Objective, subjective... selective...?

A lot has been written about whether or not a photographer can ever truly be objective in his treatment of a subject. Can a war photographer, for example, ever produce an image that does not have a bias of some sort? If they show soldiers celebrating a famous victory they can be accused of triumphalism, if they turn their cameras on the wounded and dying they can equally be accused of batting for the other side and undermining morale.

The first really media-savvy war of what could euphemistically be called "the present day" (i.e. during my lifetime...) was Vietnam. Photojournalists were given unprecedented access to the front lines. Reputations were made the hard way by men such as Philip Jones-Griffiths, Tim Page and Don McCullin. They found themselves, as young men, documenting the lives and deaths of other young men, going into battle alongside them in Hueys, armed with a Nikon or a Leica instead of an Armalite, but just as much in harm's way. For a flavour of the lives they led, pick up a copy of "Nam" by Tim Page. Don't just look at the pictures and read the words, feel the rhythm of the book - Page brings those days to life in a very personal way.

The saturation coverage backfired, of course. The US lost the war, not in the paddy fields of the Mekong Delta but in the hearts and minds of the people at home, who were fed, day after day, a diet of the horrors of war; US troops and Viet civilians alike ripped apart by explosive ordnance or flayed alive by napalm.

By the time the Falklands War came around, establishment attitudes, at least in the United Kingdom, had hardened. There was a recognition that open access meant that information could not be controlled; once the genie was out of the bottle it could not be forced back in and the "bad" would be shown alongside the "good". The government of the day were keen to keep things low key. Who can forget Ian McDonald, the MOD spokesman who appeared night after night on the BBC and ITN news, delivering carefully worded briefings in a wooden monotone? The very distances involved helped in the delay and censorship of images of course; if you are on a naval warship in the South Atlantic your options, back in those days, for getting your film back to shore, were strictly limited. It was the Falklands War that ended Don McCullin's career as a war correspondent - he was denied passage to the theatre of war, it is said, because Margaret Thatcher specifically objected to his ability to depict the horror of conflict. McCullin decided not to cover any further wars, but thankfully turned his lens in other directions.

During the Gulf War(s), journalists were "embedded" - a term that first found currency in the Iraq invasion. The military machine embraced those journalists along for the ride, swaddling them so tightly that they were again, stifled. The old saying about holding your friends close and your enemies closer was never more clearly illustrated. Today, in the Afghan conflict, there is no concurrent front-line reporting at all; "news" is stale before it is ever transmitted or printed.

All of this has had two effects; firstly, the coverage of such "events" - if war can be couched in such terms - has, except for a few honourable exceptions, become anodyne and detached - subservient to the establishment. Cartoonish images of smart bombs falling on baddies, interspersed with marginally less cartoonish animations of military advances and deployments replace real, eyewitness accounts and images. The low-tech Panorama sandbox filled with Airfix tanks of the Yom Kippur War has been replaced by the high tech Newsnight computer simulation, but it is just as detached from reality. The detachment serves to make the horror of war seem somehow less real, less threatening. Soon wars will come, like movies in the cinema, with ratings - "contains mild peril and threat" for a "police action" up to "extreme action and scenes of a violent nature" for a full-blown war.

The second, and equally worrying consequence is that photojournalists - indeed any journalists - are no longer seen as impartial observers, their actions of equal benefit to both sides. Rightly or wrongly they are seen as instruments of the state, reporting what they are told, and therefore as much a fair target as anyone else on the battlefield. The net effect is clear - the more photojournalists are seen as being directly in harm's way, the less they will be free to show what is clearly going on.

So can a photographer - can a photograph - ever truly be objective? subtext and message free? Independent of all that is going on?

Peacekeeper or warmonger...?


No.

I have looked at this primarily from the point of view of a war correspondent, because it makes it easier to illustrate the point, but the same principles hold true in other fields too.

Just picking a subject makes it subjective. Pointing your camera in a direction is a conscious decision. The longer you take on composition, the more thought you put into it, the further the eventual photo becomes. Even your choice of exposure - dark or light - and colour - or monochrome - puts your own "spin" on your output. There is no such thing as a "straight record shot" - the narrative that is in your head, conscious or subconscious, comes out when you press the button. The art is to recognise that and to channel it in your work. Every photo tells a story - just make sure it is telling the story you want it to.

Bill

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.

Sharp is not the only fruit

In the realm of photography, much is made of the merits of good glass. And quite right too. If you want a tack-sharp rendition of your chosen subject, with "perfect" microcontrast and no coma, flare, vignetting, spherical aberrations, etc., then, like so many things in life, you gets what you pays for.

