On West Wittering Beach

On West Wittering Beach, 2006

Don’t they grow up fast? This picture stopped me when I saw it this morning. It was taken six years ago and the children have all grown up so much in that time.

This evening started off warm and bright and put me in mind of the occasional trips we used to make to the beach after school and work on summer evenings. My wife would bring the children down to West Wittering beach where we would rendezvous for a picnic. As soon as the food was finished or they become impatient the kids would rush down to the water for a swim and a splash.  The beach is very shallow at Wittering and on days when the tide was out this could take some time.

On this particular evening we had taken down some plastic rings for the kids to play on. I tried to get some shots of them in the water but it was difficult to get a good composition from the shore with the children playing out on the water. I knew my best chance for a picture would come when they came back in after their swim, but I would have to make sure they would all be together so that I could get a tight composition. As they came out of the water I asked them to gather together and then to race back to Mummy. I can’t remember what the prize was, but they shot off. I had one chance, when they were together and running animatedly. Fortunately I caught the moment, and made a memory.

Worth a Look: Mareen Fischinger

Panographie Times Square © Mareen Fischinger

One of the great things about the internet is the way you can come across a new page and then discover something new, fresh and exciting. This happened the other day when I read a rather nice article about photocollages over on DPreview by staff writer Barney Britton, which laid out an easy to follow method for building photocollages in Photoshop, along with some good examples. One of the bad things about the internet is the way that some people will post negative and even rude comments about a subject that they have no knowledge of, and Mr Britton got some of those (why?...).
 

Panografie Notre Dame © Mareen Fischinger

The exciting thing on this page, buried in the comments, was a recommendation of Mareen Fischinger’s Panography pictures. And what pictures they are; energetic, lively and exciting images of mostly communal urban spaces. Familiar landmarks look as though they are dancing.

Panographie Landschaftspark © Mareen Fischinger

Mareen Fischinger is a professional photographer from Cologne, and the panographs she has created are her personal project. Unlike the joiners of David Hockney and Noel Myles, her pictures are always based from one viewpoint, but of course, capturing many moments in time. She talks about how she likes to capture the changes in the scene, and this results in the lively, busy feel to many of her pictures.

Panographie Arc de Triomphe © Mareen Fischinger

Although shot from a single view point to give a very wide angle of view, she subverts the big picture by slightly altering the arrangement of the constituent images. Combined with arbitrary angles of each individual frame, the resultant complete panograph looks as though a pile of transparencies have been thrown onto a lightbox and magically rearranged themselves. Fischinger presents iconic, familiar places with a fresh perspective, such as the Arc de Triomphe above and the Beauborg below.

Panografie Centre Pompidou © Mareen Fischinger

This fairground scene crackles with energy and movement.

Panografie Kirmes © Mareen Fischinger

Mareen Fischinger makes no secret of her technique, and has generously shared her working method in an article on Photojojo. But technique alone won't make a picture; a vision is required. To find out more, hear Fischinger talk about her interests, motivations and approach to panographies in this neat little video.

»Panography« from Mareen Fischinger on Vimeo.

Worth A Look: Vivian Maier

I have a fairly catholic taste in photography, and have collected books that cover many genres. In the past, I've always found it difficult to go into a bookshop with a good photographic section and not come out with a purchase. I hope it’s not a case of me getting old and set in my ways, but in recent years the number of books that have really appealed to me seem to be getting a lot thinner on the ground. There seems to be a lot of really dour, dull books out there by contemporary photographers, and a large number of re-hashed, re-assembled compilations of the very famous names, who are already well enough represented in my library. And so recently I found myself in the bookshop of the Tate Modern, looking for new titles to excite me. The only book, by some distance, was the really quite excellent Vivian Maier Street Photographer.

Vivian Maier Street Photographer by John Maloof

For those of you who don't know the story, Vivian Maier spent most of her adult lifetime working as a nanny in New York and Chicago. She lived alone, never married, but she had one passion, and that was taking photographs. It would seem that she was not one for putting herself or her work forward, and her pictures were never seen outside of her meagre home. Her work was not even forgotten, it was simply unknown, and would have remained that way if a Chicago historian, John Maloof had not purchased a major part of her archive, now around 100,000 negatives, from a storage container sale. Fortunately, Maloof realised that he had stumbled across something extraordinary and in the four years since the discovery has responded to circumstances and become the curator of the Vivian Maier archive.

Sept. 29, 1959, Esther St., New York, NY by Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier Street Photographer is Maloof's first book to emerge from the legacy of pictures, and no doubt more will come as the archive is explored and understood. The images presented are wonderful. Shot square format on her Rolleiflex, she has captured street scenes of New York and Chicago, beautifully composed, timed and exposed. It is interesting how a loner or maverick, as Maier apparently was, felt comfortable in taking pictures of people at close quarters. The pictures speak of a curiosity and enthusiasm of life.

Jan 26, 1955, Uptown West, New York, NY by Vivian Maier

Her work invites comparisons: pictures of down and outs hint of the work to come from Diane Arbus, some street place shots remind one of Walker Evans, self-portraits seem to herald Lee Freidlander’s later images. For me, these comparisons ask some awkward questions about one’s own involvement and relationship with art. Maier’s pictures were effectively unseen before Maloof’s discovery. They had no influence on any other photographer and did not become milestones in the development of the medium. She was undoubtedly a skilled photographer and had some style of her own, her work as good as many of her contemporaries, but she does not really fit into any history of photography. She may yet influence later generations, but she had no impact on her contemporaries. This is where many artists find themselves, unable or unwilling to get the publicity to bring their work to a large audience. Given different circumstances, it could have been Vivian Maier who was held up as a leading artist in post-war American photography.

January, 1953, New York, NY by Vivian Maier

The book is well designed, and pictures are printed very nicely in a warm black that suits the images well, and the paper is an opaque clean white with a good weight and sheen. At 128 pages long it is a good read and a book that I keep returning to. I have seen some rather critical comments about the print quality and book design on the web. Let me assure you that book design is very good, and the printing is excellent too. I have no complaints at all with my copy, which is a fourth printing.  

One thing the book does lack is a good history of Vivian Maier, but this is an understandable omission as it is still early days in piecing together an accurate record of Maier’s life. A current history can be found at the Vivian Maier website, and I recommend a visit. I think this book will appeal to many photographers, and  John Maloof should be applauded for the excellent job he has done in bringing Maier’s images to the public’s attention.

Vivian Maier Street Photographer is published by Powerhouse Books. 

Flaming June

Summer Low – Rain Tree © Graham Dew 2007

We English do rather like to talk about the weather and go on about the rain. Here we are in glorious June, when it should all be tennis strawberries and long balmy evenings. Instead, it’s been raining for weeks now, it's cold and dark, and last week’s jubilee and half term holiday have been a complete washout. Is it too much to hope for some sunshine?

Return to Normality

Policemen, Pera Hera Festival, Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens.

© Graham Dew 2010

In 2010 we went on holiday to Sri Lanka, and one of the highlights of the trip was the Pera-Hera festival in Kandy. This is a spectacular parade of musicians, dancers & painted & bejewelled elephants. Held at night, I knew I would need to use a flash to illuminate the procession, as I did not expect any substantial spotlighting to be in place. I wanted to use fill-flash, relying on the small amount of light from burning torches and decorative electric lighting to provide the ambient lighting. The only sensible option seemed was to use a large aperture lens which would allow me to make the most of the limited amount of lighting available from my flash and from background lighting. And so I treated myself (any spending on photo gear is a rare treat) to a new Nikkor 35mm/f1.8 DX lens. This lens is the DX sensor equivalent to the standard 50mm lens in 35mm film terms.

Torch Bearer, Pera Hera Festival, Kandy, Sri Lanka.

Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens.

