Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Chromasia

Published
by
djaef
on May 31, 2007
in photography
. 1 Comment

Chromasia is the website of a Blackpool, U.K based photographer by the name of David Nightingale. Really, if you don’t know this man and his work, go and check it out.

What’s most interesting to me about Chromasia, apart from the fabulous photography, is how it has developed. I first ran across the site several years back, in the first year of his blog back in 2003. I quickly became a regular visitor and watched with fascination as David’s photography seemed to improve visibly from post to post. At that point in my life I was also becoming more interested in photography again, and thinking about returning to school for more training. Chromasia inspired me in a big way.

David was a lecturer in Higher Education (lecturing in psychology at the University of Bolton), and photography was just a hobby. He had just bought a new camera (an EOS 20D) when I found his site, and I often wondered how he found time for photography considering his work load and the fact he already had three children at that point.

The man is obviously a bundle of energy, apart from being very gifted. Looking at chromasia today, less than 4 years later, it’s astounding to see how much he has achieved in such a short time. Apart from the fact he has added 3(?) more children to his family, you only have to have a good look round on the site to see what’s happened on a professional level. It was clear there was a lot of attention being paid to his site just by looking at how many comments he was getting, and I once worked out that even if only 1% of his visitors purchased a print, he was beginning to make some good money. Obviously it was going very well, because suddenly he quit his job, and started chromasia as a limited company, with his wife Libby doing the admin and David concentrating on what he does best. These days he has started with both online and private tutorials, as well as weekend tutorials in Blackpool and his site lists an impressive range of private commissions.

His journey is an inspiration to many photographers the world round no doubt, but it is clear that talent and energy are two things David has in abundance.

I could have unspoken aspirations to achieve as he has, but I certainly need to work on the energy side. The talent I can’t really do anything about, and it’s up to others beside myself to judge that area anyway, but I hold no real illusions of emulating his feats. I admire them greatly however, and can only use his journey as an inspiration to my own. Go David!

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Denmark vs Australia again again…

Published
by
djaef
on May 30, 2007
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Coming to Denmark is never a holiday for me. Rather, it’s an experience best described as an existential crisis. You might think there’s more than a little bit of exaggeration there, but to tell the truth, I’m deadly serious.

The decision we made nearly 10 years ago to leave Denmark, where I had then lived for nearly six years, to return to Australia to live, was a decision that has never sat completely comfortably for either my wife or myself. That’s not to say a decision to return to Denmark was ever on the cards either. Reality settled somewhere in between, with neither option entirely satisfying and the winner being the status quo.

That’s why it’s so hard to come back. All the doubts return in glorious technicolour. All the things we miss are magnified a thousandfold, and even if the weather is crap at the time (which it often is in Denmark), the grass seems very much greener nonetheless. And of course the grass is very much greener over here, because it actually rains, unlike drought stricken Australia ;)

But it’s never quite enough anyway. For all the multitude of reasons we think we would be better off coming back, we never seem to have enough positives to make that unthinkable decision. Maybe it’s also in the nature of the actual decision. It would be a monstrously huge thing to uproot our family and transplant it into Danish soil. It’s crazy. We couldn’t afford a shed to live in and the government would probably not even allow me to migrate anyway, due to their very strict immigration policy.

So why can’t we let it lie? I have no answer at all. It’s one of life’s baffling mysteries. My fate is inextricably linked to Denmark, but on what terms I can’t decide. It’s one of those days where I wished I could toss a coin and accept the outcome.

Sigh….

Photography and God

Published
by
djaef
on May 21, 2007
in photography
. 0 Comments

Personally I can’t think of one good reason to put photography and God together in the same sentence, and so in the course of this post I’m going to explain why.

There are no doubt, more than a few famous photographers (one in particular comes to mind - the Australian landscape photographer, Ken Duncan) who feel that the two go hand in hand so much that God is almost the reason they are photographers, but for other, more … I’d say rational people, beauty is a much better word to connect to their reason to photograph the world. Why God has to come into it, I have no idea. Ken Duncan has even gone to the length of producing a book devotional images, so we know exactly where he stands, but connecting photography and God is in my view, very problematic.

I suppose I had better explain where I am coming from. I am a staunch atheist, despite growing up in a vaguely religious family and spending more than 10 years in Catholic schools. In fact, I was even an alter boy for a number of years in my early days. But without any particular outside influence, atheism slowly became the best explanation I could find to the question of “life, the universe and everything..” Atheism simply made sense. And as a by-product, it also became my logical response to the hypocrisy of religion I experienced on a daily basis. And so Godless I became.

