But it was long ago and it was far away, oh God it seems so very far

And if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car

And objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are
-Meatloaf ( from the Bat out of Hell album)

Kia ora tatou:

Every year Christmas catches up with me, appears to spring an ambush and gets me every time. For all it  seems to be in front of me, in point of fact it has been creeping up in my reareview mirror all year.

It is a time for family, a time to remember, to take stock, to reflect on the significance of this day in the year.

For some of us it will be a time for family, for giving and sharing. For some of us it will be a time to reaffirm or reinforce our faith. For others it will be a grind and a time of suffering. But it has caught up with us and is running alongside in the outer lane. Tomorrow it will drop back, out of sight, for another year.

But it is a time of hope and a time to reflect on a great Truth. (more…)

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is
transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.
::: Richard Avedon :::

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.

~Henry Ward Beecher

Kia ora tatou:

In the course of this blog, I have from time to time, been asked why I photograph. Believe me, I ask this of myself most days. Sometimes the answers are firm, self-assured. At other times doubts have set in and I wonder why I do it.

In the previous post, SG asked this  question:

On another track, I’ve just finished going through ‘letters to Beth’. I think there is no greater or lesser (Ansel Adams/Robert Frank) - they just both great but different. To me is important why they did photography. Once I came across the life story of Jimmy Forsyth - a man with one eye due to a work accident, very little or no money and no idea of photography. On a whim he bought an old Kodak and in forty odd years Jimmy Forsyth produced the most outstanding record of his community. Why did Jimmy Forsyth do photography? “I was just catching what I knew was going to disappear” JF

What are you catching Tony? Why photography? (more…)

Updated 18/12/2008

Kia ora tatou:

A number of you may remember a post where I drew attention to the fact that I had been challenged to pick up my film camera again.

The results were exciting and opened me to old/new possibilities in picture-making. I will restate that: it opened me to revisiting old school technologies and incorporating them into a new way of working. Can I try that again: it offered the opportunity to take old-school technologies and use old methodologies to make…O, forget it.

When I walked away from film some 3 years ago, I never thought I would return, and all that knowledge gathered over a 15-year stretch with fil would become redundant. For  some reason, I held on to my EOS 1vHS. Back then I could have got a reasonable amount for the camera. Today a camera (hardly-used) which cost me $4.5k to buy is worth, at best, $300 to trade. All that time it has sat there, forlorn and forgotten, in my gear safe. In the last few weeks, however, it has had more work than my 1DS Mk III.

And I am loving it (are you reading this, Doc? Stop sniggering). (more…)

Kia ora tatou:
Help needed!
If anybody out there has the following, which they don’t want, I would love to get my hands on it…..
-Fast slide film (ISO 400 or faster)
-an unused film scanner (3000dpi or better) you might be willing to lend/sell me… ( sorted-thanks)

I am currently working on my mannequins project and shooting it in film (I will bet a number of you never thought you would hear me say that!
Many thanks

Kia ora tatou:

As I move to offer more and more workshops ( I am now commited until May 2009), beacuse I love sharing and teaching, I have put up a number over summer.

Summer is a time to kick back and reflect, before you get back into the year. A time for sun and wine and good music ( I am currently loving the Eagles’ Long Road out of Eden, and my truck stereo is starting to get sick of playing  Busy Being Fabulous and Waiting in the Weeds). It is also a great time to do a few photography  workshops.

Well, have I got some options for you! I have got together with a few of my talented friends ( Mary Jo, Doc Ross and Nick Heaphy) to bring you some very interesting days….

Have a look here. If they look interesting, be in!

Look forward to seeing you there…

Noho ra mai

I have become a big fan of plugins!
Lately I have watched some big shifts in my style and what I want to be able to do with my images. Actually, when I use my 20:20 hindsight, I realise it is a natural progression that has been taking place over the last 2-3 years, as I get out of my own way, particularly the prejudice that says I should stick to the medium’s mores and traditions.

If all of our photographs are autobiographical (and I believe every single image we make is autobiographical), then what is it we are sending to the world (and ourselves)? There is the real lesson: what we can learn about ourselves from our images (as well as pleasing our clients!)? For me, the joy in making an image for a paying client is in creating one that pleases them on the one hand and offers me a new view of my own journey, in other words that has something to say to me as well. I invite your comments.

Last Saturday I had the honour to photograph Jennifer and Gino (their English names) who are getting part-married in New Zealand and part-married back in Taiwan…(don’t ask: it is complicated!). A long time ago I taught Jennifer English and I was humbled that she would track me down from Taipei after all these years to photograph her wedding . She is a Buddhist and one of those brides who are beautiful inside and out. (more…)

The copyright demon: is somebody stealing your work?

