When will I be famous?

By sandy | Published: 15/07/2010

As I get older I am occasionally reminded that I am in fact, knocking on a bit. The trouble is, I don’t feel any older than I did in my mid thirties.

A similar feeling pervades when I think of my standing as an artist/photographer.  Am I well known, or still a small contributor whose work pops up from time to time in the magazines? I still feel as anonymous as I did when I started out, even though I’ve had lots of work published. Comments I’ve had from others on Twitter, Flickr and Facebook suggest that I’m quite well known, but that’s not the way I see myself.

I am working in something I love, but would like to be considered a ‘serious’ photographer. My work seems to be very popular with other photographers and the general public, but not with galleries. I get turned down far more often than I believe is fair and consequently have a rather cynical view of exhibiting and galleries in general.

A number of years ago, I decided to forget about galleries and to concentrate on getting published instead. Since then my ‘image’ as a photographer has changed much more rapidly than it ever would have if I had pursued the exhibiting strategy.

I think that the public perception is that if a photographer is seen in more than three magazines then he or she must be famous. This has obviously worked in my favour.

But where do I take it next? I would like to build on the achievements I have to date, but I am unsure what to do. Should I now make a more concerted effort to exhibit again or approach other international publications?

I intend to continue to promote my workshops and private teaching and I will be supplementing this with video demonstrations on Youtube, but I would welcome any suggestions on what is basically marketing. Has anyone got any suggestions?

Posted in 35mm, Darkroom, General, Large format, Medium Format, Portrait, Street photography, cameras, landscape | 6 Comments

Long lasting

By sandy | Published: 01/06/2010

Have you amassed a large collection of negatives since you began photography? how about transparencies, prints, your camera collection?

What is going to happen to all this stuff when you die?

I have amassed a very large collection of all of the above, plus a collection of other photographers prints, glass negatives, books and ephemera.

I have my fathers negatives and those of an elderly gentleman who died about ten years ago and who’s equipment I was buying off a relative.

I took the negatives because the family had already burned all of his medium format transparencies and were considering doing the same with the negs.

A lot of my junk is of no importance to anyone but me, but I’d like to think that my negatives would be valued and preserved. How does one go about ensuring that a lifetimes work is treated with respect?

barbie's legs

I can visualise with horrible clarity a situation where my negative pages and prints are sold off for a pound each on a junk stall as some ancient old curio, as many old photos are these days.

Should I leave them to my kids in my will? None of them know how to print, so what will they do with them? I can either leave them a valuable archive or a storage/disposal nightmare.

Should I make top quality prints from all my favourite negatives and destroy the rest so that nobody can print my work badly? How can I know which ones are going to be of value in the future?

All of this has been buzzing round my head for quite a while and I don’t have a simple answer for it.

I would be interested to hear other photographers comments.

Posted in 35mm, Darkroom, General, Large format | 11 Comments

Portraits.

By sandy | Published: 27/04/2010

Portraits have the potential to be amongst the strongest photographs we ever produce, but often the results are dull and lifeless.

Just sitting someone in front of a commercial background and firing a studio flash at him or her will produce a picture of a person and strictly speaking will produce a portrait, but will it have the extra quality, which transforms a shot of a person into something powerful and magical?

david quirke

How is that extra quality added to the picture? Is it a matter of shooting on a better camera or a larger format? Is it a case of having expensive lighting?

I believe that it is very rarely these things. The picture must have a mood. How to put mood into a picture is not really something that can be explained in 300 words, but I can put forward my own approach and principles. Much of my portraiture is not commercial, I don’t have to flatter the subject, and I just use their features and my darkroom skills to produce something that hopefully will grab the viewer.

Sometimes that means I am free to exaggerate a particular feature for dramatic effect instead of having to suppress it for the sake of the sitter. (Think of the paintings of Francis Bacon)

Lighting can be employed to empathise features and dramatic lighting is easy to achieve. ? ? ? Sometimes I use lighting in a dramatic way and sometimes I have to work with flat daylight. In such a situation, compositions and the arrangement of shapes can vastly improve a shot. I recently watched a documentary on the war photographer James Natchwey and he is a photographer who most definitely understands the importance of shapes in composition.

bob

Another element, which I perhaps ought to mention, is that often the technique or the materials will dictate the direction of the finished image.

I always work out what are the particular qualities and quirks of a lens/camera/film/process before shooting so that I may use that to my advantage. If a lens works more creatively wide open rather than stopped down, then I won?t shoot in really bright light. If the film emulsion is blue sensitive I need to know how that will work with red hair and freckles.

I can plan ahead to a certain extent, but always I like to leave a little room for the unexpected, for fate to take hand. This way I get images which surprise and delight me, though not all the time I should add. Being non-commercial allows me to have images which don’t work occasionally.

Perhaps another important element in my approach is that I often only take one or two frames of a person, (making sure that I have thought it through before shooting) rather than taking many many frames and editing down later. Even when shooting roll film I find it hard to expose a whole roll on one person.

nicola with ashtray

Posted in General, Portrait, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Split Grade Printing.

By sandy | Published: 12/03/2010

Split Grade printing in it’s most basic form is a process whereby two exposures are given, one through a Grade 5 filter and one through a Grade 00 filter. These two exposures can be varied in order to arrive at the correct contrast for almost any negative. I have another, simpler version which i will write about at a later date, but for now I’ll explain this method.

As I said, there are two exposure give, one through a Grade 5 and one through a Grade 00. That is the theory anyway, -but in reality some negatives only need one filter to print. This is especially true with extremely thin negatives which can only be printed on a Grade 5.

Let’s go back to basics: The photographic emulsion in a Variable Contrast or Multigrade paper is made up of two light sensitive layers. One is sensitive to green light and gives a long range of greys from pale white through to dark grey, it won’t give a deep black unless it’s grossly overexposed.?The other layer is sensitive to blue light and gives a very high contrast result, consisting of mainly black and white, with very few intermediate tones.

White light gives roughly equal amounts or both green and blue light, so exposing without a filter activates both layers giving a contrast between the two extremes, -roughly grade 2, depending on enlarger type. Using a Grade 2 filter also activates both layers equally, but reduces exposure time because of the density of the filter.

When two different exposures are given, one of the layers is activated more than the other and this moves the contrast away from grade 2.

Because this subject needs a full explanation beyond the space I have here, I have made a demonstration video (in two parts) which should make the point more clearly. Please excuse my slightly wooden presence in the videos, I much prefer to be behind cameras rather than in front of them.

Originally there were a number of shots of me talking to the camera, but these attracted so much ridicule from my students at the University where I teach that I took it down. This is the edited down version separated into two videos. The parts of the film shot under safelight are done on the night shot setting of a basic video camera and this has a slower shutter speed, causing the movement to look a little blurred and delayed. Consequently, the shots of me timing my exposures don’t appear to match up with the sound of the metronome, but in reality they were.

Split Grade Printing Part 1 ? ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XgmJk2Fmpw

Split Grade Printing Part 2 ? ? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8H7eLcGUZs

Posted in Darkroom, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

looking at shadows

By sandy | Published: 30/01/2010

As photographers we are primarily concerned with light, but often the most interesting shapes come from the absence of light – the shadows.?We are usually instructed as photographers, that our exposures should be worked out accurately to ensure that we have plenty of shadow detail, but I often find that having a deep shadow, or even a solid black, can give a stronger picture.?Using shadows creatively can impart a powerful compositional element, -the black areas give strength to the image.

hand shadowIn the photograph of the hand shadow, they lead the eye into the picture, but at other times they can frame, give scale and often, depth.

Jim BondDeep areas of black don’t necessarily have to be shadows, they can be silhouettes, as in this portrait;

amaryllis and shadowThe way shadows become distorted as they spread over an uneven surface is also very interesting to me and has been a very important element in many of my shots. In this one, the wall was uneven, so the shadow took on a more fluid shape.