© Graham Dew 2010

My world of photography began back in the early 80’s when I bought my first SLR, an Olympus OM10. As was the way in those days, if a camera came with a kit lens, it would be a 50mm, not the ubiquitous zoom that we get bundled with our cameras today. From the early Leicas in the 1920s onwards, the 50mm was standard issue on 35mm cameras. It was an obvious choice. The fifty was the standard lens, the one manufactured in the millions, and as a consequence was usually the cheapest lens available. It was light, often the smallest lens made by the manufacturer. It was bright, and usually had a maximum aperture of f/1.8. It was very well corrected, because the focal length is easier to design and build than wide-angles below it in focal length and telephotos above. The large aperture combined with the focal length made for a lens that was very easy to focus (manual in those days), and gave the best illumination of the ground glass viewing screens. 

It was interesting to see how people used the 50mm focal length. It is difficult to do exact comparisons between the eye and camera lens, but the view through a 50mm lens corresponds closely with that of the eye – with practice you could keep both eyes open with one eye to the viewfinder and one eye to the surrounding environment. 

Street View, Morocco.

Photo taken with Nikon 50mm/f1.4 AIS standard lens.

© Graham Dew 1991

This ‘normality’ of field of view divides opinions about the standard lens. For many people the normal, undistorted, unstretched, uncompressed view gave a transparency to the lens that suited their subject; people, things, the near distance. Well suited to capturing people in their surroundings, it was the lens of choice for environmental portraiture, and for documentary workers too. Cartier–Bresson claimed to use this lens all the time, and it is clear from looking at the work of many of the greats of photography that the standard lens was used to make the majority of world’s most famous images.

For almost two decades I took all my photos on a Nikon FM2, with a small collection of lenses – a 28, 85 and 50mm lens. All of these lenses are encompassed by my modern 14-42mm Lumix. In those film days, I reckon about 80% of my pictures were taken on the 50, 15% on the 28 and the remaining 5% on the 85mm. However, if my usage is anything to go by, the modern zoom spends most of its time at either end of the focal range, and very little time in the middle. I guess that I am looking for extremes of viewpoint, and that the natural look of 50mm easily gets overlooked. However, the standard lens does offer an extreme in use – that of wide aperture, and in consequence, shallow depth of field. 

Rogue Oats, Barton Farm, Winchester.

Photo taken with Nikon 35mm/f1.8 DX standard lens.

© Graham Dew 2010

Depth of field is a key intrinsic characteristic of photographs. Although painters and illustrators can mimic soft-focus, it is not inherent to their process. In lens based photography there is an element of focus depth in every image made. Used carefully, shallow depth of field can guide the viewer around the picture, change the balance of importance of the picture, and simplify the background to suggest rather than describe.

Whilst shallow depth of field can be a very appealing tool, its biggest drawback is the accuracy of focus needed to get the correct elements sharp. In the old film based days I would rarely use my 50mm at f1.4 (or my 85mm at f2 for that matter) because focussing had to be so precise that inevitably my camera or the subject moved before the shutter was released and the picture taken. Any subject not directly in the centre of the image could not be focussed really accurately – focus and recompose would inevitably give errors for close object. These days auto-focus has moved on tremendously, and modern mirrorless cameras allow accurate focussing anywhere in the image. Moreover, face recognition AF is a technology that really works, quickly and accurately focussing on eyes whilst you can concentrate on composition. Nowadays wide aperture lenses can be used fully open with confidence.

Seaweed, Sennen Beach, Cornwall

Photo taken with Panasonic Lumix 20mm/f1.7 standard lens.

© Graham Dew 2012

When I changed my camera system from Nikon DSLR to micro four thirds, along with the Lumix G3 and kit zoom I bought the 20mm f1.7 Lumix prime lens. Equivalent to a 40mm lens in 35mm film terms, this has all the benefits of the standard lens with a slightly wider field of view, which suits me even better than a ‘50’. It is a great lens for photographing things, a lens to use for stuff that is near, and can separate out the subject from the clutter. The camera feels very small, almost pocketable and very well balanced with this diminutive lens, making it a joy to use. I get the feeling that it may even become my normal lens.