Deutsche Borse Photography Prize

Before the Royal Photographic Society headquarters was moved from the atmospheric Octagon Gallery in central Bath to the anonymous and characterless office on the outskirts of the city it was a magical place to visit. It was a big deal to take the train for a day out in Bath. There was a real sense of excitement and delicious anticipation as the train approached the city and the honey-coloured buildings in the valley were slowly revealed.

And the Octagon was the jewel in the crown, I would put off walking up the hill to the gallery for as long as possible, enjoying the anticipation. I would cross Pultney Bridge and walk a circuit back around to the Roman Baths, pause for tea in the square and join the audiences for the various buskers, knowing that the best part of the day was still to come. The magnetism of the Octagon would inevitably draw me up the hill though and with a genuine, spine-tingling thrill I would finally allow myself to walk into the narrow bookshop and two or more hours of real delight would commence.

The bookshop was so narrow that you’d have to squeeze in to let people pass but that small area contained a wealth of photographic books and postcards that I just would never have seen anywhere else. Having looked at probably every book in the small shop and selected my postcards to buy on the way out I would continue into the Aladdin’s Cave of the gallery itself. I’m sure I must have seen lots of exhibitions with colour images in the Octagon but in my memory all of the photographs were black and white. The first exhibition I saw there contained stark photographs taken in Haiti. Dark studies of men holding severed pig’s heads and carrying coffins down dusty tracks, photos of voodoo dolls and fat women with fearsome expressions. Oh God, it was divine.

Walking slowly around the eight-sided room, studying these outrageous images made you feel like you’d entered a special underground club. The knowledge that in the daylight outside, people were walking along the street, shopping, using the cash-point, waiting for the pedestrian crossing, only heightened the sense that you were one step removed from the rest of the world briefly.

I eventually joined the RPS and took the train to Bath more regularly, attending opening nights and private views of exhibitions there. I once saw Don McCullin open an exhibition in the Octagon and, at that time at least, I wouldn’t have been more impressed if I’d bumped into Mick Jagger or Bono or the Pope. In fact, I’d have been a lot less impressed.

And now? A few years ago the RPS moved its headquarters to a small office building on the outskirts of Bath. It looks like an office for an Insurance Broker or an Estate Agent. Magic? It has none. Disappointed? I was gutted.

None of which has anything to do with what I started this post about so please forgive the rather self-indulgent digression. This post is actually about the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize and the fact that the Photographers’ Gallery in London is relocating to a “£15.5 million, architect-designed, purpose-built address in Soho”. I’m hoping that the Photographers’ Gallery will offer some of the magic that was lost to me when the RPS moved.

I was going to write about the Deutsche Borse because it’s a great competition and the shortlisted works are inspirational but instead I’ll simply point you to this article in the Telegraph and suggest that you take a look at the work of Fazal Sheikh, the first of the shortlisted photographers featured.

Lens Reviews

The Digital Photography Review web site, which is a great source of in-depth camera reviews, is launching a lens review section. The lens reviews will be illustrated by a fancy new widget.

“At the heart of the reviews is a unique interactive ‘widget’ has been designed to present the test results in a way that allows visitors to experiment visually with variables such as focal length and aperture and see immediately the effect such changes have on overall image quality, and to compare the performance of different lenses. The user-friendly presentation ensures that even those with limited technical knowledge of optics or digital imaging will be able to use the reviews.“

What’s great about the new widget is that allows you to set the focal length and aperture by sliders so you can see the relative performance of a lens across the entire range. There are only four reviews on the web site so far but I expect these to be added to pretty quickly.

Rickshaw Run

There’s something comically appealing about Rickshaws. I love them. They’re a great way to get around, especially in big cities and places like New Delhi now have NPG-powered rickshaws so they’re environmentally friendly too.

Sitting in the back of a rickshaw, you don’t feel like you’re removed from your surroundings in the same way that you do in a car. Sometimes that’s a bad thing as zooming down a crowded city street at improbable speeds can make you feel a little vulnerable but mostly it’s a good thing as it keeps you involved in what’s going on. Also, rickshaw drivers are a hard-working but friendly bunch. In places like Agra, where there are far too many rickshaws for the numbers of tourists, the drivers can become a bit pushy bit in my experience they’re never far from breaking into a smile and although they might trail behind you as you walk back to your guesthouse or hostel from a nearby eating house, they are rarely without a sense of humour.

This article in the Guardian comes from a couple who have just driven a Rickshaw over 4000 miles through India to Nepal. There’s more information about the Rickshaw Run over at the Team Snailpace web site.

Passionate Printers

I’m having some prints made by a pro printing company at the moment. And when I say “Professional”, that’s exactly what I mean. All the pro printers I’ve ever met have been passionate about their work. They eat, drink and sleep printing, know every pantone colour by number, can quote the weight of every paper stock ever made and can tell when you haven’t included an ICC colour profile with your digital files just by sniffing the CD cover.

But none, I suspect, can quite compete with this guy:

RSPB Bird Watch

This weekend was the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch and inspired by Nic’s annual report I decided to participate myself this year. In an hour our garden welcomed the following:

Blackbirds: 2
Blue Tits: 2
Chaffinch: 2
Collared Dove: 2
Great Tit: 2
Great Spotted Woodpecker: 1
Long-tailed Tit: 2
Robin: 3
Starling: 1
Woodpigeon: 2

Clearly the instinct to be part of a pair is strong in north Hampshire birds, except for the Starling and one of the Robins, who I suspect might be having an affair.

