show-and-tell presentation on April 11th.
Popularity: 5% [?]
The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib
Sabrina Harman took hundreds of pictures to “just show what was going on, what was allowed to be done.” Thought provoking and like all the news about and from the now-acknowledged tragic debacle that is the invasion of Iraq, deeply troubling piece in the New Yorker, with photo of Harman by Nubar Alexanian, and 10 of her photographs. NSFW, obviously.
The article raises all sorts of questions about the role of photographers in and of armies, in war zones, as documenters, in collusion, collaboration or opposition, whether conscious or unconscious, in the atrocities they make choices to photograph, how the pictures are composed, for whom and why they’re set up, and so on. Endless questions. In the end, it’s rather like those arguments about silencing the BNP. Would we rather be without them? Yes. Do we need to see what they’re up to? Absolutely.
via Postman Patel
Popularity: 13% [?]
Austin Mitchell MP’s Early Day Motion
Full text:
“That this house is concerned to encourage the spread and enjoyment of photography as the most genuine and accessible people’s art; deplores the apparent increase in the number of reported incidents in which police, Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) or wardens attempt to stop street photography, and order the deletion of photographs or the confiscation of cards, cameras or film on various specious grounds such as claims that some public buildings are strategic or sensitive, that children and adults can only be photographed with their written permission, that photographs of police and PCSOs are illegal, or that photographs may be used by terrorists; points out that photography in public places and streets is not only enjoyable but perfectly legal; regrets all such efforts to stop, discourage or inhibit amateur photographers taking pictures in public places, many of which are in any case festooned with closed circuit television cameras; and urges the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers to agree on a photography code for the information of officers on the ground, setting out the public’s right to photograph public places thus allowing photographers to enjoy their hobby without officious interference or unjustified suspicion.”
Mitchell is chair of the House of Common’s amateur photography group. You can write to your own MP in support of the Motion via Write To Them.
Popularity: 4% [?]