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A New Topography of the Durham Coalfields

TPP — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:53:17 +0000

A New Topography of the Durham Coalfield by Adam J Brown

Found on Contact Editions’ blog, this wonderful book, which we know you’ll love to see. Oh for a copy but funds do not at present, allow. Couldn’t find a website or blog for Adam, but would appreciate knowing more about the project and his work. Newly graduated from Farnham, but a Durham lad, maybe?

A longer hiatus than expected, apologies for that. Normal service will be resumed here soon, promise. Similar Posts:

Natchwey, Griffin and a Brief Hiatus

TPP — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 09:46:04 +0000

Somewhat hypnotic film from Asa Mader.

Natchwey’s clever cousin Martin has joined the team at Duckrabbit. “Martin Nachtwey does a masterful job of capturing the dystopian cacophony of conflicting rivers of delusion of our modern day irrational existence.” Describes that film quite well, wouldn’t you say?

The authentic James: “I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.” here.

Martin Parr (whose brow is nothing like as furrowed, and who needs no linking from me) is going to be at Port Eliot Festival this weekend. He sent a contribution to the Falmouth Students’ fundraising cookery book. They asked famous photographers for recipes, and he sent them “beans on toast..“. Not a recipe for beans on toast, that would be too generous of him, too giving of his precious time. Just those three words. I’ll tell him what I think if I see him wandering about, but will not be going to watch him hold court.

It is perfectly possible in this industry of ours to get famous and even notorious, without pomposity or arrogance. We know that. Brian Griffin liked my photo on Facebook this morning, not for the first time. We can only love an artist like that, at the top of his profession and free, still, with his opinions and praise.

Griffin’s Road to 2012 Olympic preparations photographs at the National Portrait Gallery are here. Go and see them: I certainly will.

So while work progresses in the studio on the sculpture, for me, a few days in a tent, in Cornwall! I’ll be taking a sweet little rangefinder and some rolls of 3200 and 6400 Ilford Delta for the evenings, and possibly a monopod.

More from the darkroom, including a short one-take film so you can see exactly how organised and tidy it is, sometime around the end of next week. Meanwhile, this is my first, hopefully of many more, moving photos, as I believe they are becoming known. Turn off the sound, I haven’t worked out how to do that in camera yet. Feel free to follow The Photography Pages on Youtube.

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Steve and a C330

TPP — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 06:28:17 +0000

Several years ago, someone I didn’t know told me my photographs were utter crap, and that I’d better do something, quick. We had quite a long exchange involving me agreeing and asking how he thought I could put it right. A quick flick through his own work showed an amazing range of grizzly trees, dark copses, lots of ’street’ and this, what he called ‘Cheap Foreign Surrealism.’

Phil Coombes at the BBC discovered Steve Harrison’s street photographs a few months ago, and there was a flurry of excitement through the blogosphere, but possibly not nearly enough. Here’s the slideshow they published:

Steve had moved quickly on to digital and couldn’t understand at all what I was doing faffing around with film and developing. Obsolete, time wasting, money wasting, oh he was far more forthright than that. I argued feebly, and the result was his much loved Mamiya C330 arriving tightly packed and in perfect condition, through the post.

Click through any of the photographs above to see Steve’s story, told in his own words, and the words of Rosie, his daughter. I defy you not to be deeply moved. You’ll need tissues.

Steve’s C330 got me into MF and my own black & white printing, got me into college to start my photography degree, and for that and so many other more esoteric, more tenuous and altogether more important things, I will be eternally grateful.

The camera now has a new owner. Lauren Healey is making work that I’m sure would make Steve look again and again, would make him mutter words of encouragement and very probably, of praise. It’s definitely in one of the genres he likes: quirky domesticity.

So, apart from the photographs I took with it, which are refusing to be found, for now, that’s the story. RIP Steve Harrison, we loved you, and we love your work.

Goodbye.Similar Posts:

So Much To Photograph, So Little Time

TPP — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 02:19:10 +0000

Not for me the glossy ballrooms of Wynyard Hall, oh no. These are a few from the day of the last wedding, the one with the four miniature flower girls, live as jumping beans, and the groom who cried while making his vows. Wonderful day. And here, the other rooms of this vast venue, where there’s a proper theatre, bars galore, dog clubs and toddler clubs. Must go back with a big camera when the light lifts a little.Similar Posts:

Photographing Snow

TPP — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:22:45 +0000

There’s a suggestion that floats around camera clubs that digital sensors, automatic meters, point-and-shoot cameras tend to render snow as a grey-ish colour. Hmm.

Click through the image and watch this film about Michael Kenna at work in Japan:

What did you think?

Now try this.

Good eye.

Good eye is more important than worrying about grey. Flow, getting into the zone, is really where we all want to be. Of course if you’re worrying about technical aspects, or how cold you are, it’ll be much harder to achieve.

Eight tips for photographing snow that will help you get into flow.

1. Waterproof boots with some good ski trousers that have anklet skirts you can tuck into them, will keep your feet warm. Wear a hat, too. And fingerless mittens or good gloves you can take off and put back on regularly. Be physically comfortable. Don’t rush out the door at the first sign of a few flakes, prepare yourself.

2. Take a tripod, or at least a beanbag to sit your camera on, and learn to use it properly. There’s a right and a wrong way to erect a tripod so that the legs are safe, and that’ll be even more important when you can’t see the ground through a few inches of snow. Or you can make a quickfire beanbag with a plastic ziplock and a few cups of lentils.

