Oldies but Goodies

For as long as Lightroom has been in existence, I’ve used it…. I’ve organised and sorted all my images using this system which has been so efficient for me.  I can find anything fairly quickly, because the catalogue system is so good, and also because I understand my own file naming system.

Looking back though at what’s in there (there’s a lot of rubbish by the way), and I do start to wonder why I keep as much as I do.  

I think I operated under the wild assumption that I would (one day) go back and revisit all those images, and edit them over again as software developed, and my skills improved.

But here we are – some 20 odd years later and I’m looking at some of the things I kept, that I thought were ‘good’ at that time.    I think I can honestly say that most of the images are of no interest to me any more.  My style, and ideas have changed, and there’s little that I did then that I like now.

The other week, I had a more radical idea.  What if I removed from Lightroom, and indeed from my immediate hard drive everything I’d not looked at in the last twenty years, and started again.  Keeping only recent ‘lockdown’ work and textures I’d made.  

I couldn’t do it….. but in the end I compromised.

I’m older now, and hopefully a bit wiser.  The person who made those images 20+ years ago doesn’t exist any more.  I was a beginner with a Sony 3mp camera, with a 1 inch screen on the back.

So, the compromise was that I’ve backed up all those old images to an external drive – they include all my college work, and some family photos that honestly I can’t take again. That drive will be stored away with other hard drives, and hopefully I’ll take a look at it every now and again.

For now though, it’s time to look at what is left…. And I discovered some portraits that I took in 2011.  My editing wasn’t that good at the time, so I’ve been able to go back to the original RAW files, taken with a Canon 5D, and work them up again.

I realise now that there’s no way I could have visualised those images, the way I do today.  I think that then I was just ‘taking’ photographs, and maybe today I’m ‘making’ them.

As an aside, I was reading a book the other day, and the discussion was about the ‘perfect’ photograph, and the question was ‘what makes a photograph perfect?’  The answers were varied, and here’s a selection of them.

1. One that is sharp and in Focus.
2. One which gives the viewer a perfect experience, with no question about the content
3. One which survives over 100 years and still gives the viewer the same experience
4. One which is artistic and impressionistic
5. One which adheres to the rule of thirds
6. One which tells a story

All of these, or some of these.  Maybe you think non of these…. 

The thing that makes photography so fascinating for me, is that all the above can be ‘perfect’.  The photographer can be both objective, and artistic at the same time, and that’s probably why I love it so much.

I reckon I’ll keep looking back at the old stuff for a while longer.  

Scarlot Rose – 2011

Insecurity

Being insecure is good for the photographic process.  Usually when you are out and about – you take a picture, and then review it on the back of the camera.  You might then move about a bit, and take another. You might do this a few times, till what you see on the back of the camera accords with your own internal ideas.

You can’t do that when you shoot film of course. You don’t have the benefit of seeing the ‘result’ straight away, and so there’s that element of insecurity because you are not totally sure what you have got ‘in the can’.  You are also limited by the number of pictures you can take.  36 on a roll, or 24, or maybe as few as 8 or 10.

What do we do?  Digitallly, we take lots of images – but which ones do you like the best when you get home, and look at them all together?

I often find that the images I like the best are usually not the ones I thought I was taking at the outset – things move on, even as I shoot, and it might be the 10th image that I take that is the one that I use. The benefit of the digital camera is that you can check as you go – but is this always good for you?

Sometimes I wonder if by virtue of being able to look at the back of the camera all the time, I am just confirming that what I saw was good, or am I merely looking at a preview of my ultimate expectation.

It might be both – because looking at the back of the camera all the time can disrupt the shooting process – causing us to miss things….

When I was working as an agency photographer – most times I didn’t have the opportunity to look and check what was happening on the back of the camera – I just had to keep going, and trust that the settings were the right ones. I learned to adjust as I went, working on the principle that it had to be right first time, as there were no second opportunities.

That was the insecurity which was hanging over my shoulder all the time – it made me work harder, and faster.  If I checked at all, it was briefly.

The best lesson I learned was to reset my camera to a default, at the end of every single shoot.  So the camera sat at ISO 400, f5.6, RAW, and Aperture Priority.  That would get me most times an OK shot – it also meant that if I’d previously been shooting at ISO 12,000 – I wouldn’t be doing that the next day, when the sun came out again.  

It happens to us all, we make mistakes, but resetting the camera can mitigate things.

Why not try this – put some black tape over the screen – and go out and shoot – make yourself a little more insecure – and see what happens….

