Wedding, 1910

At the moment I’m scanning some photos from my fathers collection for a book he has written, and came across this one: his parent’s wedding day exactly 100 years ago in 1910. I’m pleasantly surprised at what good condition the print is in, and how well it was photographed, no doubt with a large plate camera. I can look at this photograph 100 years after it was taken and feel I know a little bit about people I never met.

It made me think about today, how everyone is a photographer of some description, using cellphones to grab blurry images for Facebook or whatever.  But how many of these are valued or kept after their 5 minutes of fame?  Most are lost, deleted, or even end up saved on media that will be unreadable in a decade – how many of us have old floppy discs lying around? How often to you hear someone’s laptop died and they lost all their photos? Digital is great but unless you keep backing up onto the current media they won’t be here in 100 years – not to mention the issue of different software and file types rendering old data unreadable.

The best way to preserve images is to print them – and get good prints on archival materials.  In scanning my father’s prints it’s so obvious how the studio prints from 100 years ago are still far superior to some of the cheap colour prints from not too long ago, massive fading and colour shifts are going on.  Quality today is a mixed bag, professional lab prints to archival standards are extremely stable but those from home printers can look horrible in a few short years. Like most things, you get what you pay for.

Of course a lot of photos taken today won’t be missed if they aren’t preserved, quantity of images doesn’t translate to quality.  Here’s a plug for those professional photographers out there who’s business it is to create the photos that will be here in another 100 years – it’s what they do for a living so naturally their images should stand out. If you want to find a real NZIPP qualified professional near you go here

I’ve been keeping a low profile lately, business interrupted with travel and house building but the good news is we have our new house/studio plans finished, building consent issued and builder sorted.  I can’t wait to have my new studio, it is built to make full use of natural light, my favourite.  Watch this space!

I am back home, trying to readjust to another frozen Methven winter, and assimilate an overdose of creative stimulation gained from a 2500 km road trip over 23 days in southeast Australia.  As much as we kiwis like to ‘compete’ with our neighbours across the ditch we have no match for the amount of artwork they have everywhere.  The wealth of their country and the amount  of money it allows to be spent on public artwork collections has generated a cycle of creativity we can only admire with a hint of envy.  I especially like the way photography is respected as an artistic form, rather than being seen purely as a recording medium.   As a reminder to myself I want to detail a few highlights.

Melbourne: a visit to the NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) was worth the trip alone to see the Timelines exhibit. I could identify with the opening blurb:Time is a slippery notion. It is everywhere and always moving but this powerful regulating force cannot be seen. It is only apparent in context: in the changing seasons, in another wrinkle on our faces, in the growth of children. Photography has a unique role to play in our sometimes poignant sense of time passing. The camera’s ability to depict ‘a moment in time’ – to stop the clock for a brief moment – gives photographs a unique capacity to direct our consideration towards the mechanics and poetics of this pervasive and mysterious cosmic force.It was a brilliant collection of work including photographs from Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Bill Brandt, Ruth Maddison, Rod McNicol and Rosemary Laing.

Bendigo: Where, you say?  It’s a nice town north of Melbourne, not a huge place by any means, but a destination because an ex-Lincoln friend of mine lives there.  But its local art gallery had collections of old masters and contemporary art that would put our big centres to shame – just another indicator of how valued art is in Australia.  And in nearly every gallery we saw school classes using the resources.

Sydney: what a creative hotbed this place is. My main focus was to see an exhibition of Bill Henson’s photography.  He would be Australias most respected photographic artist, and was great to see his large prints – around a metre square – selling for $30,000 each. And yes they were selling, 19 red dots at the time we visited.  I had a special interest in his work as an acquaintance of mine, creative and technical genius Les Walkling, is a long time friend of  Hensons and had quite a bit to do with him changing from fibre paper-based prints to digital pigment prints (the same system I use). Another of Les Walklings collaborators is very well respected, Poli Papapetrou.  I was excited to find her new exhibition had just opened at the Stills Gallery in Paddington.  I had seen early proofs of some of these prints at one of Les’s fine art print workshops so was thrilled to see the finished articles.  Poli’s work really does set my mind off, very though provoking. As a bonus we caught the end and beginning of two exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography.  They were portrait oriented, printed beautifully. Just another reminder of how valued photography is across the shores.