Getting a deep black in the shadow area with film could be achieved by underexposing slightly, though I would prefer to expose normally and to increase the blacks during printing by giving a little extra Grade 5 after the ‘normal’ exposure. This would gradually deepen the shadow detail, depending on how much extra exposure you gave it.

I’m planning on covering this printing method in the next blog post on Split Grade Printing.

Boosting up the blacks in Photoshop is a simple matter of moving the left hand slider in ‘levels’ until the chosen density is achieved.

So to be able to spot this king of image, you need to be more aware of the shadows rather than the scene itself. To do this I find that whilst looking at a potential scene, squinting really helps. When you half close your eyes you reduce the light intensity to the point where the darker tones don’t register and appear black. You can then assess the strength of those shapes as regards the composition of the image.?Here the shadow falling across the wall from a bay window gives a false perspective to the interior of this shop.

shop shadows

Here are some other examples of pictures where I have employed shadow as a compositional element.

table shadows

railings

plant shadows

Posted in Experimental, General, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Indecision

By sandy | Published: 11/01/2010

I’ve been thinking recently about how I see myself as a photographer/artist and how my students see themselves. They generally downgrade themselves with comments like; ‘I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be shooting this kind of stuff’ ‘Is this ok?’ and ‘I feel like I’ll never be as good as you’.?The trouble with this kind of thought is that it keeps the student in a state of indecision and negitivity. How can this progress into ‘I am a photographer and I feel confident in my ability and vision, -look out world, here I come’.

At what point do we morph from indecisive blundering to confident artist? The technical stuff can be learned, but when do you consider you have got to a point where you can hold your poise in a room full of good or great photographers??For myself, I never thought I was good enough, and?I used to think that was normal.

I assumed that all other artist photographers felt that their work wasn’t up to standard.

I tried hard, kept learning and trying new techniques, always pushing myself to be better. I mastered various techniques and then moved on to others like I was passing exams. I did nothing with the finished pictures, they just sat in boxes at home. I would occasionally show them to friends, but never thought they were good enough for anything else.

Then I was pushed into taking my work around various galleries and publishers in London by my just recently acquired first wife.

She booked a coach and arranged for us to stay in a cheap hotel, I looked up a few galleries and publishers and we travelled down for a few days. From that visit I got a few prints in a group show in a small gallery.

Chimneys, Rotcher, Holmfirth.

The boost that gave me created a greater urge to improve and learn, so I applied myself to a greater degree, but I didn’t try to be a commercial photographer or earn money from it, because I never saw myself as ‘qualified’ yet.

I was eventually persuaded by a good friend to enter the world of commercial photography and so I began to tout my folio around advertising and design agencies. By this time I had been doing photography seriously for eight years.

I couldn’t compete with the big boys because I didn’t have a big studio and at that time I had very little equipment. The work I was offered was often dull or pointless and I found myself working for people who were visually illiterate and who also had no respect for photography. They also ripped me off on many occasions, so I eventually pulled out of that area of photography and made money by doing non photographic work; Builders labourer, furniture removals, postman, lorry driver. I even worked on a pig farm, though that only lasted two days, as the smell was overpowering.

I can say with all honesty, that each day I worked in these various trades I was thinking to myself that I wasn’t meant to do this, I should be doing photography. I knew I was in the wrong place and I knew I was wasting valuable photography time. This convinced me that photography was my calling, I had to take it more seriously and to see myself in a different way. Once I stopped seeing myself as a bumbling amatuer who happened to have a few strong shots, and to re-brand myself as someone who had a mission to be part of the real world of photography (at least the part of it that my style of photography fitted into), things really started to take off. I wasn’t snapping away, waiting to see if it came out, I was really thinking about how I saw things, actively looking many times a day in all situations for potential images which I felt were all around.

