Last Monday evening I had the honour of being asked to address a gathering of local camera clubs. I could talk about whatever I wanted. So i decided to address them on a subject which has and continues to fascinate the photo-educator in me.

Why do we photograph?

Here is the text of that address…

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My thanks to the Kaiapoi cameraclub for asking me to come and speak with you tonight. It is indeed a great pleasure.

When I was asked to speak, I readily agreed. I’m a highly trained professional mouth and more than willing to try this outside the comfort of my own home. At the time I didn’t really think too much about what I could offer you, but as time has drawn nearer , it started to occupy my mind. So, while I could have talked about portraiture, being creative in/and wedding photography ,or even how to photograph a small plant on the forest floor (a thing I know nothing about) I decided to play to my strengths , such as they are, and speak on a subject which has preoccupied me for quite some time. The photoeducator in me is continually fascinated by the photographs I see, and attempting to see the reasons behind why people photograph. (more…)

Each time I teach the landscape workshop, I introduce landscape photography as a genre by showing a PowerPoint presentation I’ve built up over the years, which traces the history of photographing the landscape. I normally do this at least a couple of times a year, so I get to see all the photographs in the presentation several times. There is one photograph which has haunted me for around 25 years now, and each time I see it, it sends shivers up and down my spine. When I first saw it, my jaw dropped open and I wondered how the photographer had produced an image so complex and yet so integrated, which showed a vast sweeping landscape with an enormous number of disparate elements, all of which held together, left to right, top to bottom, in front to back.

I’m referring, of course, to Ansel Adams’ Winter Storm Clearing over Yosemite.

Albert Hughes

At first glance, it appears to be a relatively simple composition. The photographer came to a halt, set up his tripod, selected the boundaries of his composition and pressed  the cable release. How hard is that? Yet, over the years, as I have looked at the image, and attempted to work with the big landscape, I’ve come to realise that the image is deceptively simple. In fact it is an extraordinarily complex composition. It is not simply a question of left to right and up and down. It’s a question of the relationships between the objects in the foreground and the mountains in the background. Each part of the image has to stand in correct proportion and in correct placement relative to all the others. Winter Storm Clearing over Yosemite is really a masterclass in visual design or, as some people would have it, composition. I recognised the image over 20 years ago, and something inside me told me how complex it was. The recognition was there, but the understanding was virtually non-existent. Even today, when I study it, I sense there are layers within it that I only dimly comprehend. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

There I was, tearing my hair out ( see pic below), trying to get the driver for my screen calibration device to work, and this popped into my Inbox.

It helped, it really helped.

To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity

1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don’t Disguise Your Voice. !

3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.

4. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks . Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions,
Switch to Espresso.

5. On all your cheque stubs, write ‘ For Marijuana’

6. Skip down the street Rather Than Walk and see how many looks you get. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

I know I bang on a lot about the need to take care of your data.

Well, I am at it again. This tale of woe came to me last night from Richard, who has had disaster strike. May I respectfully request you read it, then take action.

Or share your own techniques….

Greetings and a very good evening to you all…

I would like to share a wee story of woe with you…not because I am looking for sympathy – though all sympathies are of course gratefully accepted – but because I think there is an important message to share with you.

I am the worlds best at giving advice that I never heed myself….

I often tell people about the need to back their data up – and particularly their precious images.

About a year ago I bought an external hard drive. In fact it was not long after Dave Wethey came and spoke to us at a club meeting and extolled the virtues of making multiple copies of data etc. (more…)

With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. ..It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed day

-H.G Wells, War of the Worlds

The earth is 12000 km in diameter; the atmosphere which surrounds it a mere 10km thick. We are creatures living in a microscopically thin film, transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

There is a book which has followed me around over 25 years. Written by the science fantasy writer, Roger Zelazny, Roadmarks charts the journey of the protagonist, Red Dorakeen, along the road of time. Driving his battered pickup truck, with a copy of Baudelaire’s Les Fleures du Mal and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass on the dashboard, he enters and exits the road of Time at various points along its continuum. In the course of his journey, dragons appear to offer him advice.

I haven’t read it for some years now. It is packed away amongst all my other books in a friend’s garage. Even though I haven’t looked at it in quite some time, it still maintains a presence in my imagination, and the metaphors within the book still have an influence from time to time. The journey the hero makes, it seems to me, reflects in  many way our own journeys, and when I think about how the various elements in the box are in some way metaphors for the human journey, then it comes to inform me. I think our photographs can do that as well. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

As a number of you know, I have been on the road for the last three weeks, working on a book. My thanks and apologies to all of you who have emailed me, usually prefacing it with wherever you are…. With little or no access to email, I have been obliged to reply using my Barackberry, so of necessity the replies have been somewhat short. I got back last Saturday night and have spent the time downloading and wading through 716 pieces of E-traffic. I have about three weeks in Christchurch, before I fly out to South Africa on 30 May for 5 weeks. More about that later….

6421 kilometres, 4909 digital files and 108 film files on the new Kodak Ektar 100, 5 rolls of which arrived from Rochester , NY, the day I I left for the wilderness, for the high, scary places( I will be publishing a review of it in the next couple of weeks, when I get  my hands on a film scanner and before I leave the country).

I thought I knew a thing or two about 4-wheel driving, having learned it while working for the New Zealand Forest Service as a student, and upgrading it with the 4WD guru Ken Sibley a couple of years ago. Now I know a whole lot more… How to cross a river with water level with the bonnet, how to deal with tracks euphemistically labelled as gnarly, and to cope with roads little wider than the vehicle track, where the view is straight down for 600 metres to Lake Benmore…( not easy when you don’t do heights well, and the reason I switched from climbing to caving back in the day…) There have been days when I felt challenged! (more…)