Connor with Easter egg

This is my grandson Connor. It was taken a couple of days ago and although it looks like a portrait I am still going to mention the theme of photographers as historians. It may look like a happy child with an Easter egg (and it is) but it is also an historical document because it says that children had Easter eggs in 2009. Well do you know when Easter eggs started? It is also an idea for any photograph to use a prop.

A photographer friend of mine told me that hands are important in portraits. He told me that hands tell you about the character of the person. You can see Connor's hands but I think in this case the character comes from the face. I would think that hands are more important as a link to your character as you get older. However the point I am making is that character can also come from props. How does the person relate to the prop? Does the prop relate to their work or their interest? Does it show their character? I know that I have mentioned sepia and vignette before, but I'll mention them again with the photo on the right if only because Connor is a great subject.

Alright I will come clean. Connor isn't eating chocolate yet but I still like the use of the prop and it makes the title of this blog a bit arty.

Happy snapping

A little bit more history

Still on the theme of photographers as historians, let's take another look at the Morecambe bandstand and the Midland Hotel. The photo on the left was taken in May 2008. It was taken only a couple of weeks after the photo from the 'photographers are historians' blog, but now the blue wooden fence has been taken down. The photo on the right was taken on Saturday 28th March. I had forgotten the exact location of the previous picture but I couldn't get to it anyway as the grassed area is fenced off.

You can see how run down the funfair had become. It was like a scene out of Scooby Doo. In the past few years I have often walked along the prom expecting Shaggy and Scooby to run past me. Take a closer look and you will see the sign for remote control boats. You may remember that directly opposite the bandstand was the stall where you could buy your 'JUG OF TEA £1.50' and next to it were the boat swings. The go-karts were just to the left of where I took the photos.

If you remember any other rides then let me know.

Happy snapping

Historians or artists?

I mentioned last time that photographers are historians. On January 31st 2008 the Riverdance ran aground near Cleveleys. There must be thousands of people who have their bit of history like the photo on the left. There are also thousands who managed to get better photographs because they were taken when the weather was better. When I managed to get there the weather was quite dull. You may remember that it started in an almost upright position then started to list until it ended up in this position.

There really were some very good photos taken mostly because the light was better and also because some action was taking place. The picture on the right is the same photo. I have added a bit more colour and a sunset. I was thinking of painting 'help' on the hull or maybe 'Michael was here' but I didn't think that would add to the artistic merit of the photo. The historical truth has already been distorted (although the sun would set in roughly that direction) but photos are produced for artistic merit too.

Happy snapping

Photographers are historians

This picture was taken last year. I was passing the Midland Hotel in Morecambe and I saw how the old bandstand could be viewed next to the 'new' Midland Hotel. The hotel originally opened in 1933. It closed a few years ago but re-opened shortly after this picture was taken in 2008.

The Midland did not look its best as it was still being refurbished so I focused on the old bandstand. The light also picks out the sign but the reason I am writing about this picture is because times change. I walked past the Midland this morning and the whole area has been redeveloped. Who would have thought that the bandstand would ever be pulled down? Well it is no longer there. Who would have thought a few months ago that a photo of Woolworths would not now be possible but times do change?

I remember one person telling me that I should take pictures of supermarket car parks when they are empty. I know that it is diificult to do this with extended opening times but it doesn't sound like an attractive subject. His point was that times change and in fifty years he feels that supermarkets will be out of fashion. We will be buying our products on the internet, and supermarkets and their car parks will not be needed. With today's technology photographers can become artists, but in the way we store and share our photos, we are also historians.

Happy snapping

Aspect Ratios

I have books from the 1970s that I have kept because the artistic side of photography is still relevant in this technological age. However many of the cameras or darkroom skills can be reproduced on the computer, and a lot of time can be saved in the process. I still use the camera for some effects. I may focus on something in the foreground and control depth of field to make sure that this is the only object in focus. However it is safer to let the computer do it. After all, you may want everything to be in focus.