Things are certainly better than they used to be, of course. These days, even the worst cheap kit zoom is better than the average milk bottle thanks to modern formulations of glass, computer aided optical design and better quality materials, assembled by "infallible" machines to tight tolerances. Zoom lenses in particular, covering wide- to tele- ranges that would have been unthinkable a few years ago can now be produced to a "decent" quality at a "reasonable" cost. There are few, if any, "lemons" that can still be bought new.

So.

If "decent" is within easy reach, why do so many photographers still spend staggering amounts of money in pursuit of the dernier cri in optical excellence? It's a fairly safe bet that many (though by no means all) of the pursuers are not sufficiently talented to make the most of the optical qualities of the glass that they aspire to - and in many cases buy. A clear case of the unjustifiable in pursuit of the unfocusable.

In general, the wider or faster the lens, the more expensive it is. The lens speed "arms race" has pretty well been won for now by Leica with it's superlative 50mm Summilux f1.4 and frankly incredible 50mm Noctilux 0.95. They are not the first to build a lens this fast, of course, but you can count on them being among the last of a dying breed - the purveyors of "quality at any cost". What I find hard to believe, let alone understand, is those for whom the 0.95 represents a "must have" lens regardless of the fact that they already have it's predecessor, the f1.0. Are they truly good enough to push this lens to it's limits, or do they just have an overinflated bank balance to match their overinflated egos?

But I digress... Let us return to sharpness.

Much is made on internet fora about the "need" to have the most up to date, highest performing lens to get the best out of the sensor/film. Much is made about the "need" to have something sharp enough to shave with in order to produce "worthwhile" images. Leaving aside for a moment the need for talent in the equation, the "sharp is best" school of narrow-mindedness ignores a whole world of options. The more worldly photographer views the lenses in his bag not in technical terms - Xmm wideangle, fnn tele - with more letters after it's name than a 1970's Ford (GTXLR, anyone?) but as a palette of possibilities, or perhaps more appropriately as a selection of "paintbrushes" which can be used appropriately, to make the most of the subject at the time. Ask not an experienced photographer (as opposed to an "expert" photographer...) how many lenses he has of different focal lengths, ask instead how many he has in his favourite focal length.

For my part, I "see" the world in 50mm terms. I have a (big) fast one, a (compact and collapsible) slow one, and some in between. Some are sharp, with the ability to resolve individual eyelashes at ten paces, some softer, giving a more "rounded" image. I carry and use them according to whim, destination, subject matter and expected light levels. I could probably achieve similar results with a single Summilux and some plug-in Photoshoppery, but where's the fun, the creative enjoyment - in that?

Taken handheld, with an Elmar old enough to be my grand-dad - better sharper?

...not to me.

My favourite 50 by far is an ancient and crispy 5cm Elmar f3.5. It first saw the light of day when Zeppelins were in the skies, Frozen food was a novelty and wireless was something you listened to the BBC on, transmitting from Crystal Palace in dinner jackets and brilliantine. It is a soft, low contrast, old lady, that renders out of focus highlights with a gentle glow, while at the same time giving a modern kit zoom a run for it's money on a sunny day. It is generations behind the current wonderkinds, but it still has a place. Above all, the older, less "perfect" lenses have that indefinable something that I shall, for the want of anything better, refer to as "character" - something that the more clinical "scalpels", for all their carefully engineered and computer-optimised perfection, lack.

No, sharpness is not the be all and end all. It has it's place, as does fillet steak. But who would want to live on that every day...?

Bill

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.
- I don't care how good it is, I'd want more than just a knife if I was in the Swiss Army.

Great capture!!!

WOW! What a great image!!! Phantastic Foto!!

...and so on.

Give me a break.

One of the unexpected and largely unwanted by-products of the internet age is the ability to comment upon the work of others in a simplistic and anodyne fashion. Flickr and other photo sharing sites are the worst, by far, but the pernicious plague spreads far and wide to otherwise sensible corners of the web. The almost hysterical shriek of GREAT CAPTURE! leaps from the screen like a pair of fluorescent chartreuse cycle shorts on a middle-aged sumo wrestler. It's the electronic equivalent of a "high five", or chummy slap on the back, and generally has the same tea-spitting effect as the latter.

Do other pastimes have the equivalent, I wonder? Do watercolourists run around each other in circles shouting WOOT! at the sight of a well-rendered landscape? Do quilters experience orgasmic glee when confronted by a particularly, er, well-filled, one?

Now, you will probably by this point be thinking of me as a bit of a curmudgeon. Why shouldn't people be encouraging (and encouraged), I hear you say. What's wrong with a bit of heartfelt enthusiasm?

There's the rub.

What's missing for me, 99.9 times out of 100, is the little matter of "sincerity". Let's dwell on that thought for a moment. The origins of the word give us a clue as to what it is all about. It is from the Latin, "sin cere", meaning "without wax". I understand (I wasn't there...) that an unscrupulous sculptor back in the days of the Roman Empire might use an inferior quality of marble, or cover up careless chisel marks, by using wax as a filler. This worked well as a cunning ruse to fool the unwary art lover right up to the point that their newly acquired household god, tasteful nude or priapic faun was hit by the warming rays of the sun as it streamed across the Aventine. The wax would melt, leaving our hapless purchaser with something that looked like a large tabby had sharpened their claws on it. The sculpture was revealed as not genuine. The real thing was "sin cere"...

A genuine comment, truly meant, is worth a thousand times more than something that has been cut'n'pasted a dozen times already in that browsing session alone. I swear that some people leave such comments like some sort of electronic paper trail, just to prove that they have been there. They are probably the same people who had "I-Spy" books as children, bought to keep them quiet on long journeys as they assiduously ticked off each type of lorry, tree, pylon or whatever. Big Chief I-Spy has heap much to answer for, I fear.

I'm not saying don't comment - but if you have nothing genuine to say, then I don't think I'm alone in saying that I'd rather you said nothing at all. If you have the time, the inclination and the mastery of your keyboard to use the q,y,i,o,s,d,f,h,j,k*,l,z,x,v,b,n and m keys in addition to those that go to make up that most empty of plaudits, please do so. The best comments are thought-provoking. They make the photographer look at their own image afresh, to see it with new eyes. The vast majority of photographers are terrible self-editors, who need all the help they can get to separate their wheat from the chaff. Thoughtless praise for mediocrity, lightly given, simply encourages more mediocrity.

Like it? Loathe it? Let me know. But DON'T say "Great capture!"

Original is here: Berlin

There is another dimension to this. There seems to be an almost paranoid fear of causing offense. Critical comments, especially constructive and well-composed ones, are so rare that the WWF are starting an appeal. I suspect that this is in part because it is easier to carpet-bomb with smileys than snarlys (Is that a word? It deserves to be). Constructive criticism, or critique, is HARD, because it requires TIME and THOUGHT. Those are increasingly precious commodities in the modern World, where Apple and Blackberry are now communication devices instead of something that goes well with crumble and custard.

So.

Please - comment away, but do so with your mind in gear, not your rubber stamp in hand.

Bill

*I'm assuming that you are not one of those who think it's cute to spell capture with a K...

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.
- This Blog entry has been brought to you by the Provisional wing of the Popular Front for the Promulgation and Preservation of Constructive Criticism.

Smart Metering?

Much has been made in recent weeks of the forthcoming introduction of "Smart Meters" for domestic use. Depending on the hue of your morning paper this is either a necessary thing (broadsheets) a costly thing (red tops) or a filthy communist plot to spy on our domestic energy consumption (The Daily Mail). All this hot air, however, has set me thinking about the a type of metering much closer to my heart.

Don't read this expecting a technical paper - these are (as usual) my personal views, based on the journey I have taken over the years.

Like many, I started off by really not understanding metering, beyond the basics of too much light = overexposure, too little light = underexposure. I relied heavily at first on built in metering (centre-weighted, of course) and aperture priority auto and gradually fumbled my way into a broader understanding of light and exposure. The greatest lesson I remember learning in those early years was that there is no such thing as "correct exposure" - there is only the exposure that gives you the end result that you are happy with. That may be too dark for some, too high-key for others, but hey, that's their problem.

The next thing that moved me forward was spot metering, combined with the use of slide film. Suddenly not only could I expose easily for the element of the subject that I wanted, but I could also see the end results as I indended without the well-meaning intervention of a spotty youth tweaking the processing machine in my local branch of Boots.

Not averagely metered...

Matrix metering - great if you are not very experienced, if you are feeling lazy, or if you are Keanu Reeves (you may of course be all of the above, in which case welcome, Mr Reeves, and when are you going to make a decent movie?) I have had various cameras with matrix metering or some variation thereon, and have generally found it to be akin to trying to get through the day wearing gardening gloves - I can still do what I want, but I cannot feel anything; subtlety is lost.

So.

That takes me full-circle. The scales fell from my eyes when I finally, after years of "I can't do that" excuses, I acquired my first totally manual, meterless camera. That was a Leica IIIc, which has subsequently gone on to new owner, but has been replaced in the proverbial gadget bag by a II and an M2. I rushed out and bought a hand-held meter (the tiny Gossen Digisix - accurate and easy to use, but with a frightening appetite for batteries.). I religiously metered each shot for all of half a roll of film, before realising that the reading did not change that often. I metered every other shot, then every 3 shots, then...

Freedom!!! My generally lazy nature combined with the realisation that I could guesstimate the majority of lighting conditions, and rely on the latitude of film allowed me to leave the meter at home. The feeling of walking around with a purely manual camera, adjusting exposure by experience and by eye and getting good results has to be experienced to be believed. Whole rolls of film slid through without a single exposure reading being taken. Sunny-16 became my friend, albeit in the UK at least, it is more like Sunny-12.

