Portraits

Here (click the word "here"!)are some quite good portraits to look at. They are by Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002).

Mostly I prefer portraits to be more natural, rather than posed, but these are good all the same. Especially with actors and people with "public personalities" it can be just as important to see their projected persona as to see their secret face. Still, I know which I find more valuable.

Film or Digital

In photography there is a popular question at the moment: film or digital? Actually it's not really a new question. The first digital camera was tested in 1975. It weighed 3.6 kg, and its cassette tape-recorded image had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels and took 23 seconds to capture its first image. That was a test, of course, but the first publicly available digial cameras came onto the market in the late 1980s. They were expensive!

In contrast, photographic film was first being produced 100 years before that. So you can see that, though there are many millions of digital cameras available today, digital imaging is a much younger science. (On the other hand, things are moving faster these days)

Film is good (or it would not have existed as the professional standard for 130 years) but you can't see what it looks like until it's developed. Digital cameras let you see the picture immediately. That means you know what you've got. It's very helpful, and you can see why they are popular.

I could talk about ease of use for a while (I'm sure the internet is full of that kind of discussion if you want to read about it). Obviously digital is really convenient and makes pictures easy and fun to take. That's presumably why it's popular!

There is, however, the question of how the medium responds. Digital is improving all the time but for me, at the moment, it doesn't have the same feel as film. There are several reasons for this. I don't know enough about the details to explain them properly, so let's just say how I feel.

It seems to me that when the image gets over-exposed, film and digital behave differently. Over-exposed means some or all of the image is so bright that the film or sensor can't hold any detail and it burns out to white. This is not necessarily bad if you want it to look like that in some way - but it looks to me that film and digital behave differently.

Here are two pictures. The first one is an old picture from last year. It's quite pleasant but there are some big holes in the sky where it has exceeded the latitude of the camera's sensor (i.e. the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of the scene was too great to include all of it, and detail was lost in highlights or shadows). Those are the big white blobs. I didn't notice when I took it because I didn't know what it meant. Now I know and I know I didn't want it to look like that! Here it is:



(click to enlarge)

The point about that image is that I want you to notice the way it burns out in the sky. Now compare with a picture taken on film:




(click to enlarge)

Perhaps you can see the sky also burns out in this picture (also not intentional!). But it looks to me like it burns out more gracefully. I know that in the middle of the burn it is white...but somehow it gives the impression of being yellow. Whereas in the first picture it seems to go straight to white.

As far as burnt-out highlights go, I prefer the more gentle way of film.

I picked these pictures because they illustrate the point about burnt-out highlights. My best work you will have to wait for - it doesn't exist yet!

PS If you go to the cinema, then you are seeing "films" (movies, in U.S.) that were shot on film. Presumably they do that because it looks better. Don't worry though, I'm sure digital will catch up.

On the other hand, I released my CD on CDs not on vinyl...

New News

I went to a camera show run by Nikon which purported to be for professional photographers (I am not one, but, you know, when you know the right people....). However I had the feeling that professional photographers would more likely be outside being professional photographers rather than attending a show.

I was not entirely wrong, and you can follow my way of thinking by looking here! Look, it's scantily-clad women wielding industrial welding equipment! It looks like it - anyway they certainly make a lot of sparks! Wow, that looks exciting. Evidently it is supposed to be exciting anyway! And we can imagine that Nikon have pitched this about right, if a lot of the people who buy camera equipment are the same people who buy camera magazines and car magazines and so on. They always have women in, posing in a rather demeaning way (it demeans lots of people!). Oh well, they get paid for it I suppose. You probably get paid more for being an astronaut though....they could try that instead.

So anyway, there were similar types of females featured in a so-called "catwalk opportunity". Also one man, much to everyone's disappointment I am sure. Indeed, nearly everyone attending in the guise of photographer was a man, many many many of whom found it necessary to carry their cameras around their necks so as to show off what they've got, how much it cost, and how many megapixels it has. A lot of them were funny grey men...rather odd, it was.

I would have thought a camera show was not necessarily a good place to learn about photography. For example, it must be a similar type of thing to wanting to learn about music at a piano show, or about painting at a paintbrush show (I've never heard of a paintbrush show, this is entirely fictional), which is to say, it's possible but unlikely.