Over the last few years, at seminars and workshops, I have been asked the question: what do you do when somebody steals your image? My answer has been somewhat vague, as I haven’t really had any direct experience of it.

Well, now I have. And I know more.

A month or so ago, I was photographing in town and walked past a small gallery in Central Christchurch. There, sitting in the window was an image I had shot for an organisation, printed (badly), enlarged to around 30″ by 40″, in a frame and for sale. It was the first I knew about it. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

I wonder how many of us read those EULA’s ( End User Licence Agreements) we agree to when we install software or sign up for an online service. I would bet  not many of us.

This came to me today from what I take to be a reputable source.

Hi everyone,

This was mentioned briefly at the XXXX XXXX lecture on Monday, but for
those of you who weren’t there please be aware that when you open a Flickr
account (or use any Yahoo!Xtra service) you are agreeing to the following
Terms of Service: (more…)

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules

-George Bernard Shaw

Rules are made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind

-Douglas Mac Arthur

I received this email the other day from a member of a local camera club. I am going to call him Frustrated of New Brighton. I would like to think he was a lone voice in the wilderness. I know he is not. I have heard this story any number of times. But first, his comments…

The one thing that irritates me about camera clubs is their strict adherence to so called rules of composition. It is a cardinal sin to crop a limb off someone in a photograph, the rule of thirds etc…….etc……..While I acknowledge that a photographer should have an understanding of  these so called  rules,  it is counterproductive to insist that club members adhere to them religiously. Tony, you will remember the humming bird shot in the club competition that you recently helped judge. Do you remember that the bird was smack bang in the middle of the frame? Does it matter?

I came across a classic timeless image by Henri Cartier-Bresson the other day while browsing online galleries. It’s the one of the boy strutting around a street corner with a bottle of wine tightly tucked in each arm, but it is the expression on his face that says it all. In all the times I have seen that image I never noticed before that the boy’s legs have been cut off in the photograph. Why didn’t I notice that before? Because it isn’t important to the impact of the image, and it isn’t important to the story the photographer was presenting to me. The image below is one I took at a recent Maori Cultural Evening at Willowbank. The club was invited to take photographs for promotional purposes.

I won’t be entering this in any club competitions next year. I know that the judge will throw it out because I have cut the hands off.

DOES IT MATTER?

FoNB, it doesn’t matter, and it does. Let me explain. It may take a little while…. (more…)

“My painting is almost entirely autobiographical - it tells you where I am at any given point in time, where I am living and the direction I am pointing in. In this present time it is very difficult to paint for other people - to paint beyond your own ends and point directions as painters once did.”

-Colin McCahon

My friend/fiend Jenny asked a difficult question a little time ago in a comment to a previous post. She wrote:

Okay! Next question…. related to this post in the spirit of generating some dialogue. Having thought about some of the ways ego is constricts creativity how do we completely devoid ourselves of it’s influence?? How do we recognise all the layers of its influence??

Difficult to answer, Jenny, but here is a partial response.

Sometimes you have to let go. Sometimes you have to get out of your own way.

I spend a lot of time previsualising, using my visual diary and of course the images themselves to examine my ideas and reflect upon the direction my photography is taking. Sometimes I think I try too hard. I was reminded of that last Saturday night when I went out to make some new work. I had pictures in my head.

It didn’t quite work out that way. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

Time for a Sermon on the Mount.

On Monday night I had the singular honour of being asked to judge the Canterbury Roundup, an interclub battle for projected Images, along with Ian Smith (ex-Photo Access) and Linda Lee, a Fine Art photography teacher from Christchurch. Nice to see clubs looking for input from people outside the system. Widening the range of inputs can only be good for photography as a whole and for enlarging our awareness of the possibilities the medium can offer. CPS came first (again), followed by Rangiora (YAAY!- No, I am not being parochial-much) and then Kaiapoi. Congratulations.

On that subject, I want to raise (and hopefully dispel) a common fallacy: that professionals are better photographers  than amateurs.

Wrong. They are the same, only different. I have seen work from amateur photographers that had a long way to go. And I have been asked to explain ” this depth-of-field thing” to a professional who was making $80k a year, shooting families, weddings and children. A professional makes his/her living from photography. As such, he/she is driven by client expectations. An amateur photographs for the love of it. We are all amateurs. Or we should be. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

1. I always intended this blog to be a community. We grow as photographers when we debate and discuss. As Robert Adams said, “Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny but that carry with them a reminder of community.” I depend on my mentors and artists’ models; I also depend on you and I value your visits and the comments that you leave. Please, if you have a thought, a debate or question, ask it, state it, vilify me, whatever. If it is an Ian-Walls-question (many thanks, Ian, you hook me every time!), I will write a post about it. Morris Dancing excepted!
   