Real men don't use meters...

I've mentioned film already, and this is a key part of the equation. My camera food of choice is Kodak 400CN, a chromogenic film that means I can (still) get a 30 min high street dip and dunk and proofs to disc without too much hassle. I don't use anything else, so I have learned how this emulsion behaves under different lighting conditions and how far I can trust it.

But... here's the funny thing - although I can, I don't manually estimate, or indeed manually set, exposure on my other cameras. I am still happy to rely upon automation when it is available, even though I have tasted the fruit of self-reliance. Do I feel guilty because of this? No. No more than I do leaving my car gearbox in auto mode for 95% of my journeys. Sensible, non-invasive automation is an asset, but going "unplugged" is something special.

Bill

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.
- I'd rather have a week of Fridays than a month of Sundays.

Calm down, Dear, it's only a photo...

Photographers of every shape and size, amateur, professional, journeyman or craftsman are all as guilty as the average "creative" when it comes to occasionally taking themselves and their outputs just a tad too seriously. I blame Barthes, myself, and that Sontag woman. The problem starts when the "serious" snapper - that is one who takes their photography seriously, either as a hobby or a profession - starts to fret that they do not have a "personal style". HCB did, so did Chatwin, Weston and Adams. So does Rankin, O'Neill, Parr, Myerowicz, McCullin, Salgado - the list is endless.

"I have no recognisable style..." the panicky little inner monologue declaims. "I cannot be a proper photographer, I will not be taken seriously, until I have a recognisable style of my own." This pernicious little thought drives out any concept of learning the craft and letting a style evolve on it's own. Oh no.

The next "logical step" (for which read "hare-brained idea") is to work slavishly to become "the next [insert as applicable]". This leap of blind faith ignores an inconvenient truth - style does not spring full-formed overnight. and certainly cannot be adopted, like donning a suit. Those who our little lost photographer would choose to emulate built their instantly recognisable signature bodies of work over a period of years; their less polarised work has faded, either through time or assiduous editing, from the public consciousness. There is simply no short-cut to greatness, although there is a fairly easy footpath just over there that leads to mediocrity.

The other funny thing about personal style is that it tends to be structured and codified by those around you. For the most part it is their positive (and negative) feedback that encourages the photographer, like a lab rat, to understand that pressing the shutter on a particular camera, using a particular lens, pointing at a particular subject, in particular lighting conditions, results in his getting a "treat", and if he does the same thing over and over again, the treats (or plaudits, or work, or money) just keep coming.

Problems can also arise when inexperienced photographers try to run before they can walk and start to believe a little too much in their still slender abilities. "I am working on a project", they will say with a faraway gleam, or "I am building a portfolio" - just like the big boys. No they're not. They are taking lots of similar pictures in the hope that they might "hang together" in some sort of recognisable theme. At this point, the skill lies not in the execution of the image, but in the editing out of the also-rans. The photographer who declares his mojo found, his style settled, is fooling no-one but himself. No amount of Flickr slideshows or vanity publishing can disguise a lack of talent, ability, or self-awareness.

Don't get me wrong. It is very laudable to try to hone your skills, and to sharpen your eye. A good photographer works, if not with a pre-visualised idea of what he wants, at least with intent. Random snapping is not for him; he can go out with a single camera and a single lens, knowing that the shot he wants can be obtained with just that equipment. Instead of wandering, our boy follows a golden thread, exploring around and beyond it, but keeping one foot firmly on the path. He lets his subjects evolve, rather than trying to ossify and regiment them, safe in the knowledge that he has the skill and the vision to extract what he wants to draw out.

Just a photo. Anything you can "see" in it that relates to walking toward the light, or taking a journey, or striding out, is the product of your own fevered imagination...

There is another trap for the unwary. Not everything has to have a meaning or a reason. Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh and a photo is just a photo. No amount of jesuitical debate can bring three dimensional depth to a motif or subject that is inherently shallow. Images that are too weak or diffuse to stand on their own, and require explanation, or any captioning beyond a brief title, to "speak" to the viewer are by definition in and of themselves, mute.

Always remember, there is no shame in being an amateur (or jobbing) snapper. We can't all be first violinists - some of us have to push the wind through the trombone. Don't rush, and don't panic. Your style - if it is truly there within you - will evolve and emerge when it is ready, and you have the maturity and ability to let it come to the surface. In the meantime content yourself with the thought that you are still part of the orchestra...

...even if you are only playing the triangle.

Bill

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- All images on this blog are copyright Bill Palmer and may not be reproduced in any format or medium without permission.
- If any of this makes you laugh nervously you are probably taking yourself too seriously. Put the project down, back away, go out and take some pictures.