3. The light at the beginning of the day is more likely to stay steadily even than light at the end of the day, when it will fade fast, so choose an early morning, get ready to go about an hour before daybreak so that you maximise your time in the best light. In the UK, if it’s snowy it’s likely also to be blustery. A calm spell of freshly blanketed stuff won’t ever last long, so grab it while you can. Take a cable release to minimise the effect of camera shake from the shutter, and weight things down.

4. If you want everything to be in focus, start at a minimum of F8 or F11 and chose shutter speed from there. Bracket. That means do several exposures at different shutter speeds, maybe as much as 2 or 3 seconds, depending on the strength of the available light. If your camera has an integrated meter, and most of them do, use it as a guide. like everything else, it’s a tool. Shoot a few frames at 2 stops above what it indicates: you’ll see later if that works for you and for those lighting conditions. Shoot a few frames at 1 and 2 stops under, too.

5. If you want to go technical, point your camera at something grey, a patch of concrete, or your jersey, the back of a well tanned hand will do, or even a patch of grass. We’re aiming for an 18% (or 12%) grey, or a field approximation thereof. Use that as a starting point for working out exposure, not the glittering white expanse before you. Metering ambient light is a pretty hit-and-miss affair anyway, especially in high contrast situations like mid-July and blankets of snow.

6. Michael Kenna suggests a faster shutter speed to collect visible snowflakes, and a slower shutter speed to achieve a milky misty effect. Do both, see what works for you. Photography is an art, not a science.

7. Take a friend, an assistant, a collaborator, or go alone. Solo works best for achieving flow, unless you know each other well enough to enjoy your silences.

8. If you can’t get outside, for whatever reason, fling open a window or a door. Climb the stairs of your office building; get out onto a roof.

The darkroom is calling: negatives from the winter of 2007 and 2008 need printing. This one, for example:

It’s a commission, inkjet printed on museum rag: low contrast, almost dusty. It will be great to see how it looks with some rich blacks and yes, we’ll see how grey that snow is, too.

Enjoy this week’s weather, and please post links to your own snow photographs in the comments. We’re all loaded up with Tri-X 400 and ready for daybreak.Similar Posts:

Blow Up

TPP — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:45:12 +0000

One of the (many) reasons I became fascinated by the backroom processes of photography, the darkroom with its quiet concentration and trickling water, the gadgets and the gizmos: Blow Up was a strange film starring the newly trendy David Hemmings and the mighty Vanessa Redgrave. Antonioni wrote and directed what appeared to be a murder mystery, the victim in the bushes revealed by the Hemming’s character’s zeal in the darkroom, with an enlarger.

Blow Up’s other theme is the rather sordid celebrity photographer’s routine cruelty and abuse of his female models. The character was allegedly based on the real life David Bailey, a reputed misogynist, misanthrope and all round bad lad. This same testosterone-laden behaviour is pretty much the day to day norm in at least one northern higher education college. Apparently “the trade is like that”. Is it really? If there are instances of sexual harassment in the industry, isn’t it incumbent upon the training establishments to make sure that they don’t foster an environment where this level of sexism is encouraged within their own walls?

Some of our institutions really do reside firmly within the Blow Up sensibility. Surely our photography students deserve better mores and attitudes than were being pastiched way back in 1967?

See it if you can: let me know what you think.

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Major Yoko Ono Retrospective at Baltic

TPP — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:30:23 +0000

A big show like this hardly needs introduction and there’s room to be wary of promoting celebs, but do go and see this, do go. Much of her work brings forth unquantified emotion, some undoubtedly sentimental, but other pieces simply bring an unexpected rawness to the surface.

This gallery was full of people laughing.

‘Painting To Let The Evening Light Show Through’ in two versions, were hung in front of one of the glass gallery walls facing out over the river with Byker in the distance. The bright winter sunlight sparkled across the Tyne and did indeed show through.

Most moving were the films of her two performance pieces in which she invites her audience to cut off her garments piece by piece with a large pair of scissors. In the 2005 performance she is regal in her detachment and her participating audience is respectful and in some awe. In 1965 the film shows the fear in her young eyes as a jeering lad jabs at her bra, slicing decisively through both straps. I remember reading at the time that she was left completely naked.

Painting To Be Slept On:

Hang it after sleeping on it for more than 100 hours.

We might see a piece in tribute at our new Private View opening next week.

Go and see this work. Fluxus is on the ground floor, too. No time for that today, but needs revisiting, and the Campbell film about the life of Bernadette Devlin too. Magnificent to have these here.

ETA:

Without both computers in for repair, and therefore no Lightroom, can anyone please recommend an adequate photo editor online or for Mac that will do the basics like resizing for web, white balance and the like? TIA>Similar Posts:

Sid Kaplan on Saturday

TPP — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 22:28:11 +0000

Talk at 2pm on 25th by the genius who printed the works of one Usher Fellig. You’re probably going to see Dean Chapman at Kirkleatham Museum instead, right?Similar Posts:

James Natchwey’s TED

TPP — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 08:14:50 +0000

James Nachtwey’s wish is to “break [a story that the world needs to know about] in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digitial age.” The TED Prize.

Via No Caption Needed and everyone else! Please pass on. Similar Posts:

Portrait at Coombe End

TPP — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:29:22 +0000

Laura Goodman’s photographic exhibition continues its UK tour in Glasgow at The Gallery at Mussel Inn.

The Coombe End Preview is on Thursday 4th September: mail Laura if you’d like an invitation. The work will be on show until 30th September, and then we’re hoping Laura will come and do a talk about her methods and practice at Number 7, the new private gallery space.Similar Posts: