an occasional blog about framing, photography, art, and living with an analogue mind in a digital age…
Personal projects are funny ol’ things. You start with all good intentions, and run through multiple phases of varying activity, and it’s a lottery whether they ever see completion.
Here’s something that I’d had “pinballing” around my head for a little while, that I’m delighted to say has come to fruition.
As an addendum to the previous set of posts exploring my thoughts on “street” photography, I just wanted to throw a light on one of the best.
Tony Ray Jones’ brief career left an important mark on documentary photography.
Much has been written, so there really is nothing I can add without resorting to plagiarism, but if you’ve not seen his work, please do seek it out and absorb it. His eye for composition in a documentary setting remains unparalleled 50 years after his untimely passing.
Continue reading “don’t take boring pictures”I never expected this theme to run over three posts, but as I considered my self-posed questions, the stream of consciousness flowed and could so easily have continued to more. But I’m going to close with this post where I find myself wondering if anything I do can be considered “street”.
As someone who finds it exceptionally hard to photograph people, even people I know, street photography, in its widely accepted guise as (mostly) candid observations of people in public situations, is perhaps a challenge too far. So, back to my earlier question: how do you define street photography? Can I remain close to my people-free comfort zone and still be a street photographer? Or must I step outside my comfort zone and take a more people based approach?
Continue reading “surviving the streets”Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk
Were it not for the fact that 2018 is designated a “fallow year”, this weekend just passed would have been the Glastonbury Festival, so it seems an appropriate point in the year for this post…
Back to June 2010 then, and the 40th anniversary Glastonbury Festival. A conversation with some friends ended with four of us deciding we’d like to experience it, and if it turned out not to be to our liking, well at least we’d know not to do it again. Beginners luck maybe, but tickets seemed easy enough to procure, sadly not a statement I’ve felt able to repeat since! Continue reading “my happy place”
Edited and updated historical post from www.steers-gallery.co.uk Originally published 30/12/12
Have you tried “on-demand publishing” yet?
It’s an oft-quoted fact that people no longer print their photos. We live in an age when anyone and everyone is a photographer, and you can upload the most banal photograph of your breakfast to a potential global audience before you’ve rubbed the sleep from your eyes, but people just don’t print their photos, preferring to view them on a smartphone screen, brushing each image aside, glancing but not looking, seen but not digested, instant gratification, instantly forgotten, swipe, swipe, swipe… It seems the humble photo album, that printed link to our, and our family’s past, is now itself, a thing of the very past it used to celebrate. What a great shame that is. Continue reading “On-demand publishing”
I love talking photography. Discussing and debating what I like and what I don’t care much for. Sharing knowledge and ideas can feed your own interest and also be a potent fertiliser when you feel your artistic life beginning to wither.
I’ll often drop in on any local gallery, and if the exhibiting photographer / artist is present, there’s nothing I like more than having a good old chat. There’s a connection between us as I take in what they’re exhibiting. I try not to critique, that’s not why I’ve walked through the door, but I’ll point out what I like and offer an opinion if pressed. If the exhibitor is proud / happy / confident enough to put their work up for public consumption then they’ve already won my respect, and that goes for any art form, not just photography. Continue reading “exhibitions and influences”