An occasional post

It is Christmas Eve and I am at home. It is warm enough to sit outside on the terrace and drink coffee, read books, play with the iPad etc. Mrs. Ha is making gingerbread men and all is well with the world. The plan is for 2011 to be my last in full time work. I will be in my 55th year by the time I pack in so enough is enough. I am quite nervous as the outlook for investing for income is quite daunting and I don't want to start eating into my capital right away. I hope I can bite the bullet and get by.

The idea of freedom to do what I want for a while is so attractive. I am increasingly addicted to the Leica although sometimes I find myself frustrated by it. I keep reading more and more about photography. Both the creative side and the technical side. I am thinking through what I really need to do differently to tale better images. Its not about quantity it is about quality. The key word seems to be anticipation. I was reading how Cartier Bresson used to find the setting and then wait for the moment when something happened to trigger the moment he wanted. He could visualize what he wanted and sometimes varied his position by only a few millimeters to get a quite different impact each time. He was said to dance with his camera, he was so light on his feet, trying to create the image he knew he wanted. the expression "the decisive moment" is now for ever bound to HCB but it simply means picking the moment amongst many that encapsulates what it was he wanted to convey.

Whether you call it street photography, documentary photography or reportage it matters little to me. I go out to try and take a better picture than I took last time. If you are photographing people the question is to engage or not to engage. Should you "sneak" the photo or ask. I do both I'm afraid.

This was posed:



This was not




I shot this, as you can probably tell, without using the viewfinder. The lens is at waist height - I am sitting next to the man - and I guessed focus and exposure to take a candid portrait. Its nothing to write home about but I thought it was a nice example of how you can literally "shoot from the hip".

I took some photos in the local park. A lady learning tai chi from her master. I asked if I could take photos and they were quite content. I sat quietly on the bench and tried to get what I wanted. The 50mm was a bit too little but as they moved closer and filled more of the frame the shots improved. The master motioned me to shoot from the other side so I did although I didn't want to. The light was all wrong. When he took a break I moved back round again.





I am converting most of my shots to B&W now and wouldn't mind going back to film for a while. What really troubles me is that when I post images in critique fora they get little reaction. There are occasional exceptions but generally not much by way of feedback. The question therefore is what makes an image stand out enough to get a reaction, positive or negative. I have learned that they need a focal point but many photos - not just mine - are trashed for being too derivative. What does that mean? Copying the style of someone else? I guess developing your own style is hard but distinguishes you from the rest. I am a long way from there yet. Here is another one I like:




What I do enjoy is the creative process of taking a digital image and working on it on the mac with Lightroom 3, Photoshop CS4 and / or Silver Efex Pro to produce a different effect, replicating digitally the grain, tones and textures of black and white film.

In the coming weeks, my focus, if you will pardon the pun, will be on seeing better the image in the viewfinder. The Leica allows you to see what is outside the picture so you can tell when someone is about to enter the actual frame. You have context as you compose. I need to be more aware of the frame lines and think about what is in and what is outside the image boundary. HCB didn't crop his images and the sense was that he moved to make the full frame meaningful rather than cropping after the event to remove extraneous subject matter. This is far from as easy as it sounds and reflects his ability to visualize and choose the perfect or decisive moment to expose the film (or sensor as it is today).

To finish, here is another of my favourite recent snaps. This is the generation gap.....



Happy holidays everyone.