After all that stimulation I feel the need push my own photography a bit more; I have plenty of themes to keep photographing but need to work on getting more images printed and displayed. I have plans for a website upgrade but more urgently am anxious to get our new house with gallery/studio space built. Final plans are almost complete, hopefully construction will start soon.

Blue car by red shed, Methven

‘Reality’ in photography is something some people spend a lot of energy talking about.  I try to avoid any discussions on the matter so am writing my thoughts here for reference to those who worry about such.

No matter how an image is captured, reality is altered to some degree.  Anyone who says “Oh I don’t use PhotoShop, my images are unaltered” is either ignorant, lying or disingenous. Even if they use a manual film camera and print straight from the negatives they have altered reality by all the decisions along the way: selective framing/composition of the subject, what sort of film was used (just how ‘real’ is B&W?), lens choice, processing method, type of paper printed on (is reality glossy, matte, borderless?).  Not to mention various filters – how did Ansel Adams capture those broody skies? – by using filters to enhance the tones among other choices he made.

Digital photography is no different.  Instead of film being processed the raw digital data is processed either in the camera (the only option for pocket digicams) or optionally later on the computer with PhotoShop or other software.  And contrary to what some people think, PhotoShop does not have a magic ‘unsuck’ button that transforms a bad image in to a prizewinner.  A good image still needs to be captured properly in the beginning.

Now this assumes that for some reason a finished image should convey something ‘real’. Maybe if you are a forensic photographer, or cataloguing artwork for a museum.  But for anyone who approaches photography as an artistic outlet the only reality to worry about is your own and you should use all tools & skill available to construct your reality. Ten people can photograph the same subject and come up with ten different images, because everyone’s reality is different!

When I find a subject that compels me there is a mood, feeling, or some emotion triggered that I want to capture in a 2D image. If I set the camera to ‘A’ for automatic (or maybe ‘P’ for Professional), push the button, and download my memory card at the nearest photo kiosk I’m going to be sadly disappointed with the results.

What I do instead is spend a lot of time getting the composition right. Then I often have to wait for good light. I decide what lens to use. I agonise about the right exposure to get the tones I’m after. When I get back to my office and download the images I pull them apart and reconstruct them to match my reality of what I saw and felt. If other people enjoy what I do that is a bonus and I’m glad that my reality resonates with theirs.  If it doesn’t, too bad, it is impossible to produce a universally loved image.

So do I use PhotoShop? Yes, of course I do, and I’m proud of it.

I have not spent as much time out photographing as I would like lately due to some big changes underway. If you are not plugged in to the Methven grapevine you may not have heard that we have sold our house.  We love living here but decided we want to be able to pack up and travel more easily.  A house with 2 acres of garden is not very conducive to that idea!  Having sold the house, we spent a lot of time deciding where to live but ended up realising Methven has everything we want: a great community, all the shops & essential services yet still retaining the small town ambiance, and a location central to all points of the South Island.

Having decided to stay here we looked for a smaller house to live and work from but couldn’t find the right combo so once again will go through the building process.  I’m excited to be able to incorporate purpose-built printing room and studio space.  We have found a great architect to work with and are at the early planning stage, expecting to take most of the year to complete the new property. We will live in a nice little rental cottage on a farm just out of town for the year.

With a disrupted year on the books we thought why not really mix things up.  So we have ordered a large (25′) caravan that we hope to spend a lot of time in this year, doing a slow crawl around the island(s).  NZ is not that big but there are endless little communities and interesting pockets of country dotted all over.  We want to take the time to get to know as many of them as possible.  And of course be photographing life and land along the way.  I’m not sure what the end point for this photographic journey will be, but it will develop along the way.

I am hoping to connect with a lot of people on the road.  This blog will be a lot more active than it has been, with updates of where we are and where we are going.  So if you are somewhere near us and feel like sharing your part of  paradise do get in touch, we will  head your way.  And if you have any suggestions for places not to miss, we’d love to hear those too.  Here’s to an interactive tour.

We will be heading off in early March once we have fully moved out of our house and settled in to the cottage.  I’m busy trying to figure out the best mobile internet solution because much of area we plan to go is not near cellphone coverage.  If you have suggestions, please let me know.

All this means my other ‘regular’ work will be a bit disrupted during the year, but we will have short periods back in Methven now and then, so if you do have a project you need help with let me know.  I might just need a bit more notice than usual.

Snow on Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill, mid summer

And for the visual of the day I have a photo I took just out of town this morning looking towards Mt Taylor and Pudding Hill. Yes it is supposed to be mid summer with harvest getting under way but fresh snow makes a joke of that. I am reminded once again why I class my 20 years farming as ‘character building’.

It must be time for spring cleaning, I have just finished a big overhaul of the portfolios.  They are now grouped in themes, all on one page (portfolio).  I have added some new images and deleted some old, with the aim of better showing what and how I like to photograph. Like most visual sites it does need Adobe Flash installed (version 9 or greater) and javascript enabled. Do let me know if you have issues, there is always a balance between presenting images nicely and having pages that work on old systems.

I spent last weekend in Wellington at the annual NZIPP (NZ Institute of Professional Photographers) conference.  As well as a series of interesting speakers, trade displays and catching up with other photographers from around the country there were the Iris Awards. Full time photographers can submit work to be judged.

I’m ambivalent about entering awards because I firmly believe the only opinions that matter are those of the photographer (and client if a commercial job).  While there are some obvious elements of technical skill and innovation in some work, the emotional response of  like or dislike from any images is rather subjective.  In short, I make photographs that please me – if other people like them, that is a bonus. But the process of entering awards not only involves much valuable self-criticism but also gives the opportunity to analyse what everyone else is up to.

My entries in the Landscape and People categories picked up bronze awards which I was happy with as the judging seemed to be particularly tough this year.  Out of over 1200 entries only around 20 made gold standard.

The most enjoyable part for me was seeing what everyone else is doing in the people category.  While I have leant more towards landscapes in the past I’m hatching plans to photograph people more.  One at a time though, not family groups, weddings etc.  What I enjoy most and am best at is working with people one on one, coming up with images that are beyond your average portrait, unique to the individual. Often more art than portrait. Such as the one below, one of my award winners last weekend.

If you have been here before you will notice a change – I’ve redecorated the blog theme as part of an ongoing upgrade.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what I do and why I do it.  No conclusive answers yet but I’m working towards photographing only themes or subjects that grab me and dropping any effort to generate more commercially viable work. The downside is that while it may get much personal satisfaction from what I do (which should be enough of a reason?), there is often no obvious outlet for the images.  So I’m working on ways to get my images in front of more people,  and ways to make the images available in a form that suits people who like what I do.

I have been quite tickled to see the number of people on my Facebook page growing steadily, it is much more interactive than this blog.  I contemplated axing the blog but for now am going to use it as a place to dump any news, issues or just random thoughts that need to be written down.

This is a little backwards but I started a page on Facebook here with the aim of letting surfers there know about my website and photography. It is interesting how interactive it is though, I plan to have regular updates there.  So if you are already on facebook I’d love you to add me over there.

As a bit of an antidote to my general obsession with extreme detail and quality I have been doing a bit of work lately with images that are more impressionist than realist. It is photography deconstructed, conveying more of a mood or feeling than a literal record.

In most situations I will still be striving to capture as much detail as possible but at the same time i will be looking out for an alternate view. I have started a small collection of these images on my projects page, just click the ‘Impressionist’ tab.

This image here – familiar (yet not) to locals was taken early one morning on main street outside the Brown pub. I have made a 50×80 cm print on canvas of this, now hanging at the Icehouse Gallery.