However the technical side of photography is sufficiently important (important if you want to get it right without guessing, as Ansel Adams wanted to teach us to - though guessing is possible, just time-consuming) that some of the presentations must have been useful.

I did learn a few things. I learned about the history of digital photography - e.g. the first digital camera had less then 2 megapixels of resolution and cost around £20, 000! Also I heard someone from Nikon saying that megapixels were not everything - other factors define a good camera. Interesting to hear that from the top of the camera production tree.

Also, contrary to what you might have been expecting from the above, there was A PHOTOGRAPHER! Yes, a professional photographer (so there was at least one!) called Bruno Barbey, showing many of his pictures and saying a little bit about them. It was quite exciting because I had recently seen some of his pictures in a book called Magnum Ireland so now I caould see that he was a real person! He was officially there for the purpose of telling us that he now uses a computer and a printer to make exhibition prints (rather than developing them the okd way) and has been satisfied with the results. Also he appeared to endorse digital photography -he laughed when he said this though, probably because it's what everyone seems to talk about. My identification test for people who say they are interested in photography is: what is the first thing they say when I mention the subject. Often, in fact nearly always, they say "What camera do you use?" - indeed, this is an interesting topic, and I often wonder what camera people use, however it is probably somewhere down at the bottom of the list of interesting topics, because, as Ken Rockwell says on his completely useful website, it's not the camera that takes the pictures. Yes, it is your brain! When Edward Steichen took a portrait of Isadora Duncan at the Parthenon in 1921, he borrowed a Kodak camera from the head waiter at his hotel. Looking at his amazing photographs, I can only assume that he knew what he was doing!

Bruno Barbey seemed a bit embarrassed (did you know there is a place called Embarrass, Wisconsin? Also one in Minnesota) to be talking about digital, I don't really know why. He said it was very good for shooting in the dark. Perhaps that is the only time he would use one? Ha ha, actually night photography is good, you just have to hang around a bit while the camera gets enough light in it so you can see something. He probably meant digital photography sees into the darkness very well. This is true since the manufacturers has concentrated on optimising for the dark areas in an image - they decided they wanted dark patches to have more visible detail, The result of this is that they have been successful, and consequently digital images burn out to white in the highlights very easily - analogue film took bright light more gracefully.

Howeveritmaybeso, M. Barbey showed us his pictures shot on film (some using Kodachrome, which was developed by Godowsky's son Leo (who married Gershwin's sister) and his school friend Leopold Mannes (who was a president of the Mannes College of Music, founded by his parents)), and very good they were too. This is the one I remember first:



(See a bigger one here) It's interesting because it has little colour yet in the scale of colours it has, there is great variation (the red umbrellas - and the red hat! - in the middle are very exciting, I think). It shows an excellent control of proportions and colours, and is a very resonant image. Things that are good make me feel calm or give me a sense of wonder or make me feel I am part of them, and that's what I feel with this image. That he could achieve this as a photojournalist is something we can be amazed at. Nobody sets these pictures up, you know - good photographers have to be good improvisers.

He talked about painters a little bit (e.g. Matisse) so you can see he was interested in the image more than the hardware. Actually that is a little bit of a redundant statement - we can see he was interested in the image from his images!

So that, my friends, was what I learned from the Nikon show. It was a while ago but still newsworthy, I hope?

Believe It!

Instead of looking around desperately trying to think of something to take a picture of, I have lately been working on calming down and believing that I will find a picture if there is one to be had.

I was a bit disheartened because all I had were a few over-exposed squirrels not doing anything, so I sat under a tree to eat my bagel (bagel, smoked salmon, lemon juice, cracked black pepper, you can put butter on the bread or use olive oil). Then after that I looked up and what should I see? Exactly, it was something I thought looked interesting. It was the scene you can see above.

And you know another thing? I'm telling you (and myself) that we should all have faith that the right opportunities will come our way when we need them to. Seeing my picture was evidence of that. But the next thing I saw, it had got a bit darker, and there was the moon! A crescent moon right in front of me. I hadn't even moved my position.

You can see the moon more easily in a large size version of the picture. It's on the left, near the church. Of course, to the naked eye it appeared much bigger, because the eye is sort of the best camera ever and focuses and zooms without us realising it.