A central tenet of my atheism is that I repudiate any claim that morality or beauty (or basically anything else useful) belongs exclusively or even primarily to the religious domain. In short, people can of course be idealistic, decent, beauty loving citizens of the world without a trace of anything called faith in their bones. It’s a testament to religion’s awesome power of indoctrination that I even have to make that statement.

In the last few days I have been reading in the Danish media about a few new, very welcome books attacking religion: one by the British journalist Christopher Hitchens, entitled god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and another by the popular scientist Richard Dawkins, called The God Delusion. I have not read either book yet, but I have devoured long excerpts in newspaper articles and on the Internet.

They don’t relate to photography at all directly, but they awoke a memory lingering just in my subconscious (and I’m sure they’d be an interesting read). Just the other day I was looking at a Ken Duncan photographic book on Australia that my wife’s grandparent’s had bought, and despite the photography being of a high standard, Mr Duncan really turned me off with the outspoken God message that seemed to find a home on almost every page.

One of the main reasons I love visual communication is its ambiguity of meaning. By insisting that the beauty portrayed in his photographs was the work of God, Ken Duncan was limiting my experience and interpretation of his art, and this was something I didn’t enjoy. This none so subtle form of proselytism just shows how important religion is to him, but it defies my logic why he couldn’t use universally acceptable language, speaking of “natural beauty” instead of “god’s creation” or whatever.

I suppose I see photography as something mercifully free from the necessarily subjective nature of other forms of communication, like writing for example. Now I don’t have any problem at all with subjectivity (unless it’s a newspaper editor trying to tell me his paper is not full of it) as I really love the nature of free speech and the to and fro of intellectual debate. But something I discovered to be a real joy in photography is the freedom ambiguity gives in visual communication.

“Show, don’t tell” was the advice of my professors at university. They were talking about writing, but I think it equally applies to photography. If we show the beauty of the world (or the weirdness, or the dark side for that matter) in our images, then we should realise it’s a uniqueness of the medium that we can leave the assumptions and interpretations up to the viewer. By sticking God in their face, you are taking away choice, and that’s always a narrowing, limiting experience. It’s a bit like David Lynch’s philosophy of film making, which could be distilled to “let them figure it out”.

In a way it’s not even God I’m rallying against (however I find that so much fun, I don’t need much of an excuse). What I’m talking about is restraint. Having the restraint to present your art without funnelling and otherwise directing people what to think about it. That the world is beautiful and amazing goes without saying. It’s also ugly and hypocritical and everything else under the sun. Choose what you want to photograph of course but for Dog’s sake, let the viewer make their own mind up about what they are seeing.

To this end, I want to show you two of my images that illustrate what I am talking about. There are stories in these photographs, but I won’t tell you what they are. That’s up to you to decide.

The Cleansing

Reflection

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

The Great Danes

Published
by
djaef
on May 19, 2007
in Personal
. 0 Comments

Copenhagen is a fabulous city. I sometimes can’t remember why I ever left the place. Particularly in summer. In winter though, it comes back to me all too quickly. :)
But now it’s spring. Late spring. The sun is warm, and high and bright in the sky (when it’s not raining that is), and the trees are all proudly wearing a thick coat of brilliantly green leaves. The Danes themselves are out in their thousands, soaking up the sun wherever they can find it. I went out for a few hours today around Frederiksberg Park, and I have to say how stunned I am about the Danes as a people. They are just so beautiful. Women, men and children alike. The general homogenity of the nation strengthens their look I suppose, but they are a very handsome race, that’s for sure. And my God, talk about stylish. They probably go a bit overboard there (well at least that five year old girl with the matching gumboots and jacket was a bit much) but in general they are just so damn attractive. It’s nice to watch, but as a not quite so handsome and definately not so well dressed visitor, I feel like I stick out like a newly arrived Pom on Bondi Beach on New Years Day. Especially with a camera around my neck. It’s days like these I want a 400mm lens, and a specially built hide right in the middle of Strøget so I can happily snap away at the Danish beauties without feeling exposed.

It’s all so voyeuristic photography isn’t it. I love shooting social street documentary type stuff, but that’s one of the really voyeuristic aspects. Stick a camera up in a bunch of strangers and take photos of them. I sometimes wonder if I’d be better off exclusively shooting inanimate objects so hard is it to overcome my inclination to shyness.

Oh well, I suppose there’s nothing for it but to get back out there amongst them all. Thank goodness it’s not high summer, when all the girls strip off and lie in the sun in nothing but their knickers in the parks in their lunchbreaks…

Denmark, death and hackers

Published
by
djaef
on May 15, 2007
in Personal
. 2 Comments

There was a death in my wife’s family, and we had to suddenly return to Denmark. Pernille’s beloved grandfather, Karl, died last week at the age of 90, and one of his dying wishes was that we all returned for the funeral. There are not many people I would travel halfway around the world for in circumstances such as these, but he was definately one of them. The world is a lesser place with his passing.