Colander, eggs

Some of the strongest images in my portfolio were taken in those years. My life was busier than it had ever been, with three small children to look after and a gallery to run, but I was on fire! That simple change in my perception of myself and my work improved my output in a really profound way.

Dad's lily

When my students have achieved a certain level of ability I tell them to see themselves as photographers, not students, even if they are still in the education system. I believe that self belief is crucial to your personal development. Not a deluded kind of self belief which shouts from the rooftops, but a sense that you are on a mission to produce something of value to the world.

Posted in General, Lecturing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Snow scenes again -the images.

By sandy | Published: 30/12/2009

I have been out on a number of occasions since writing the last post. Some of the films are processed, but not all. We have had days when I could get to my darkroom and lots of days when I could not. I have had to scan the negatives to show the results here, but intend to print them at some point on high contrast matt FB paper, as I think this will really suit the look of them. Hopefully, they will look like pen and ink drawings.

Untitled-5

Untitled-6

Untitled-7

Untitled-11

Posted in 35mm, Darkroom, cameras, landscape, processing | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Snow scenes again

By sandy | Published: 21/12/2009

It’s almost a year since I started this blog and one of the first articles I wrote was about shooting in the snow on Ortho film (See ‘High contrast snow scenes’, Feb ‘09). I also wrote another article on achieving higher contrast by altering the film ISO and increasing the development time (see ‘Flexible film’ October 2009).

After doing the tests on these films I had a result which I was eager to take further, unfortunately the snow went rather suddenly and I could do no more (The images used in the October article were shot at the same time as the ortho tests in Feb). Here in the UK we have had heavy snow again and I’ve been wanting to continue my tests.

I like the effect of having black shapes floating in a white space, the images are abstract, but recognisable. Here’s one from last time;

square field

I prefer overcast days with white skies for this kind of shot, there are no strong shadows to distract from the forms.

To get high contrast the trick is to over process the film so that the heavily exposed areas become black on the film. The exposure is determined by an incident reading to ensure that the large areas of white don’t influence the meter too much.

With the Delta 100 film I rated it at 800 ISO and doubled its development time in Ilfotec DDX diluted one to four. The resulting negatives print well on a normal grade of paper, but will give more tonal separation if printed on a hard grade.

I’ll be going out tomorrow with the Delta 100 loaded, but this time I’m planning on shooting with a long lens so that I can pick out shapes in the distance and reduce the angular distortions that come with wider lenses. This hopefully will add to the abstraction.

We’ve not had great snow here for around twenty years, so this has been a great opportunity to add to my snow scenes. I’m going to continue with the high contrast shots on 35mm Delta 100, but I’ll also be taking other snow landscapes on medium format loaded with HP5 rated at 200 to give a beautiful long tonality.

This is a 35mm shot from 1983 (I think).
snowy gate

Posted in 35mm, Medium Format, Uncategorized, landscape, processing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Images on Glass

By sandy | Published: 01/12/2009

In the small town where I live, there used to be a company who became famous for making illustrated postcards. These humorous cards showed cartoon images of seaside holidaymakers and ordinary working people and often had double entendre meanings.

Picture 11



The company was known as Bamforths and although the cards they produce are famous worldwide, not many people are aware that they also had a photographic studio. In their early days they were leading producers of magic lantern slides on subjects such as romance, tragedy and the temperance movement. They also produced movies which were seen all over the world. According to Wikipedia, the films made here in Holmfirth, surpassed those made by Hollywood at the time!

If the company had not ceased the film making part of their business during the first world war (due to shortages), the place where I live could have been the centre of the worlds film industry. When film making finished they continued with postcard production up to the latter part of the 20th Century.

The company closed in the early 1990’s and the daylight photographic studio of the building was turned into homes. The rest of the building was left to rot and a few years ago plans were put forward to develop the site and build a large new development of flats. These were opposed by locals, but the work seems to be going ahead anyway.