I hope you can see there is a lesson to learn from this, wherever and whenever you wish to apply it. Right?

English Country-Tunes

I was there!

I attended Michael Finnissy's performance of his famous piano work "English Country-Tunes" yesterday. The floor shook (and it was a big room) and everyone cheered.

It was the friendliest event I have been to at The Warehouse (home of contemporary music concerts that cost £900 to put on).

This was the last performance of the Finnissy Weekend, organised by the British Music Information Centre and directed by Matthew Shlomowitz and Laurence Crane.

I again noticed that live music is more striking than recorded sound. So let's have more concerts, please.

I also noted that English Country-Tunes, which, being music, cannot be described adequately in words, is what you get when a country has had no creativity for 300 years and then has to make up the balance!

Stag

Look! They have deer in London!

I found this one in Richmond Park. It takes one hour to get there from door to door.

I hadn't seen deer before. There are also a lot of parakeets flying around. I don't know how they got there, but they seem to like it.

OK my deers?

Secret Citadels

Originally uploaded by philiphoward.

When I took this picture of some ivy I had no idea that it was ivy covering up the Admiralty Citadel, "located just behind the Admiralty building on Horse Guards Parade (London). It was constructed in 1940-1941 as a bomb-proof operations centre for the Admiralty, with foundations nine metres deep and a concrete roof six metres thick"!

It is still used today by the Ministry of Defence - and ignored by me!

Boy

I like this one. By Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Local Colour

I have been wondering about the colour in my photographs. It often seems a bit pale, making me wonder what's going on here when I think of the vibrant colour you sometimes see in glossy panoramic travel photographs and the like. What is the cause of it, I am not sure but I'm confident I will get to the bottom of the situation. Nevertheless, I had a look at some highly thought-of colour photography just to see what the difference was between that and my deckchairs from yesterday (see below).

The colour deckchairs is a picture I like, speaking for myself. I suppose it reminds me of light-hearted seaside England a little bit, as well as being on the other hand part of my view of nature - a conflict between the natural world and what we use it for, more gently considered than cynical, I think. Now the weather was not able to decide what it was doing, alternately a sunny day breaking out of the dark chrysalis of night (as you might say) and the typical English approach that turns an August day a different colour by liberal applications of November rain showers. So in fact the in situ colour was not particularly bright, so in a way this is reflected in the colour you see in the picture. But the point is I am trying to understand how to control the colour: I am happy to have colour-feeling X, Y, or Z but would like to achieve it deliberately, thanks! (Apart from that we might be a little bit over-exposed in the sky at top left, also.)

The issue of controlling the image will become clear, I am sure (I already know you can't fully control anything! That's what makes good pictures a surprise - though you should be able to have technical facility and preparation just as with any artistic endeavour - thinking of the piano here, for one). Whatever is causing whatever-it-is, it will be possible to find out about it, like with anything. Now let's look at what I felt was missing - deep, vibrant colour.

I already know that things that on the surface are rather alluring are not always of much interest once you start thinking about them (all that glisters is not gold, as the saying goes). Again, think of the piano: it's easy to get a particular sound that people love (there are several styles) and keep going for it, but what happens to the music? What music, I'm an artist, comes the answer. So in other words let's not be too worried about making beautiful photographs that are widely admired, and try to show the beauty that already exists in the world rather than adding a more instantly attractive coating.

Let's have a look at a colourful picture. Steve McCurry is a photographer well-known for his use of colour. Here is one of his pictures:



You can see more at the website.

Well there is colour here and it is deep and attractive! And we can look at lots of similar pictures with more or less colour in and have a similar feeling about them. I notice from the website that the pictures they show are from all over the world - well, when I say all over, I mean of course all over except for where "we" live. That means where Steve McCurry lives, and I presume that is North America. The pictures will be consumed by "the West" and will largely be images of things that are outside that. I mean, this is not so bad. Photographs are only worthwhile if they show something nobody has seen before, so that makes sense. Look at his biography too - this is a serious person! My feeling about the colour is that it is telling us that the world outside the cities of the West has something we lack: mystery, the famous exotic magic of far-away places that people have been getting so excited about for so long. Where there is colour, there is life, and city life lacks something that we are trying to find when we say "wow" on seeing one of these pictures. They all have an internal consistency of image, too - the colour is deep and lets deeper levels of association catch on the film grains and their prints. They are good pictures. But basically I felt that colour is here too, that "over there" in India or wherever, the local people do not find their lives so strange or exotic, and that while the strong-coloured pictures will inevitably draw the attention more and sell the photobooks, we shouldn't be distracted by all that. It's bright, alright, but it's not the only kind of life an image can have.