Despite the circumstances though, it’s always nice to return to DK. So greetings from lovely Copenhagen. Unfortunately when I arrived the other day, I found out that someone had hacked into my server and so the last few posts I had written were deleted as the server was restored from a previous day. Bloody hackers. I will never understand their motivation. Anyway, I won’t be blogging much in the next few weeks as my computer access is limited, and I have a large family of in-laws to re-acquaint myself with.

Despite that statement, I have been thinking a lot lately about the value of photography in an artistic sense, and the differences between “pretty pictures” and more conceptual images that arouse strong feelings in people. I love pictures that are confronting and challenging, but I equally love a beautiful landscape that speaks of not much more than beauty and peace (as if we’d need more). I suppose it’s all about what turns you on. If I get more time in the next few days I might ruminate on that idea further.

Photography Education

Published
by
djaef
on May 3, 2007
in photography
. 4 Comments

I want to discuss photography at an educational level, and in particular at the Diploma Level. This is particularly pertinent for me right now, as I am completing a Diploma of Photography this year.

Historically, photography has clearly been what you would call a specialisation. Students were taught photography on a technical level first and foremost - how to measure and expose for the light in any given scene. They learned about film and how to develop and print, and they learned about perspective and composition and the myriad other technical and artistic elements of photography. As any serious photographer knows - there is a LOT to learn to be good at this craft.

Now of course, as we move into the digital age, things have changed dramatically. Until recently, computers were not even part of the curriculum. In a few short years, the darkroom will be gone (in some places, it already has), and film will finally be a thing of the past. These days it’s all digital capture and Photoshop. Fair enough too, in one way. The advantages of digital are abundant and obvious. I still think there is a role for film in the curriculum, but that’s not really what I want to talk about.

It’s more unsettling to consider the other changes to the way we learn photography in the current curriculum. I would have to say that what we are learning now, at least at my particular educational facility, means that we are no longer specialising in photography. We are now expected to be photographers, graphic and web designers as well as small business managers. We seem to spend more time learning all the other aspects of photography, like Small Business, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Indesign than we do learning about the actual taking of photography. We are given a lot of photography assignments, but are expected to research and complete them almost without any instruction (OK, we are in our second year, but we still have a lot to learn). Clearly, the overall emphasis of the Diploma is to produce all round skills in the area of small business, photography and computer based applications that are used in the photographic / graphic industry. But when we are talking about a two year program, that means our skills as photographers are going to be much less than if we studied photography alone. And it’s photography we came to do. I already know a fair bit about computer programs and I ran a small business for years. Others have no intention of becoming graphic designers or small businessmen. They want to be specialist photographers.

But I suppose that’s where we need to look. Is there a need for specialist photographers any more or does the market expect photographers to be able to do all the other stuff we are learning? Clearly the curriculum has been heavily influenced by the industry telling the institutions that students need small business and computer skills. The time of specialist photographers seems to be passing. But what I think is being ignored here is the fact that it’s actually quite limited what you can learn in two years. Personally I think it dilutes the education down to near worthlessness. I think that to maximize the usefulness of a Diploma of Photography we need to be spending the bulk of that two years learning about photography, and when I say photography I’m talking about what goes on from behind the camera looking through the viewfinder. We need hands on instruction day after day. Not just a bunch of assignments thrown at us. I think small business and computers should be on the agenda too, but in a much smaller way than they currently are. Photoshop is an amazing program, but the way we are being taught photography means most students are learning how to correct mistakes they should never had made. And while Indesign is no doubt a valuable tool, how are we as photographers with about 50 hours of instruction in the program supposed to compete with graphic designers? I realise it’s supposed to complement our skills as photographers, but this sort of approach makes a Diploma of Photography into not much more than an introductory course. If the course was four years, and you had the same mix as we do now, I would better understand the approach taken, but as it is, all the course seems to be doing is unleashing into the world after two year a bunch of students who know a little about photography, a little about Photoshop, a little about Indesign and a little about small business. An ex student called the place a Photography sausage factory. I’m beginning to see his point.

And I haven’t even mentioned the other important things we are NOT learning. Things like learning to critique photography, how to best implement an effective DAM (Digital Asset Management) workflow and gaining a really solid understanding of colour management.

After looking through RMIT’s BA in Photography Program Structure, I realise I should have went to uni instead…

Technorati Tags: , , ,