I was pleased that the woodpecker decided to visit during the “Birdwatch” hour as he’s often around and I wanted to make sure he was included in the results. He duly obliged. The picture above is one that I snapped of him last year with the camera on a very long USB cable connected to a laptop in the kitchen. He was a bit punkier then with his spiky hair but he’s much more sober looking now.

There were almost 42,000 results posted when I went to register mine and I imagine there will be a lot more in a couple of days’ time. You can view the results online.

AOP Portfolio Exhibition

ephotozine announces the forthcoming AOP Portfolio exhibition. The exhibition will run from February 7th to February 28th at the AOP Gallery, 81 Leonard Street, London. EC2A 4QS and I’m hoping to have eight of my photographs exhibited.

Steve McCurry Interview

There can’t be a travel photographer on the planet who isn’t very familiar with Steve McCurry’s photographs. I know that I’ll be yanking one or two people’s chains when I mention him but, for me, his biography and his photographs can be a valuable resource for anyone hoping to make a living shooting travel photographs.

There’s an interview with McCurry at PDN Online, which makes for interesting reading. A couple of quotes stood out for me, “Just because someone’s wearing a turban, doesn’t mean it’s an interesting photo.“, which a lot of photographers forget when they start photographing in unfamiliar locations.

Also, “Sometimes when I travel with photographers, there’s a distance between them and the people they see“, which I think can also be true. Perhaps it’s because the sort of locations that McCurry regularly photographs in, Thailand, Tibet, Burma etc., can seem so strange to western eyes that there’s a temptation for photographers to look at local people as “subjects” rather than people. That’s human nature I suppose but there’s no doubt that my best photographs have been made after I’ve first made friends with the people I hope to photograph.

Lastly, “If you want to be a photographer, you have to photograph. If you look at the photographers whose work we admire, they’ve found a particular place or a subject, dug deep into it, and carved out something that’s become special. And that takes a lot of time and a lot of work – that’s not for everyone.” is a comment that resonated for me. I know that being a “Travel Photographer” and being based in the UK is something of an oxymoron - but more about that later.

And whatever your opinion of Steve McCurry, I think you’d be hard pushed to say that his photograph of the four Burmese nuns proceeding down a rain-soaked street and dressed in pink robes isn’t as yummy as the marshmallows that those robes put me in mind of (see the bottom of the PDN article).

Canon EOS 450D

Canon have announced a new digital camera in their EOS range. The 450D will replace the 400D and features a 12.2 Megapixel sensor. Yikes!

With Live View, the EOS sensor cleaning system, 9-point auto-focus and 3.5 frames per second this is an entry-level camera that packs a lot of punch.

There’s a full review over at dpreview.com.

Smoky shapes

I’ve wanted to have a go at producing one of these images of a smoky abstract for a while, since first seeing them on the Chromasia web site. They seem so other-worldy and the shapes produced by the smoke particles are often quite beautiful. It’s also interesting how we tend to want to find recognisable shapes in the smoky curves. I’ve seen faces and bodies, words and letters, musical notations and all manner of other things. I quite like this one and if you’re interested in my interpretation then I think that the top half resembles one of those political cartoon or Pink Floyd characters by Gerald Scarfe, there’s a big “S” that starts about half-way down and the bottom shape is a woman with her bottom on back-to-front. God, I hope there are no psychiatrists reading this.

Getting set up to produce these smoky abstracts isn’t that tricky. It’s just a case of getting a dark background, I have a piece of black card, positioning the camera about six feet away from it and placing an incense stick half-way between camera and background. As I don’t have a remote release for my flash at the moment I just drew the curtains and set the camera for a 1 second exposure at f/22 (ISO 800). I needed a long exposure to give me time to manually fire the flash and to give plenty of depth-of-field. Keeping the smoke sharp is the biggest hassle as movement of just one or two inches backwards or forwards can take it out of focus. Having lit the incense, I took about 200 shots (thank God for digital), of which only about 8 or 9 are both sharp and have interesting shapes.

When I’d settled on a shot that I liked, I altered the white balance to make the smoke look a little bluer. Interestingly, although there was only a single light source the smoke varied in colour so there were various tones to play with. In Photoshop I applied a V-shaped Curve Layer which inverted the colours, changing the black to white and the brown tones to blues. Lastly, I used the “Replace Colour” option to introduce the pink hues although because of the inverting curves layer I had to select a green colour at the opposite end of the spectrum to the pink that I wanted.

Britain's Worst Hotel

“I don’t give a damn what TripAdvisor says”, declares the proprietor of the Nanford Guest House in Oxford, recently announced as the “Dirtiest Hotel in Britain”.

I have used TripAdvisor quite regularly in the past when planning trips as it’s useful to see what previous occupants have said about a hotel or guest house where I might be planning to stay. Visitors often leave helpful advice like “avoid the rooms on the ground floor” or “Room 6 has a fantastic view of the beach” so it’s a bit like asking a friend to go and check out a place for you before you book.

However, the proprietor of the Nanford clearly doesn’t share my enthusiasm for TripAdvisor and I can understand his reticence. It’s hardly a glowing recommendation and if you check out the individual reports then you’ll find unadulterated comments like “The entrance hall stank of urine, the staff were incredibly rude, the beds had ticks, the shower was a dribble, but best of all what came out of the taps genuinely looked and smelled like it had came from the toilet“

Every cloud has a silver lining of course and the proprietor is currently welcoming a string of journalists keen to check out the accommodation for themselves. The latest report comes from The Guardian and whilst the journos are probably staying at the nearby Randolph Hotel rather than the Nanford, their regular visits is at least giving the proprietor a chance to brush up on his reportedly rusty Customer Service skills.

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