Some early year ruminations.

West Sunshine, 2020-01-09 17:05:05

I am no fan of best of lists or end of year lists at all.

I will never write about gear. I envy after several pieces of kit. But they are all mostly on the 2nd hand market these days.

I write here for two reasons, to practice my writing skills, both generally and as I consider my PHD application at some point in the future. Oh and to showcase some of the work I am working on. This image to the right is from my ongoing Sunshine Project, on tumblr
Here’s a list of projects I am working on as they're called these days:-

• Sunshine, postcode 3020 and its changes using both film and digital, the film idea is titled  'Sunshine in Silver Stanza 1 though X', the digital work lives online on tumblr [pc3020.tumlr.com]. For now.
• Several photobooks in various stages of pre-prodcution and a handful completed listed on my main website a link will be added once my technological issues are resolved.
• Collage and montage projects, these have just this year begun. After many years of gestation. The plan is for them to be small cheap 6x 4 postcards.
• A small group of pictures currently titled ‘A Winter Mornings Walk’, inspired by Robert Adams’ work Summer nights. [silver gelatin a work in progress final size to be determined]
• A series of silver gelatin prints I have printed and exhibited twice called Maps.
• A series of silver gelatin prints about bridges all shot on 5x4 film and more than 20 years unfinished.
• A series of silver gelatin prints on the urban landscape from both 5x4 film and 120 film black and white.
• A small type C print series of pictures near on and around the Ring road M8 freeway, in progress.
• Two  of tumblrs that explore time and place one at work  the other at home as well as a tumblr of pictures uploaded on the the fly that are loosely curated in any order that suits, the only connection being visual from picture to picture
• A large box of polaroids that needs editing down to a book.
• One tentative exhibition has been proposed but is still in the verbal discussion phase.
• Working on the South Eastern fringes of the Mallee, and the rural towns in-between
• C Roads and other Adventures a digital psychogeographic exploration of Victoria, or anywhere else I wander with "purpose" 
• Pictures of nothing or as I like to call it Neo-Documentary

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Are Digital Cameras Computers?

I agree with Mike Johnston, from the Online Photographer. I only considered teaching students to use the auto focus settings on digital cameras once 1.8 lenses became cheap enough and I understood the implications of how shallow DOF is on digital cameras.


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Ten Years Ago Today? [TBT]

2009-05-02 15:06:42

Ten years ago today, I mdae this picture. At the time I was using a Sony Ericsson C902 phone camera. I had a 5 megapixel sensor and full internet connectivity. These were the reasons I bought it, even though my telco had offered me an iPhone 3 at the time.
In those early days I was fond of pushing the limits of a digital photograph being made using the humblest of devices with minimal control. I feel I had some interesting outcomes.
Now ten years later I have a much more sophisticated device. One that is capable of capturing in several file formats and allowing some exposure and focus controls. In some ways I miss that early experimental aesthetic. It feels like it's harder to achieve when I can shoot in RAW, and the process the file in Lightroom. I use a third party app for this on my iPhone XS. It is called ProCamera, I wrote a couple of articles about it back on my Wordpress blog.
Having the ability to make a "serious" picture that may end up on a gallery wall on in a book is too tempting to not make sure at least some of the pictures that I see, I can best reproduce using any device at hand. The opposite idea really applied in this early days. How far could I subvert the image using this simple tool? Yet hold onto that vestige of indexicallity that so many critics claim is Photography's Achilles heel?

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Exposure Triangle?

I am currently the teaching Certificate IV Students how to use their digital cameras more effectively. One task revolves around using a simple calculator to work out a series different exposures. All ‘correct’ but some giving different outcomes based on shutter or aperture choice. I don’t allow the students to change ISO in this task. This idea is often referred to as the exposure triangle. In the days of teaching film the ISO was always locked in a single place. Students then only needed to understand the relationship between image brightness and aperture and shutter.
I was unhappy with the way the students responded to this task.
In an effort  to find another way of explaining or teaching it I opened three books. Those books were:- 'Reframing Photography Theory and Practice’, 'Photography 4.0 A teaching guide for the 21st Century' and 'Digital Photo Assignments, Projects for all levels of Photography Classes'. None of these excellent books draws a string around the 3 principles involved in image brightness and exposure? Is this a deliberate choice? Do the editors and writers of these books not consider the relationship meaningful enough for a section or a paragraph?
A quick google returns an enormous amount of information. It seems I will have my work cut out for me formulating a new way to teach this idea.

[edit 2019-04-03] I found two more books in my library that could offer some interpretation or explanation. These are, Langford's Basic Photography and Horenstien's Black and White Photography, a  Basic Manual. Both are pre-digital books and as a consequence approach the idea from a film angle. That is; that it, exposure is fixed at the ISO level. In good news. I took my students out to practice. The idea may be sinking in now. we shall see?

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