Have you ever thought about the size of photographic prints? Well start by thinking about the size of the film, because if you want to make full use of your film then the photo has to be in the same proportion. A standard 35mm film is actually 36mm x 24mm. Finding the lowest common denominator then the ration (termed 'aspect ratio') is 3:2. When things went digital there were many manufacturers who produced sensors that had the same ratio as film. The same ratio happens to be the basic size of photo prints that you get on the high street, 6"x 4". If you have a print with any other ratio then you have to lose some of the original photo. It is cropped out to make the proportion that you want. I tend to use Olympus cameras and one reason for this is that their aspect ratio is 4:3. In other words you make full use of the sensor with 8"x 6" photos.

Happy snapping

Technological Advances

When I started taking photographs in the 1970s all cameras had film. Although there has been a huge change in technology, there are aspects of film cameras that remain. The theory of light entering the camera through the lens is exactly the same, even if the film has been replaced by a sensor. The amount of light entering through the lens is still controlled by the shutter speed and aperture. In layman's terms the aperture is the size of the hole that the light gets through.

All cameras are boxes that allow light in, and an image may be formed at the back of that box. If the hole is small the image may be formed without the need for a lens and focusing the light on the back of the box. You may have heard the term for the very simple ‘pinhole’ cameras. The nature of these cameras means that the image is upside down and the images with these cameras is far from brilliant. Compare this with today’s technology. With some digital cameras the images are shown to you immediately, and the camera is intelligent enough to put the image the right way up.

Happy snapping

No need for bathroom conversions

I have been taking photos since I was a teenager in the 1970s. I had my own darkroom. Well it was normally called the bathroom but my dad made some boards for the windows and boards for over the bath to work on. You were allowed to work in red light when dealing with black and white, but colour processing needed absolute darkness. I didn't have the facilities for colour and it was expensive.

Nowadays photography is so much simpler. Everyone works in colour and changes to black and white if they want to. There is no need to convert a bathroom, to work bent double over the bath, to have continuous running water and then to peg out the pictures to dry on your ‘washing line’.
Printing is so cheap now that you can have your photos (or works of art) hung on your walls, printed on canvas or printed on any number of objects. My personal preference is to put them on DVD. It is cheap, stores the photos well and they can be seen very conveniently. We have come a long way from converted bathrooms.

Happy snapping

Invasion of privacy

I am listening to the news on Thursday 19th March and one particular article is about Google photographing the streets of England in their scheme called 'street view'. There are issues of invasion of privacy and Google have agreed to blur faces and registration plates of vehicles because of the privacy issue. Some people are appalled at the prospect of having their house photographed.

Another article on the North West news was about someone who was asked to stop filming at Macclesfield railway station. It is private property and you have to ask permission but he was told to stop filming for security reasons. What is the world coming to? What is the security risk? It is irritating to hear such nonsense. We are becoming a country of little Hitlers.

If it is an invasion of privacy to take a photograph in the street then it may be against the law to look into the street. Macclesfield Railway Station may be private property but it is not a private area. Where does the 'buck stop'? Is it National Rail, or the regulatory body which is the Dept of Transport, or is it someone with a uniform at the station? Whoever it is I fear for our future because I may be arrested there 'for security reasons' because I have a good memory. Despite this...

Happy snapping

Converging Verticals

I have tried to take a photo in which the verticals are converging. Basically you get close to something vertical and take your photo. The principle is the same as a road going into the distance. If an object is further away then it is smaller. If you are close to the pillars of Morecambe Town Hall then the upper part of the pillar is further away.

I found this task difficult because I don't like converging verticals. I should have gone a lot closer to the pillars. I could have corrected it by taking the picture from a distance and zooming in. I chose to correct it by manipulating the photo but both methods work. Some photographs use converging verticals as an effect, which is fine, but I just didn't want to get any closer to those pillars as I felt it would be difficult to recognise the picture. Notice that there is a gap between the top of the pillars on the left. I have distorted the photo on the right to make the pillars vertical, but the eye does this automatically. We know that pillars should be vertical so the eye does not recognise convergence. Who says the camera doesn't lie? Well the eye can lie too.

Happy snapping

Changing brightness

If your photo is too dark or too bright this is called under or overexposure. In the past you would get a sticker on your photograph from the printer who told you to improve your technique. Now there is no need to despair. That wonderful photograph can be saved. I took one photo of a bride in a room and the flash didn't go off. I took it again and this was the photo that they were given but the first one was fine as well after I had been on the computer.