What I think is this: we could go to Afghanistan or on a similar adventure, but we shouldn't forget that it is not the same level of adventure for the people who already live there. Is that to say that it is not really interesting in foreign places? Maybe - most places are mostly the same as each other except for some superficial differences. But on the other hand, there really could be the same level of adventure here as there. It's not less exciting over there, it's more exciting over here! We should be making travel pictures of our own street.

With their own appropriate level of colour of course!

Anyway, colour is good and I'm glad to see some for once. I don't see a lot round here!

NOTE: now I know the sky was simply overexposed! The eye can adjust to wide differences in contrast (bright to dark) but the camera has a more limited range. (November 06)

more deckchairs!

Deckchair

Israeli-Lebanese Conflict Protest

Today there was a march in central London largely by Muslims protesting against the actions of Israel in the ongoing Lebanese conflict. Men and women separated as usual, the protest passed through the centre of London in four waves.

Children were represented both in person, carried in the arms of a parent or in pushchairs, and symbolically, shown by the presence of tiny black coffins also carried in the arms of demonstrators.

Pre-prepared orange placards were held up and as each crowd passed it chanted slogans, repeating the words of a few young men in their midst with megaphones, reading from cards.

The sight of the black coffins, both small and man-sized, was the most dramatic aspect, yet for me this visual imagery was matched by the chilling sound of the women's high voices shouting the Takbir, "Allahu Akhbar" (الله أكبر).

Not normally chilling, although sensational media might have us hear it otherwise, the phrase meaning God is Great is traditionally used in a rich variety of circumstances. But today it appeared provocative, the verbal missile of one religion hurled at another. Perhaps I misread the intention, but to my eyes it appeared that this protest was not against war and aggression, seeking conciliation, but was instead a protest against another country, people, and, perhaps, religion.


Other slogans to be heard were "Down With USA" and "George Bush Go To Hell". Perhaps I did not misunderstand after all. It seems unequivocal at least as far as the US is concerned. I could not hear everything they shouted but other chants were less pithy, for example "Death, Destruction, Full of Dark". It may have been more poetic but it didn't make me feel much better.

I don't believe we fully know what is at the root of the tension between Israel and Arabia. Clearly it is difficult. Clearly I wish there would be more understanding. Perhaps this is impossible. I'm sorry to say that I have sympathy for the cultures on both sides of this question. Only sorry because it doesn't seem a very popular viewpoint to take. In a war is it most dangerous to be in the middle?

I should know better than to criticise either side of the conflict - and I do, because I wasn't criticising.

We could potentially learn a lot from both of these religions. I'm sure the greatest winners would be the two cultures themselves, if they could do the same. But they are concerned about their own true possessions (land) and while that is very understandable, to me I do not see that ownership can ever be much more than ink on the map, when all one finds on either side of the line is people and...more people. I will say no more about that.

The procession has passed by now, without incident. I hope the same fortune will befall these simple, hopeful words. (Hopeful that no-one sees this as critical of Islam - which would be as foolish as taunting Israel when we have seen what she can do many times before...)

---

Roosting, Twinkling

There is a whitish pigeon sleeping outside my front door. I thought it was an ornament! But it moved very very slightly...

I don't have a picture of it.

Today is the 8th May. That is Gottschalk's birthday, and the day Ethel Smyth and Luigi Nono died (not the same year...)

For the last four days, a giant mechanical elephant and a giant little girl have been performing in London, near Trafalgar Square/Piccadilly/St. James's Park. Not only do I not have a picture of it, I didn't even see it!

This is something I have seen, many times. It is the constellation Orion (Orion the Hunter) which is the constellation I most easily recognise in the sky over England. (Photo credit: Matthew Spinelli)