Went down to Brighton Beach the other day, with a bunch of students who were in disarray…sounds like the beginning of a blues song!

Went down to Brighton Beach the other day,
with a bunch of students who were-in disarray.
Trying to teach them to use camera’s proper-lea…
As well as compose and inform them in every-way.

Sorry, that was pathetic and a blatant abuse of the entire history of the blues.

This trip was not-so-good, it was a mixed bag of students ranging from those who couldn’t be bothered, to those with literally no interest at all, to those who were quite up for giving it their best shot.  Now setting a bunch of students off along the seafront – a place they have grown up around – and getting them to take interesting shots is no mean feat.

I tried my best to encourage, instruct and inform…but it seemed to fall, largely speaking, on deaf ears.  Eventually I got bored and frustrated.

LEAD BY EXAMPLE

Then, I thought: “Lead by example”.

So, instead of instructing and informing…I picked up my camera and just joined in.

Not sure if that method worked either – but thought you might be interested in the results none the less!

To be fair, making images on the seafront is not as easy it may first appear.  Besides some troublesome light issues – it is hard to frame anything that hasn’t already been shot a million times before.  Still, I was quite pleased with the results and enjoyed myself if nobody else did!

What I also found interesting was my inability to shoot in Black & White.  Many of our students photograph in B&W and I thought I might do the same – but I couldn’t do it!  Much as I used to love working in grayscale, I just can’t seem to do it anymore.  Guess I just see the world in colour and have little interest in photographing it any other way.

Enough chat – here are some pictures…cue music.

(by the way, I have decided to add an exciting bit of chat at the end of this post, which I shall entitle Geek Chat read if you like chat and your a geek.)

BRIGHTON BEACH BLUES GALLERY – (CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW FULL SIZE IN LIGHTBOX)

GEEK CHAT

The geek chat will be kept to a minimum – but there is an interesting additional tale to this set of photographs.  As you wont know…I have recently been brushing up on my Photoshop.  Undertaking the rather daunting and quite dry task of working through and array of manuals and books to hone my skills a bit better.  I have always blagged Photoshop and most of my image adjustment skills stem from some basics learned during an afternoon tutorial from Mark Power!

So I have been hitting the books and trying to do things properly.  For those interested, for an all round insight into many of Photoshops main features – set out in a structured and hands on approach, I can certainly recommend the official Adobe Photoshop CS5 Classroom in a Book.  It is very good indeed.

Anyway, I have also been trying to see what I can do with RAW.  For those who don’t know – RAW is a brilliant image format that does not use any compression and maintains the original information captured by a camera’s digital sensor.  This means after taking the shot, you can use a RAW conversion software to save your photos in a non-destructive manner, but better still, you can make changes to the core settings of the image like white balance, exposure, sharpness etc etc without damaging the original data or loosing any quality.  Genius.

I have also used Adobe Lightroom for several years now, but primarily as a filing system.  I sync Lightroom with my images folder on the computer so I can use Lightroom to view folders of images, re-group them, create collections and all that jazz.  I also use it to export images in different formats, resize them and so on.

Christ this really is getting dull!  Anyway, combine all those three things and what do you get?  The photographs above – that’s what.  I wondered what would happen if I did all my image enhancements and adjustments in Lightroom – without taking them into Photoshop at all.  Meaning I could work straight from the RAW files and then export them in a format and size ready to upload.  I think it worked very well – the photographs look, as the students would have said “sick”.

Of course, I think normally the thing to do would be to make the adjustments to the RAW files in Lightroom, then take the images into Photoshop for final tweaking and adjustment before exporting and resizing them.  I am still trying to figure out this whole digital work-flow thing and how to work with RAW images as though they were negatives.  Not sure I have got anywhere near to a solution yet, but this experiment was useful.

Love some of Lightroom’s features.  The straighten function is great and I really love being able to use a dropper to set the white balance on the image itself.  Also the system they have where you can drag on the image itself to adjust the curves and colour balance is genius and for me a much more instinctive way to work.

Think I might have to investigate further…more books perhaps!

So here we are, post election excitement – I have been at rest since the madness of the polls and feeling temporarily uninspired to write anything…which, I can now firmly blame on the Tories!

Anyway, I promised the political talk would come to an end and so it shall – instead, lets move onto experimenting with very small children (something else the Tories are into…sorry!).

I think, perhaps, I should start again.

MY DISCOVERY OF SEVERAL RANDOM FILMS

So…I recently spent about a billion pounds on getting a large quantity of film processed.  Films that I have taken over the past year or so and have not had the funds to process (tragic huh?).  So in a fit of idle rage and partial madness – I took them all in a few weeks back and got the lot processed and scanned at once.

It was an exciting haul – full of surprises and forgotten gems.  For anyone who doesn’t stock pile films and get them developed in one swoop months and months later…I highly recommend it!  Every image is a nice surprise as you have no recollection as to what was on any of the films.  I had the delights of several medium format films I took in Greece, my first efforts with the Lomo Mini Diana camera and even a couple of random 35mm shot through my Nikon FM.  Marvelous.

Three photos initially confused me when I looked at them, until my memory banks kicked in and I remembered what they were all about!  A few months back…perhaps at the dying end of last summer, Hannah and I met my sister and nephew in Preston Park for a picnic and general jolly.  I was armed with various items for personal entertainment – including of course a host of cameras.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GIVE A 1 YEAR OLD TODDLER A 35mm SLR CAMERA TO PLAY WITH?

As I was thinking of new an interesting ways to amuse my then, 1 year old nephew, Noah – it occurred to me that one is never to young to learn photography.  So my lesson began and I greedily forced him into taking his first every photographs.

Noah's First Photos - Attempt 1

ATTEMPT 1

So we were just warming up here and to be fair, young Noah had no idea what the hell was going on.

Still – I think he got quite a good portrait of his ear and how he managed to get the interesting blue to purple fade in the left of the frame is beyond me (edge of his finger perhaps?)…but I like it.

I discussed the merits of depth of field and focus with him – he spluttered a few noises back and we tried again.

Noah's First Photos - Attempt 2

ATTEMPT 2

OK, not bad – a definite improvement.  I like his composition, good awareness of colour, perhaps his focus could have been a bit more centred – but overall, not a bad effort.

Think it kind of says something about a lazy day in the park.

Nice job.  However, I felt a chat about visualising his images before he shot might help and we discussed how you can bring meaning into an image by being more selective about what you shot and really aware of what you put in and out of focus.

Noah's First Photos - Attempt 3

ATTEMPT 3

YEAH!

Check that puppy out.  Now tell me if I am wrong, but that is a genuinely great photo!  Taken from Noah’s point of view, I think it comments on the relationship of mother and son.

The ever watching eye of the mother gazing over the childs shoulder – mirrored by the ever gazing eye of the camera.  Susan Sontag would have a field day with this one.

So, what do you reckon?  For a 1 year old – I think he shows much promise!  Next lesson, I will move him onto Medium Format and see how quickly he can master that medium!

Remember kids – you are never to young to start learning new and complex skills!

Digital Pinhole 1 (2009)

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A BROKEN DIGITAL CAMERA?

Just a quick post to update you on the digital camera disaster (see previous post).

So…the lens was ruined, but I had no real way to tell if the camera body was also damaged. I had managed to download the latest images off the camera – which was a good sign. But without a lens, I had no way to check the camera’s functions and sensor had not also taken a battering.

Sitting in my small technician’s room one lunch time – I wondered if you could create a digital pinhole camera. This train of though mostly came about through my frustration at having an expensive camera body but absolutely no way of affording a new lens to make the thing usable in any sense!

That line of thought lead me onto the most basic form of photographic image – the pinhole camera technique.

So, thinking that there was no reason it shouldn’t work, I set about turning the Nikon Digital SLR body into the most expensive and technologically advanced pinhole camera the world has ever seen!

So far – I have only done a basic test to prove the theory correct and the process would work. To do so, I just got a bit of black mounting card, poked a very small hole (a pin hole no less!!!) into the middle of it and cut the card to be slightly bigger than the lens housing on the camera body.

Digital Pinhole 2 (2009)

I then firmly held the card over the camera body where the lens would normally fit, and took a photo as normal (this has to be done in fully manual mode; otherwise the camera goes mental trying to find a lens). I also had to experiment with exposure times for a while to try and get that right.

However – I was quite pleased with the results – three of which are displayed here. I didn’t Photoshop them other than a very small tweak on the levels. So what you see is what I got.

I am quite excited by them truth be told! Think there could be some mileage in this ironic form of digital image making!

So – my next project will be trying to make a slightly more permanent lens attachment so I can use the Nikon as a digital pinhole camera until I get the funds together to buy a real lens!

Or perhaps it will change the way I take photographs for ever?!?!

I will post more results on the blog as I get them.

Digital Pinhole 3 (2009)

In the mean time – try it yourself! It will fill you with a smug satisfaction to use such expensive and advanced equipment for such a basic task!