There are photographs everywhere but we tend to walk past them and not think artistically. Look at cinema adverts or any adverts for that matter. I am thinking of the 'atmospheric' low key street lights for film noir. I like night photography which changes the scene completely. One change that I like to do is take a street scene and then darken the street light. The brightness of the light is obviously much greater because it is lighting the whole street. You could crop a particulary bright light out of the photo, but you could also adjust the lighting just around the lamp.

Happy snapping

Who wants to see the weeds anyway?

This is Morecambe Town Hall and I took this photo just before sunset on Wednesday 18th March. I have a few things that I want to say about this photo. I want to amend it a few times, and you will see it in black and white and sepia. Then you will see the effects of cropping and finally I will put a Warhol slant on this photo, so you will see these blogs below as it will take more than one blog.

Compare these two photos. I have taken the marks off the path and a few weeds off the lawn. It must be the wrong time of year for weeds, or maybe the council are looking after the lawns. In my wedding photography I usually take the weeds off the lawn, because I do not feel this is too intrusive and still represents reality. The lawn may have been cut the day before, so taking out the weeds is not too far from reality, and who wants to see the weeds anyway?

Happy snapping.

Black and White and Sepia

So the path has been tidied and the weeds have been removed. What else can you do? Well the simplest method of manipulating a photo is to convert it to black and white. How you do this depends on your software and there is usually more than one way to do anything on a computer. In this case I just clicked on desaturate. This immediately takes the emphasis off the lawn and puts the emphasis on the building.

I have been on the guided tour of the town hall and I remember that the sunken gardens were initially the site for the building. The excavations took place for the foundations but the land near the sea was too sandy, hence the foundations became the sunken gardens. One more click on the computer takes black and white to sepia. In fact it takes two clicks because I had to add some red and then some yellow. Whether this is a good move or not is down to personal preference, but I like sepia.

Happy snapping.

Crop the art work

The sensor on my Olympus camera takes photos that are 8x6. This is exactly the same as 4x3 but if it helps to think in terms of printed pictures then you often get 8"x 6" photos, so you can get an idea of the proportions of my sensor. However photos are not always this shape. I don't think that the path and the lawns are too important to this photo so I have cropped them out. The proportions of these two photos are 2:1 but you may like to think of them as a photo size, say 12"x 6".

The first photo is simply a cropped version of the sepia picture seen in the last blog, with an increased contrast and decreased brightness. I could have cropped it a little more but I wanted to include the flagpole. It may have improved the photo if I had used the clone tool and taken the pole out. For the final photo in this series I have obviously changed the colour, and I have also increased the contrast and decreased the brightness again. For good measure I added a signature. What was a fairly average picture of a building is now a work of art (if you like Warhol's kind of art).

There are so many artistic effects that are available with most software that it would take years to blog my way through them. I'll leave that for you to investigate.

Happy snapping.

Red-eye

I am sure that everyone has seen red-eye on photos. I have seen it many times on television when a photo is shown of someone in the news and a recent photograph is used. I don't have an example of red-eye to show you. This doesn't mean that I don't take any photos with red-eye, it just means that whenever I see it I change it immediately back to normal. Even the most basic software packages have a red-eye tool for removing this effect.

It may well be that red-eye is more common in poorly lit situations. It may be related to the size of the pupil, and light reflected from the fundus at the back of the eye, and it may be related to how close the flash is to the lens. You may see some photographers with their flash on an extension bar. Really there is no need to go to these lengths. On the occasions that you will be unfortunate and get red-eye just press a button on the computer and it is gone.

Happy snapping

Product Placement

Product placement is all around us. The film 'I Robot' was on television a couple of nights ago and Will Smith does a lot of advertising for Audi, Converse and many other companies. Is product placement a problem? I have added the website address to my photograph of the cravate and the white rose and to me it looks quite good.

This photograph is blatant advertising. The problems occur when art is compromised by business interest. If I were the director of 'I Robot' I would not have a great problem taking pictures of Audi cars as they are fine looking cars, and if someone wanted to pay me a lot of money at the same time then I would be very grateful. At least this photograph tells you that words can be added to photographs. It isn't quite the same as a phrase that means something to the bride and groom.

I think of the vignette as a way of concentrating on the main subject of the photograph. I was looking at some watercolours yesterday and they had a similar effect in that the detail around the edges was not there. So a vignette can concentrate attention, it can give a Victorian feel to a photo, but it also gives it an artistic effect.

Happy snapping

Social comments in the town.

If you live in a city and you take a photograph of a cityscape, how can you avoid taking photos of people in your picture? Well you could get up very early or you could take up night photography, but what are the legal implications of taking photos of people? As a photographer you want to record what is going on around you, and people are part of that. You may wish to take a picture of a building, but you may also want people in the photo to give it a sense of scale. How do you take a picture in the centre of Keswick without getting people in the photo? In this photo I wanted to get a sense of business as usual in town but a storm was on its way. The heavy clouds are a big part of this photo. Going one step further you may want people in the photo to give it some kind of social comment. (There was nothing incriminating in my photo but I have withdrawn it following news reports on 19th March. I have written a blog about these reports and you can read it if you look at Tuesday 24th March 'invasion of privacy').

As an artist this may be an important concern. On the other hand, as a private citizen, you may not wish your photograph to be taken. The general rule in the UK is that you have no choice. Your picture may and will be taken. Walk down the High Street and you will be filmed many times and you have no power over what happens to the photograph. We already live in George Orwell's 1984 as world surveillance is all around us (and wars are fought for reasons we don't quite understand). We are observed many times each day, so don't stop the humble photographer from adding their comment.

There is always an exception to every rule, and as a photographer don't be too intrusive. Even if you are allowed to take photos of people in a street, they still have their dignity. How would you feel if a less than flattering photo was taken of you and then shown to the whole town!

Happy snapping

Who do you think you are? David Bailey?

How do you choose which brand and what kind of camera to buy? It is a little bit like buying a car. Technically all are very good and they get you from A to B. Some are better than others and neither cars nor cameras tend to break down. Prior to the digital age there was a huge difference between SLRs and compact cameras. With an SLR you got the photo you saw. With a system of mirrors that moved aside, there was no difference at all between what you saw and what you photographed. With compact cameras the viewfinder gives a similar view but it's not exactly the same. SLRs are generally more sophisticated, they give you more options, and they are technologically better than their compact counterparts. In this digital age what you see through the viewfinder is what you get with most cameras, but SLRs generally produce better photographs.

Perhaps you want a compact camera so that it fits easily in your pocket. It may be convenient but if you are serious about your photography don't let your camera be too discrete. I think the biggest influence on your choice is advertising. Do you remember the Olympus Trip adverts from many years ago, in which David Bailey would work around a professional who had a lot of expensive equipment. His simple point and shoot camera may capture a moment but technically the professional would have a better picture. Paul Simon sang about having a Nikon camera. Recently Avril Lavigne endorsed Canon SLR cameras. If you like the look or the feel of a camera then you are going to use it more. If you feel like a celebrity then that might help you use it more too.

Happy snapping

Photos on photos

Last time I was writing about increasing the brightness and decreasing the contrast of a photograph and using it as a background for something else. In that case I was talking about putting text on a slide. Here is an example of photographs place over another photographer and for good measure there is a black rectangle.

You can now see the effect of increasing brightness and decreasing contrast. It allows some background information. It sets the scene. One previous blog was about whether photography is 'correct'. Of course there is no view like this one. It is not 'correct' but that should not detract from the photograph and if you like it then this may be the one that ends up in the frame.

Happy snapping

Photos for presentations

Digital manipulation can easily change photos from colour to black and white. I cropped this photo and increased the contrast to produce this photo. I used it when I gave a presentation at Edge Hill university, but the photo was too bold so I decreased the contrast a lot and made it brighter. You could just see the photo as a background and I had added the words 'any questions' as it was my last slide of the talk.

There was no great scene here for a photo but it made a very distinctive final slide. It certainly made the audience wake up, or maybe it was because I had finished my talk. Look out for names. Also look out for space in a photo so that you can add your own words. It can work well in presentations and it can be used sparingly in general photography.

Happy snapping

All weather photography

There is so much you can do with very basic digital equipment. This photograph was taken on a dull cold day. It was windy as well which was good for sailing but the lighting wasn't brilliant for photographs. In fact I had not gone out to take photos and I didn't have an SLR with me. I did have a small compact camera and with the wind blowing I didn't know if camera shake on the prom would be too significant. I found a little bit of shelter which helped me because it really was windy.

I took this photo fairly close to where I took the Bare photograph (see 10th March). The sailing boats were in the distance and I was concerned about using too much zoom because this exagerates any shake. Even with the zoom I had to crop the picture. At home I digitally manipulated the photo by cropping, bringing out the colour and increasing the contrast. So even on the worst days you may find that you can take a good photo.

Happy snapping

Are photographs correct?

"Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?" This is a quote from Pablo Picasso, and although you could identify the human face in his early work, he went on to paint in the Cubist style. Are Cubist faces 'correct'? Take a look at some of Picasso's paintings on the internet if you are not sure about his work. Although his work is interesting, popular and critically acclaimed, I would not choose a Cubist viewpoint as 'correct' over the vast majority of mirrors or photographs.

There is a huge distortion in Cubism. There is distortion with mirrors. Have you walked past the mirrors in the fun house and seen how fat, thin, tall or short you can be? There is distortion in photography. People get dressed up for a photo. Is that the real them? If you know about digital manipulation then you know that change has occurred.

The point of the quote is that photography is an art form. It may not be 'correct' but we are not looking for correctness in art.

Happy snapping

Bare photography

This is a photograph of an area of Morecambe called Bare. So you could say that I am writing about Bare photography. This title should increase the number of hits for my website.

This photo does follow the rule of thirds as described earlier. In fact the rainbow lead you into the place where the thirds meet. The main purpose of this blog is to give you ideas for your photography and the obvious point is to have your camera ready for rare weather conditions. Regardless of conditions you should still think about what you are photographing and the composition. This photo would look very strange in black and white because most of it is sky. When I wrote about colourful Lancaster I said that black and white might help the photo. In this case staying with colour definitely helps.

Happy snapping

Sunderland Point

I would normally say that a photograph is much more powerful than words. This is a photo of the bore at Sunderland Point. Now this surge of a flood tide may not look exceptional, and the weather is fine so risk of danger was low, but it is quite a sight and it can be dangerous. Enlarge the picture and guess how the estuary will change with just one wave. It is also useful to hear the bore and you can appreciate the power behind this wave even if it is less that two feet high.

This photo highlights the need for patience in landscape photography. You can wait for a long time to see the light fall in the way that you want it to on a mountain in the Lake District and you still might not get the photo that you want. At least the bore will let you hear when it is approaching.

Happy snapping

Colourful Lancaster

This is a fairly nice scene of Lancaster and the river Lune. You can see the castle, which dates from the twelfth century, Lancaster Priory founded in 1094, and the Greyhound bridge formerly a railway bridge but converted to road in 1972. You can also see the support structure of the Millenium footbridge (Feb 2001) which was designed to look like the masts of a ship.

The main reason that I have put a colour photo next to a black and white is to show you how colour leads the eye. I want you to be drawn to the famous historic buildings, the reflections in the river Lune or even the mast-like structure. I don't want you to focus on warm pink flats in the foreground or the red lorry on the bridge, but you can't help it when the photo is in colour. There is a change of emphasis in black and white which is certainly important here.

An alternative approach is to take the picture again when there is no lorry on the bridge.

Happy snapping

More wedding group photos

The simplest way to take your wedding group photos is to take the main photo first then divide the group into two, the bride's side and the groom's side. You gradually reduce the size of the group from family and friends to just family to close family and finally parents. Then you do the same thing again for the other side. You will have to keep some people back e.g. groomsmen, bridesmaids and parents from both sides.

The important thing about taking the group photos is that the decisions are down to the bride and groom, not the photographer. The tendency is for the bride and groom to be next to each other in all the photos after they are married but they may want just the bride with the groomsmen or any other variation of group.

Happy snapping

Wedding Group Photo

Probably the hardest photo to take on a wedding day is the main group photo. Where is the best place to take the photo? What is the best way to make sure that you get everyone in the photo? How do you make sure that everyone is watching you?

I always like to to 'case the joint' with the bride and groom. After all it is their day and even if you have taken photos at that venue before, they should have the say on where they want their photos. I do give advice which is often taken but they are in charge. As to the best place, I like steps and I like natural slopes. I also like backgrounds that are not distracting, so preferably there will be no reason for other people to be walking behind the main group. Photos can be taken looking down at the group and these photos are often very effective, but I generally prefer looking slightly up at the group.

Have you noticed how the two people on the end of the group are often the most obvious? It doens't matter how big the group is. If the people on the ends turn slightly inwards then it gives the group photo a finished look and directs the viewer into the photo.

Happy snapping

Reflections

You can find a picture in a reflection. It can be a boat in Morecambe Bay. It can be a photo of a reflection in a river as long as the water is not flowing too rapidly and as long as the water is clean enough. You can also get reflections in a window or in a building and these pictures can give a new perspective to a previously routine view. Take another look at highly polished metal. Is there a reflection in a spoon? Most obviously, is there a reflection and a photograph in a mirror? Looking at a mirror is how we see ourselves, and it may be that we prefer our image that way.

Dorothea Lange was a photographer who was most famous for her pictures taken during the depression of the 1930s. There was certainly emotion in her photography as she took photos of the poor and homeless. She is often quoted for her photography and although there may not be a strong link with Morecambe Bay and the 1930s America, she did say that 'the camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera'. this quote is equally useful for both circumstances.

Happy snapping

Photographic embellishments

I have mentioned the need for emotion in portraits. You want to see the person but you also want to see the character. What are they wearing? What is in the background? Do the clothes and the backgound add to the picture? Do they tell us something about that person't character?

Last time I wrote about the leitmotiv in my wedding photography of a buttonhole flower. The flower is a rose and over the centuries certain flowers have acquired meanings. It just so happens that a rose has developed the meaning of love and happiness, so it is quite apt for a wedding.

There is a debate about whether music can be romantic. Can we hear the sound of the sea if we listen to Debussy's La Mer? I don't think it takes much imagination to hear the sound of waves. It is the same with photography. It does not take much to link a sepia photo or a vignette with artistic embellishment, and this can often give the photo a romantic feel.

Happy snapping

Night-time photography

I like night photography. I suppose the best time to take a photo is not when it is totally dark but when you can see some aspects of the background. Just as I wrote about the camera lying, so does the eye. If you go from a light to a dark room then temporarily you cannot see a thing The eye accommodates and we get our 'night vision'. We are so used to street lighting that we hardly ever see darkness, but even if we did see darkness our eyes would get used to it.

So what is a true picture, darkness or the accommodation of the eyes that allows us to see in the night? Well of course the answer is that both are true. The camera can take both views by adjusting for the exposure. If a street light is in the photo this becomes a lot brighter. With digital manipulation you can make the light darker and the rest of the photo lighter. You get the photo that you want, just like the eyes accommodate. Here is one of fire breathing. You get the spectacle which is obviously more dramatic at night.

Happy snapping

Colour and black and white

One of the techniques that I like to use is making part of the photo colour and the rest black and white. This is a very easy technique digitally and you just select an area then make it black and white. Commonly you will see the bride's bouquet in colour and the bride in black and white. I like to use the same technique when the bride is walking down the aisle and I leave the bride, her father and the groom in colour. Of course the original photo is given to the bride and groom as well as the black and white photo.

Here is an example of this technique. I took a photo of the groom and the best man walking towards the church. I left the two of them in colour and this really draws your eye to the two of them. There are lots of other things that I could have done to lead the eye and I'll write about them in later blogs.

Happy snapping

The photo as part of reality

I mentioned Henri Cartier Bresson last time because of his work as an artist, for his quotes and for his photojournalism. Another of his quotes is 'the photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality. I took his idea of the little human detail (a cravate and a rose from a wedding photo) and used it as a leitmotiv. I read this second quote and I found that I did not totally agree with it.

What is reality? I don't mind taking photos in black and white or sepia, but we don't have sepia vision. I don't mind straightening perspectives. If you get too close to a building then you end up with converging verticals - the sides of the building look like they are coming together. In real life, when we stand close to a building the brain accommodates for this convergence.

The camera never lies, oh yes it does. I don't want to sound too cynical but there are tabloid editors who may completely change the meaning behind a photo. There is also the change caused by artistic effect. A picture can be worth a thousand words and it is nice to think that there is a truth in photography,but I look at Cartier Bresson's background as an artist and I know that there is an artistic influence in every photo.

Happy snapping