2. For those of you still thinking about attending the Freeman Patterson workshop in Akaroa next year, there are still a few places left in the first ( Digital Intensive) and 3rd workshops. This is an ideal place to spend a week working with other photographers and taking a solid step towards photographing with your own voice. The three of us never cease to be amazed at the way attendees’ photography takes a giant leap forward.
3. I am on the cusp of sending out a newsletter. If you don’t get it, that is because you aren’t on my database, and spam laws prevent me sending it out on a whim. You can sign up here or here.
   
4. Last Saturday night I did something I haven’t done in 31/2 years. I went out and shot a roll of film, AgfaChrome RS 1000, dated 12/96. I won’t tell you the number of times I shot, took a look at the back of the camera, and then called myself a Richard. But it was fun. More importantly, It showed me a new technique that I can add to the armoury. Appearing on a Creative Workshop near you…. O, and yes, I have given it a little nudge in CS3. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? I am excited! Now, where is that Mamiya RZ67? And if anyone has fast transparency film in the freezer they don’t want, my address is…. (more…)
   

When you come to my fights and I’m under the lights
and you see that my footwork is false
don’t count me out, at the start of the bout
I’m just doing the secondary waltz
doing the secondary waltz

- Mark Knopfler (from the Kill to get Crimson album)

I blame Mark Knopfler. It is all his fault.

Sometimes I am as influenced (read: informed) by music as I am by what I see, and sometimes music affects my perception of the landscape. Heaven knows what I will produce if I start listening to Metallica or ACDC while I am on the road!

Lately I have been giving myself permission to move beyond the representational, to move further into post-visualisation and expressionism. Let me explain. (more…)

Kia ora tatou:

I guess most of us buy our memory cards on price. Well, why not? I mean they are all much of a muchness (that looks terrible in print).

Wrong.

I am asked from time to time which brand of cards they should be using. I know I have tended to stick to the big names (Sandisk and Lexar) and buy them from someone I can have a discussion with when/if they go wrong/fail. So far it has worked. But there is more to it than that.

Firstly, you need to consider write-speed, the time it takes your camera to write the file to the card. This will vary according to the make and model of camera. If you have a camera that takes 2 different forms of card (i.e Compact Flash and SD), then you find that performance varies.

Brand is another issue. One manufacturer’s 200x card may well differ from another’s. And don’t believe that a card with an advertised write speed of 30Mb/sec (e.g Sandisk Extreme III) will actually deliver that. The culprit here is not the card, it is the camera. As an example is my Canon 1DS MKIII.  A SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition 8GB ($NZ180.00) has an actual write speed for RAW files of 17.966MB/sec, in other words a little more  than 1/2 the potential performance. A Sandisk Extreme 8.0Gb CF Ducati($325.00) has a write speed of 19.808MB/sec. Nearly twice the price, but not 2x the performance. Bang for the $$$, The former card represents better performance value. A Transcend Class 6 8GB SDHC card for the same camera has a write speed of 9.795MB/sec.

So how do I know all this? Because there is a cool site which has tested a whole array of cards with different cameras and published the data. You can access it here.

Read-speed is the time it takes to get the data off the card, and here the issues are the speed of your card-reader and the bus speed in your computer. If this matters, then buy a really good card reader. I recommend the Lexar Professional UDMA Reader. Quick and effective.

Lastly, how do you know that card you ordered online is the Real Deal? My friend SSG ordered one while overseas, A 16Gb Transcend. When he went to download it, it turned out to be only 8Gb in capacity. He was able to return it to the dealer who had sold it to him. Would it be that easy if he had ordered it from www.fornexttonothing.com? I wonder.

I note the Big Two are using holographic logos in their packaging. How reliable they are I am not certain.

Caveat emptor.

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people go right on talking when you’re interrupting

-Mark Twain

Kia ora tatou:

As most of you know, I am a digital guy now. My friend, Doc Ross, is a fine artist and film guy (that makes two of them I know). Recently we faced off across the debating table at the PSNZ Southern Regional Convention, arguing our sides of the moot: that digital is dancing on the grave of film. Debating is great fun; you take a point of view and argue it, no matter what you may believe. As Jill Ruckelhaus said, ” The best way to win an argument is to begin by being right.”

Naturally our side won… (more…)