IMG_0128

There are a couple of websites which give a little more detail here; http://www.bamforthpostcards.co.uk/ and http://www.bamforth.0catch.com/

About fifteen years ago I was approached by a local man who had been living behind the derelict Bamforths building and had discovered a pile of old lantern slides covered with pieces of carpet. The slides had suffered some damage from years of weather, but images could still be seen. He gave me the glass positives and I stored them away in my studio. I was reminded of them recently as I walked past the old Bamforths building and noticed workmen knocking down one of the smaller buildings (the little studio where the illustrations were drawn). I approached one of the guys and asked if it would be ok to have a quick search round the back to see if there were any more lantern slides hidden in the undergrowth.

He waved me through and I clambered over rubble and weeds to a little area behind a wall where my friend had located the glass images so many years ago.

Behind Bamforths

I hadn’t been prepared for the fact that not only had the whole area been left to go wild with creeping plants and nettles, but the nearby houses had used this ‘waste’ ground for years to dump all their grass cuttings, old pushchairs and broken pots. I struggled through and found an old iron bar which I used to dig around and lift rubbish, but all I could find was clear squares of glass and broken pieces of glass which had once held images. The emulsion had completely rotted away from these.

IMG_0094

It was quite depressing to find no trace of the photographic history, so I went back to the studio and dug around in my own collection for the lantern slides that I had been given years previously.

I found some really interesting images, not least of which, are three photographs of the Lusitania in Liverpool docks.

20091130-Untitled-1320091130-Untitled-1420091130-Untitled-15

Although the search had come to nothing, it had spurred me on to find the Glass lantern slides I had forgotten I owned. How many other great images had been lost to the damp and cold though? If only I had gone to search after I received this small collection..20091130-Untitled-420091130-Untitled-8

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Posted in General, Uncategorized, landscape | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Night Photography

By sandy | Published: 16/11/2009

Although the weather is turning much colder now here in the UK, I really want to get out and do some more night photography. I’ve not done any serious night stuff for a while now and keep seeing shots while I’m driving or at other inconvenient times. I try to make a mental note of the location with the intent of going back with camera and tripod, but you know how it is, it doesn’t always happen. So I’ve decided I’m definitely going out this week.

prospect road

I prefer cool, slightly misty Autumn nights for shooting. This is because it gets darker earlier, giving me longer to work and the misty air separates the tones as they recede into the distance (known as aerial perspective). This gives a better sense of depth and drama to a scene and suppresses the bright highlights of distant lights.

churchyard

Autumn also brings a colour change and the orange brown leaves reflect the street lighting better. This year I have missed the best of the Autumn colours as we have had some really windy weather, which has stripped many of the trees bare.

Coming back to night photography after shooting other subjects and styles for a while, I was thinking about approaching it in a different way this time. Previously I had shot mainly on 35mm and medium format. Now I think I would like to shoot on 10×8 using a 300mm 5.6 lens. This would be used at it’s widest aperture to give a very shallow area of focus which I think will accentuate the theatricality of the lighting, making each shot look like a stage set. I’ll post some images when I’ve done them.

copleys bakery

If you are thinking of doing any night photography and the lights where you intend to shoot are the common sodium type, then you might find chart 1 useful. These are the starting point exposures for Ilford HP5 under ordinary sodium lighting (orange lights).

The much brighter high pressure sodium lamps which are seen along motorways and in many city centres are paler in colour and twice as bright.

Use chart number 2 for exposures with such lighting.

As can be seen from the charts, the exposures increase dramatically as you use smaller and smaller apertures, this is down to reciprocity failure. This is a problem with exposures longer than one second, where extra exposure has to be added.

For anyone interested in taking night photography further, I wrote a book on the subject which has now sold out, but you should be able to find used copies on Amazon.

Chart 1

Sodium lighting

Chart 2

HPS lighting

star trails

old railway station

night mist

Posted in 35mm, Medium Format, Night Photography, landscape | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments