Welcome to the new boss

 I am not one for gear acquisition syndrome. My mantra is usually, get the best you can afford, learn to get the best of its capabilities, until a) it breaks or b) reaches a point where technology provides some advantage that I cannot do without

My 1st Fuji Camera was a XT-2, bought in 2018. It was a worthy workhorse, but I felt that the autofocus was lagging, so in 2022 I updated it to a Fuji XT-4.

Today I got a XT-5. 

To be honest, I should have got a XT-5 in the 1st place. I pretty well bought the last XT-4. My thought process was a) I would save £200 and b) I did not need the extra Mega pixels that came with the XT-5.

This was a mistake.

While the XT-4 has been fine, in terms of technology there really wasn't enough for an upgrade. I don't feel I did anything with the XT-4 that I could not have done with the XT-2. The main reason was to improve the auto focus, which is definitely not class leading, and I could never really trust it with fast moving objects. 

The XT-5 on the other hand, the reviews seem to indicate, is better. Like I said, I don't really want the extra MPixels littering my hard drive (40Mp vs 26 Mp), but I guess I will just have to be tougher in what images I keep

The other thing I did not like about the XT-4 was the flippy screen. No photo centric camera should ever come with one. Not only are they difficult to use in photo situations, but it makes fitting an L-Mount virtually impossible for tripod work. The XT-5 I am happy to announce has reverted a more traditional tilted arrangement.

Apart from that the XT-5 is much the same as the XT-2/3 etc. Both good and bad.

Anyway I went out for the 1st time today to see whether how it felt.

1st Impressions

The XT-5 is actually a bit smaller than the XT-4. However the grip feels shallower and i felt I needed to grip more to keep it stable.

The controls are much the same We still don't have a locking button for exposure compensation and the pointless ADV option on the control dial is still there. Apart from that the AF button is more prominent which is good, but the two custom buttons (on top and front) are still too recessed. The Q button is also a bit hidden.

The menus are still standard Fuji ordering i.e you have to guess which category each function is in, and sometimes naming is bizarre (photometry anyone)

However, the big thing is does the AF work any better?. Well a good thing is that now it has subject detect, which is a welcome addition, however irritatingly, you can have eye detect or subject detect, but not both. The only way you discover this is by setting way then seeing the other one disable. It is this sort of Fuji menu peculiarities that makes being a Fuji owner such fun 

My test subject was my dog. This is a tough ask. Not only is she fast, but in low light it can be difficult to track. 

The 1st signs are hopefully, but I still was not really getting enough keepers. Hopefully it is just a case of settings and experience

Anyway, some more images from today

Before original sin

 Do you remember when you first got your first real digital camera?

Mine was a Sony a37, with a kit lens. In terms of technology, it would feel primitive today, but at the time it felt like entering another world.  I had vacillated for a long time about buying one, putting up with a plethora of smaller cameras, until I persuaded myself (and my wife) that I deserved it. So I went to Jessop's in Rugby high-street, presented my credit card and bought it (how things have changed).

I remember being outside the shop, slipping in the SD card and taking pictures of the local church. Later I got them back and marvelling of the quality (!) and the ability to process them. 

For the next few years, the camera went everywhere with me. My family had to put up with me disappearing to take photos. After a while I felt I could see an image in everything and took photos of all sorts of subjects, but I had no way to judge whether the images were any good.

Later my wife persuaded me to join a photography club, and through internal competition and just seeing other images, I started to form ideas about what I wanted to see in my images and strived to achieve them. In turn (in my mind anyway), my images improved, and in turn, I became more critical of what images I kept.

As I did so, my output dropped. I no longer took images anywhere. Instead, I would make special trips. I would still take holiday photos, but they were for family Facebook pages, not for general consumption. Although I did not take as many images, my success rate improved and they started winning competitions.

However, last year something happened. It is at this point in the year when I review my years work and I look at what to enter in club competitions. To be honest, I struggled to find anything I liked. 

There are a number of reasons for this.

Firstly was opportunity. Basically, I have less time to get out. I did one pure photographic trip last year, and even then I had to postpone once. That is not to say I did not go to some great places. I spent 10 days in Japan, which is a wonderful place for photography, but it was a family trip, and I struggle to combine my photography needs in such times. Coming back, and reviewing the images, I felt I had not taken the opportunities offered.

Even when I take photos, they often lie on my PC for weeks and months, before I got around to processing them. Now, this is not always a bad thing. I sometimes find a gap provides a different view of your images, and you see something else. However, too often I fear looking at my images in case mediocrity stares back.

Photography, for me, is always about improving. Up to now, I had felt that every year my images had improved. Last year, for the 1st time I felt my photos were either no better than the year before, or were just, worse, plain derivative. I am not a photographer who is happy to repeat or copy others, but to often I was chasing past glories, taking the same image in the hope something would click.  My goal is to highlight my own style and niche, and it just felt that everything I did had been done before by me, often better.

This made me think about the excitement of owning a camera for the 1st time. That moment of innocence where you don't know any better. The period before the original sin. How great it would be to recapture it.

Obviously, I cannot forget what I learned. One mistake many make, including me, is to go back to your place of greatest success and try to recreate that moment. You fall in the trap of trying too hard, and end up with an image, no better than the one before, but also cursed with the knowledge of faults in the original image.

Instead, I decided to just take my camera and take photos. Don't worry about competitions, prizes or public affirmation. Take images because it is a fun thing to do, with no expectation of success. Just like I did all those years ago.  

So these images below were just me, my dog, walking down a river and taking images. I am not putting them here to be judged, by me or anyone else, just to show the joy of taking.

 

 

In defence of arty bollocks

 

Arty Bollocks definition  

The process of extolling a piece of art in excess of its actual quality or worth by the use of superfluous or extravagant language to hide its actual inadequacies i.e the emperors new clothes effect 

We recently had a talk at my local Camera club by Ashley Franklin. Ashley is an entertaining speaker with a long background as both photographer, judge and in a former life DJ and photo journalist. As such he  puts together an engaging talk.

His talk was the second of a two-part series covering photography's history and its critical genres, together with Ashley 's particular take on them. The 1st half of the talk covered uncontroversial  topics such as advertising, landscapes and aerial photography. The started after the break when he turned to fine art photography.  

To put it mildly, Ashley is not a fan.

He showed various examples of artists such as Andreas Gursky, Wolfgang Tillmans and others, where he (and a number of others) in the audience chuckled at the quality of the photography and the absurd amounts that they sell for. 

However, I was a bit uncomfortable about this part of the talk. It wasn't so much about Ashley's opinions, but more about my own inability to define what I felt was wrong about it. 

So it has spurred me to think about my history with fine art photography, and (despite myself), mount a defence on its right to exist

The Rise of Arty Bollocks

During the talk, two recent examples of Arty Bollocks came into my head

I was in Paris recently (I know, it's a tough life) and you cannot throw a baguette without hitting an art gallery or two. I therefore took the opportunity for me and my good wife to go to a couple (To my disappointment the Henri Cartier-Bresson museum was closed )

So two Arty Bollock examples

Example 1 The Bourse de Commerce Arte Povera exhibition

A mixture of photography, sculpture and art work with descriptions like "defining seamlessly fashion ethical realism".  The very definition of Arty Bollocks

Example 2. A small side gallery called the Louvre. 

Collections of major artworks and sculptures including a small 30 by 21-inch painting of a woman called the Mona Lisa., by up-and-coming artist Leonardo Da Vinci

Is this arty bollocks? Most would say no, but then you get descriptions like the one below 

"I was struck by its simplicity and the enigmatic nature of the subject’s expression. The depth of the image was breathtaking with the muted colouring creating an aura-like atmosphere. I found myself being drawn into her eyes, which seemed to follow me as I walked around the room. "

If you did not know the history of the painting or the artist, it would be easy to put this into prime Arty Bollocks territory. I mean the painting is nice, but is it as good as it is lauded? 

For me this image, just a few yards away, but generally ignored by the masses spoke to me more. Does that make generations of art critics wrong? 

So taking these two examples, there are a number of lessons to be learned. 

1. Cost is not equal to Value

One of the issues Ashley had with images was the inflated amounts people paid for them. If the Mona Lisa ever came onto the market, it would no doubt break all records. For example, the Salvator Mundi  was sold for £450 million, despite doubts about whether it was even painted by Da Vinci. 

 But generally, artists have no control of the value of their works. The art world is a business based on speculation and markets. Just because a photo is sold for £ 1 million, we should not blame the artist or use the to measure its quality.

For example during the (fortunately short-lived) NFT craze, photos we being sold for far more than their ordinary value. That was not because the picture value had been re-ascertained, more we were in a bull market, with everyone piling in to make a killing 

2. An artists talent cannot be ascertained from one image

In club photography, the single image is king. Rarely do you get a chance to show more than one image. In fine art photography, the artist wants to express some concept. They are trying to express a wider meme, and generally, this requires the entire body of work to understand it. 

For example, if only the Mona Lisa existed of da Vinci's work, we would not be as impressed nor he be as famous. However, it is the work taken as a whole which defines his quality

3. Art is a journey

There is an assumption that Picasso just started off making cubist paintings. That is not true, his early work was more traditional, but as he grew as an artist he pushed against the given and re-defined his work and what a picture was

It is similar to photography. Some of the artists in the talk were pushing against the constraints of what is generally considered a photo, but could only do that because they had already established their skill as artists. One of my favourite photographers, Andy Gray, is a fine photographer in the club definition but has chosen to go down the ICM route. However, he can only get there because he has done the hard yards

When I was just getting into photography, I happened on a photo exhibition in Bakewell. Among the usual landscape images, was a set of photos which were very different. They were almost a stream of consciousness images and black and white tree branches. They were prime Arty Bollocks, but for some reason, they stood out among the rest and I did something very unusual for me and emailed the photographer about how much I liked them.

The artist was Doug Chinnery , and I later found he was a well-known photographer with a history of taking great, but standard landscape shots. No one could accuse Doug of not knowing how to photograph, but his work has moved to more abstract memes over the years. 

If I had turned up to an art gallery with such shots, I would not get past the door, but because it was part of Doug's journey, it had more value.

Similarly, when  David Hockney created his Polaroid montages, it was accepted in a way other artists were not. 

4. Time defines quality

Trying to define what is quality and what is art cannot be defined easily. However looking back in history it is easier to understand which art and artists are significant, and which were superficial. 

Many photographers we consider critical to the genre, were riduculed and belittled in their era. However they are now seen as pioneers. Similarly, if you look back at photographic magazines only 50 years  ago, a lot of photographic styles seem a bit simplistic or bland. 

Only looking through the filter of history, can we see the direction of travel. So it is today. Some of the images Ashley disparaged may turn out to be the Pepper No 30, while some will be also rans

5. Art is personal

Many people consider Ansel Adams, the finest landscape photographer of all time. However, I have heard many say, that they just don't get him. Does that make Adams fans wrong? No, it means that the art for whatever reason does not speak to them. 

There can be many reasons for this. Education, Personal experience, or just heritage and where you were brought up. Someone growing up in the Northwest may appreciate Adams images, more than someone brought up, in,say, East Anglia.

I had a direct experience of that last year. I went to the National Portrait Gallery to see the years' portrait prize winners.  The National Gallery is one of the few places where photography is held to the same level as painting, but I have to say the winners of the competition largely left me cold. but the image below kept drawing me back.

In many ways it is similar to Sally Mann's immediate family images. For me with teenage daughters, I knew that look. As someone without that experience, it would not create the same emotions. 

So was I right and the judges wrong? 

No, Art is at its best when it is personal, but you cannot expect everyone to have the same emotions. 

What is wrong however is to belittle someone just because they did not react the same way as you

A lesson from history

The 1st photographic image was generated about 1826. By the late 1840s, every city had its own “Daguerrean artist", the first professional portrait photographers. Two things then happened. Firstly the process of having your portrait taken became "democratized". More people could now own an image of themselves and their loved ones. 

Secondly, traditional artists were increasingly pushed out of their livelihood by cost.

Coincidentally or not, painters started pushing against the boundaries and constraints imposed from above, with the impressionist movement being born. At the time, the Académie des Beaux-Arts still dominated French art. The Académie was set up as the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style and imposed rules on what should be considered acceptable.

The impressionists therefore had to move outside the official painting circles, painting that was not deemed acceptable by the traditional painting authorities

In this era of increased restrictions and facing a changing landscape of technology, they de-constructed what a painting was. They rejected realism, to concentrate on more abstract forms. To do so, they asked questions that traditional art forms skipped over, such as the nature of light, the limitation of form, and how colour interacts with structure. 

It could be said that photography has reached a similar nadir.

Modern cameras and phones have democratised the taking of images to the point we are flooded with photos, which the available technology ensures are good enough. In fact, the camera technology makes a lot of the skill of the photographer now superfluous, with exposure and focus generally automatically handled

The next thing is the rise in AI. It is already possible to generate images with a simple command. Phones are starting to have AI features added to identify and correct image faults, and it won't be long till cameras follow suit.

Ironically two photographers that Ashly did like Red Saunders and Cédric Delsaux , are not really fine art photographers and could easily be created using AI

So what does that mean for the future of photography and how does art photography fit in?

But what is the question?

DEEP THOUGHT:

"I think the problem such as it was, was too broadly based. You never actually stated what the question was.

PHOUCHG:

B- b- but it was the Ultimate question, the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

DEEP THOUGHT:

Exactly. Now that you know that the answer to the Ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is forty-two, all you need to do now is find out what the Ultimate Question is. 

 Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy

One of the issues I had with Ashley's discussion on Fine Art photography, was I felt he had a very narrow focus on what parameters defined a good photo, without ever asking the question "Why are those metrics the important ones?" 

As club photographers, we are often given rules that are used to measure the quality of our images. Things like, are areas that distract the eye? Is the image sharp?  The rule of thirds, even the rule of 3 objects. 

As a club photographer, you learn these mantras when you enter your image in competitions, and woe betide any image which fails these rules in the eyes of the judge.

The problem is by following these dictates', we don't ask the question "Why are these rules the important ones?" and in doing so we just follow the herd, and the result is just a set of identikit images

Why art photography is important 

"A bit of madness is key
To give us new colors to see
Who knows where it will lead us?
And that's why they need us"

"So bring on the rebels
The ripples from pebbles
The painters, and poets, and plays The Fools Who Dream"

La La Land

So why is fine art photography important and why should we not dismiss it out of hand?

Photography, like any art form, must evolve if it to remain relevant

Like evolution, there is however no master plan. Instead, it changes by participants continually asking questions about the status quo. Therefore it is important not dismiss those who push against the flow. 

Fine art pushes the boundary about what a photo is. Like impressionism, it de-constructs the image and in doing so allows us to rebuild photography in new and exciting ways

It also grows by pushing the boundaries and inciting our emotions. Many people get angry with fine art photography. Anger, like pleasure are strong emotions, which also drive our memories. An image you particularly dislike and makes you angry is generally more memorable than an image which is "nice".

Fine art photography is needed to make us ask questions on what is photography. It should make us uncomfortable and edgy, and in the end it should result in pushing us into new directions.

And yes, not all fine art photography is necessarily good, but the important thing is to ask the question why it is not good and not to dismiss it out of hand just because we don't like,. As artists we must continually re-examine our prejudices, understand how our beliefs came to be and in doing so, merge new found insights into our photographic zeitgeist.

If we don't we end up with what we see in, unfortunately, far too much photography. The same derivative images being presented again and again. The work then becomes predictable, inward-looking, and just boring and we don't bring on the next generation of photographers

We don't have to like art, but  we should never dismiss fine it, nor hide away from iit

To paraphrase someting, thatVoltaire apparently never said.  

"I dislike everything about this artwork, but I will defend to the death, your right to present it"

Christmas Dad

The Guardian newspaper published an article recently about the Christmas Dad and the impossibility of buying presents for them. Basically, they men who have achieved a point in life where they have everything they need. I have realized that I am indeed in that category. I am in the fortunate position to be debt free, reasonable well paid and every year I am a nightmare to buy presents for. 

My wife always around November starts asking for a Christmas present list, and after much soul-searching the best I can ever come up with is books. 

Not that I need more books. I have a birthday late in the year, and again I ask for books, but I am lucky to have completed any of them by Christmas. In fact, I calculated that I have probably enough unread books to keep me going for an entire year of continuous reading.  However, any other present would be too expensive or too complicated to explain, and the fact is, if I had really needed it, I probably would have already bought it. 

So what do you get for the person who has everything? 

Everything but time itself

The weird thing about growing older, is that life never turns out as you expect. 

I had assumed, as I move into my 7th decade, that I would have more time to spend on hobbies, but the truth is as you grow older you instead accumulate responsibilities, which in turn eat into your so called "free" time. 

I have around the house multiple half-baked projects, that I never really get a full run up to complete. In my youth, I would spend weeks doing these sorts of things, but now I am lucky to spend a day a month. 

So what do you get for the person who has everything?  The answer is time.

 My wife is always telling me I need to take my holiday earlier. The problem is, I always feel guilty in doing things on my own. I love both my wife and family, and I want to spend time with them, but when I do, I constantly want to go and do things on my own terms. 

So with that in mind, I decided to take a "me" day and go to London to see a photography related exhibition and with a bit of luck a little photography

The question was therefore which one? 

My first thought was the Victoria and Albert. I love the V&A. It is like the  the world's biggest and best attic, but photography is just an addendum on top of everything else gets subsumed into the huge morass of objects.

I there decided instead to go to the National Portrait Gallery(NPG). Despite going to London many times, I had never visited.

 It was also hosting the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize, so it seemed as good as anywhere.

National Portraits

The NPG is hidden behind the larger and more prestigious national gallery on Trafalgar square, and as such gets far less footfall. 

The NPG is in itself a bit of an anachronism. I mean, why have a gallery based on one genre. After all, we don't have a National Landscape gallery, or a National Still Life gallery. The other thing which differentiates it from all the plethora of other galleries in London, is that it is the one gallery in which photography and painting are held in the same value and displayed equally, so next to a Gainsborough will be a Bailey. 

 

Also, all the pictures shown represent people, living or dead, who had desires, prejudices and ideas just like those viewing them. The test of a great portrait is how well the character of the subject is expressed to the viewer.

In this regard the skill of a portrait photographer needs to exceed the portrait painter, since while the latter can modify their image to show the character of the subject, a photographer is limited to only what they see in the studio at the time.

I will admit now, that I am very poor at taking photographic portraits. 

Here I am not alone. In a recent club competition, the judge bemoaned the lack of good landscape photographs entered in the end of year show. I am willing to bet, however, that te represented portrait photography will be even more worse. What is considered portraits in these sorts of competitions can be split between glamour photography, where a model is paid for a pack of paparazzi wannabees to take shots and portrait montages consisting of heavily HDR'd black and white images showing sentimental story lines that are laid on so thickly it would make a pre-Raphaelite brotherhood painter blush with embarrassment.

However, neither of this are true portrait photography. They are too artificial,contrived. A good portrait has to bare the soul of the sitter and provide some measure of the person's life or character to the viewer. 

Looking at some of the images in the portrait prize exhibition, made me realize why few portraits do well in club competitions. The view of a portrait's worth is very much driven the viewer's experiences and prejudices. How you engage with the image is based on so many individual aspects, that no two people will view the same image in the same way

For example, in the portrait prize exhibition, I was not particularly drawn to the winning photos. The one that stood out for me was this one.

If I entered this as a club competition entry, the judge would complain about the arm across the image, the cluttered background, the bright spot in the top left. It fails to meet the standards that what we are taught in clubs define a good photo. 

However, having teenage daughters myself, I recognize the look on the subject's face. It is one I have been subjected too many times.  It is a combination of gained confidence, the arrogance of knowing they know best, combined with the "I am only allowing this image to be taken under duress" look. 

However, to anyone who has not tried to photograph similar people, it would not have the same resonance.

Selfies

I greatly enjoyed the NGP. Again, a relatively unique aspect of the museum is that the images tend to be in chronological order, with the earlier portraits on the upper floor. You can track therefore the progression of the portrait from a pure propaganda device where images stood in for the individual presence, such as the Tudor images of kings and queens, to more personal representations of self. 

Close to where I live, we have a building purported to be the oldest continuous working photographic studio in the word, W.W.Winter. As well as a working studio, it has an excellent museum attached, with many thousands of plates being restored. The NGP bought it to mind with its exhibition of small personal photos from the 1800s, some famous, but many unnamed

 

It always reminds me how incredible the portrait photograph must have been when they first became available. Before photography, pretty well everyone in the world had no way to refer back to how they looked as a child. At the opposite end, unless you were very wealthy, no one had images of what their relatives and ancestors looked like. I have a plethora of both images from my family and that ability to place an image onto a name, even of those I never met, is incredibly valuable to me and connects me with my ancestors, as I hope my images will connect me to mine.

However, one portrait image type has become linked to the modern age, and that is the selfie. In fact, its history goes back a long way, with the first being recorded in 1839, and I'm willing to bet there are older ones which did not survive, since the desire to record our presence is a strong instinct.

Since I finished at the gallery relatively early, I left with what else to do with my day. I always come out enthused by such exhibitions, and therefore decided to try and take some images in Trafalgar square amongst the Christmas tourists and market.

 

I wasn't really sure what to take, but I watching all tourists taking selfies, I decided to take images of people recording themselves. One of the things about London that I always take a little getting used to, is that people rarely take notice of other people, even those pointing cameras at them. This can make London quite a lonely place, but for street photography it is great, because you are unlikely to get the aggression found in smaller places

The classic single selfie

The group shop

The setup

The multiple selfie

The watcher

The mum selfie

The teenager selfie

 

The family selfie

 

Big in Japan

The Photographers Gallery, lurking off Oxford Street, London

 

 

After the square and feeding myself on a traditional German bratwurst served by an Indian with a London accent, I was not really sure what to do with myself. I decided to head for Oxford street, in the classic faith over experience moment that I could do some late Christmas shopping. As I perused the satnav, I noticed I would be passing by the Photographers Gallery. This is the only really true photographic gallery in central London, so it seemed the perfect place to head for.

 

The gallery had an exhibition on by a Japanese photographer, Daido Moriyama. In many ways it was very much the antithesis of the NPG, with stark, heavily contrasted, black and white images, with no clear link or subject. Many of the images were brutal of people like sex workers and were often uncomfortable viewing and again were the direct opposite of club photography where the desire seems mainly to create images with the minimum of conflict.

 

Daido purpose seems to be an attempt to deconstruct photography to almost minimalist state. Although unsettling, I greatly enjoyed the exhibition. I am planning to go to Japan in 2024, and I was fascinated that although native Japanese, Daido seem to take the same fascination in Japanese idiosyncrasies that I do. It felt like a very western view of Japanese culture.      

 

 

You are not in camera club land any more

All your analog needs...

Finally..

So how was my Christmas present?

I really enjoyed the NGP, but more importantly I enjoyed the opportunity of taking it at my own pace. Even more so, the photographers gallery. I would not inflict this on my family, but i savoured the opportunity to peruse at my leisure

The more important question was what I did come out of it? Well, a better appreciation of the art of the portrait, some nice street photographs and a new view of Japan.

More critically, I came away with a stronger realisation that you take photographs for yourself. Whether someone else likes them is a bonus, the most important thing is that you yourself now you did the best job you could

I'll leave you with a few more images that I took that day

Happy Christmas 2023 

 

 

The eyes have it. King Charles III and Malala Yousafzai together

Marge Wallis Simpson

Sara Forbes Bonetta

An example of how a photograph can misrepresent a character. This man could be anyones grandad, but was responsible for multiple massacres in the West Indies

Murderous sociopaths - the very definition of Christmas

The last supper