It’s only pixels……..

There’s Too Much Noise

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s too much going on around me, and it’s distracting me from my photography.

Not the camera – but the rest of it – the internet (in particular Facebook), the computer generally, the radio, the television – it’s all getting to be too much.

I know I’m not taking enough time over my photographs – I feel rushed…. complete this, edit that, mount up this one… and I know I’ve talked about this before – and still done nothing about it.  Well from this minute forward I will – I promise.

I’m trying to be on a Facebook hiatus.  I do check in to look at what’s going on from time to time, but nowhere near as often as I did.  I’ve turned off the TV (other than Wimbledon) and I’m listening to podcasts only in the evenings.

I think that the more I can turn off technology, the more I should be able to concentrate on my photography – and do you know, it’s starting to work for me.

I’ve found more time for my edits, and am now looking at some photographs I took about 2 weeks ago and appreciating what I can do with them.

The plan is to go back to images I took ages ago, and re-edit them. I think that because of the rush to produce I’ve not always done my best, so I want to start again, and get some prints done, and keep up with the blog too.

Last weekend, was Armed Forces Day in Cleethorpes – I was away (on family business) for part of it, but did manage to join a couple of other photographers on the Sunday afternoon.  We shot some aircraft displays, and I purposely took far fewer images than I would normally do – and the results were much better.  The other plus side was that I actually watched most of the displays – something I would normally miss, as I’d be hidden behind the camera frantically trying to track a Eurofighter as it shot across the sky.

Here’s a couple from last weekend then, a fast one, and a slow one…….  the rest of the edits will just have to wait!

“I walk & I look, when I find something that interests me, I take a picture. It’s really that simple.”

The above quote is from an Australian Photographer – Steve Coleman – he lives in Sydney, shoots film, and his images are different.  He makes photography sound simple again – and so it should be.

Let’s all go out and shoot something that interests us…. and not something that might be interesting to someone else.

I’m not a street photographer, but I have the greatest of respect for those who can do it well.  I have a friend locally who is a wonderful street shooter.  I’ve been out with him a few times, and stood next to him as he worked his magic.  I could see the results afterwards, but for the life of me, at the time, could not see what he was waiting for.  He knows exactly what he’s looking for, and has the imagination, and creativity to make those images come to life.

The image above was taken when I was on holiday in Amsterdam.  The weather was terrible, and I just took a set of images in Dam Square because I found this chap (who was feeding the pigeons) interesting.    It’s not often that I let myself go, and just shoot for the sake of it – and it’s a picture that’s been sat on my hard drive for a couple of years.  It’s only recently that I’ve come back to this set of images, and actually processed them up.

So, next time you’re at a loss for something to do, then have a look through your archive. I bet you’ll be surprised at what you can find.  Technology moves on, and the shots you took years ago, can now be reprocessed into something acceptable.

I sat only this morning, talking to another photographer about images that languish on hard drives – he co-incidentally – was doing the same thing as me, and going through archived images looking for inspiration.  We agreed that images previously thought to be lost, can be revivied.

Don’t forget that photography has to be fun – it has to keep you interested, and for you to be interested, you have to take photographs of things that interest you.

Thank you Mr Steve Coleman for reminding me of this simple fact.

 

 

 

A Trip to the Circus – and the Fuji X-T2 – Impressive Performances

I was pleased to get some tickets this week for Russell’s International Circus – and even more pleased that I was allowed to photograph the entire show, without having to remain in my seat! – I decided to take the Fuji X-T2 and a couple of their impressive lens.  I chose the 50-140 f2.8, and the mega sharp 23mm F2 – I knew that the light levels were going to be low, so I went for the fastest zoom, and my fastest, widest prime.

Using auto ISO, and shutter priority, and the widest aperture, I let the camera do the heavy work – whilst I concentrated on the action.

Having shot with the X-T2 for a few months now, I’ve been impressed with just how well it performs under low light conditions.

The ISO ranged from 12,800 down to 200, and although at the higher end (it was the dark blue lights) the images were a tad grainy, it was an easy fix in Lightroom.  The lighting for a camera, was probably some of the worst I’ve experienced outside a theatre, but the Fuji dealt with it well.  The images are excellent and I loved what the camera could do.

I’m very impressed with how well the X-T2 handles noise at ISO 12,800 – the colour holds well, and for the future, I’m going to have no qualms about racking up the ISO to compensate for the low light.

Take a look at a sample of the images from the night……