Competitions Are For Horses

About three years ago, just as my photography journey was starting to feel like it had something more serious to offer, I asked a friend whether he entered photography competitions.

‘Competitions are for horses not artists’ he replied.

Even then my friend was an ‘accomplished photographer’ by virtue of having been published several times and shown in a number of exhibitions (he is even more accomplished now), so I was surprised by his answer. I thought a lot about it at the time but haven’t given it much thought again until this evening.

It’s an interesting metaphor. Not only does it perfectly highlight the, at best incongruous, and at worst blatant hypocrisy of trying to objectively judge an entirely subjective medium, it also highlights the demeaning nature of such efforts.

Horses, while noble and beautiful are still just animals. They may well experience consciousness, who can tell (heck I can’t even prove that the person sitting opposite me is experiencing consciousness), and people, through their relationship and bond with them, may have found inspiration and insight into the meaning of life as a result. But to the best of my knowledge, no horse as yet has composed a beautiful symphony, written a sonnet or carved stone in a way that makes you cry.

Horse racing is base. Art is not.

This is the image I entered. I thought it was pretty good but apparently it's just an also ran.

So if that’s the case why am I sat on a train now, on my way home from a relatively minor photography exhibition and competition in which over 150 images were shortlisted and feeling pretty shit that my submissions were not.

There were some brilliant works on show. One has even previously featured in this year's Taylor Wessing exhibition and is of course brilliant (though I think is a bit cheeky if you’ve already won a major accolade to then hawk your work round other far more minor exhibitions). There was also work I’ve seen recently in the BJP and one portrait in particular really stood out for me for its power and bolt of lightning connection in the eyes of the subject with you as the viewer.

But many looked like the curators had been given a night off and the selection left to the horses. I found myself thinking ‘how the hell did that get selected but mine didn’t; is my work really that weak? Inevitably the self-doubt starts to creep in and I can hear the clock counting down to the point at which this edifice of self-esteem that I am, in all honesty, building on this pursuit of truth, beauty and love, comes crashing down into the pretentious heap of a mid life crisis. I keep trying to convince myself that that's not what's been going on but there's a very good chance it is.

I texted my friend for some crumb of comfort. He’s even more accomplished now having recently made the short list for the Sony World Photography Awards, whittled down from around 150,000 submissions to the last 40 or so. He even had the temerity to submit a portrait even though he says he’s not remotely a portrait photographer. He’s a bastard of course but he’s also a dear friend and because his work has been externally validated, his opinion matters and counts a great deal and not just to me.

The crumbs were plentiful, enough even for a small cake.

‘Competitions are for horses’ he said again. ‘Don’t take anything from it, most of the time the curators don’t even know what they’re looking for; your work is fabulous and you have an energy and drive that I’m incredibly envious of’.

They were good crumbs, as I said, he’s a good mate and has been something of a mentor to me that last few years of this photographic journey. But still, this need for external validation exists. It cries out to be nurtured like the thousands of pouting teenage selfies I see on my Instagram feed, all desperate for affiliation, actualisation and validation. I’m no different.

The New Masculinity

One of the trends I've noticed in the millennial generation (based on the 'Transitions' project though this is not taken from that) is the shift of male sexuality away from being quite so polarised between gay and straight, towards a more ambiguous, less rigid interpretation. It's not that more men are likely to self-identify as bi-sexual (though that might be the case, I don’t know), more a trend towards not feeling the need to be quite so demonstrably 'straight'.

The insecurity associated with ambiguity is disappearing. In its place is a more nuanced expression that allows for the boundaries to be a little blurred. Women have long been OK with this flirtation; it's always been something that was permissible, perhaps even encouraged. It was incredibly risky for men to do this.

The two guys in this image self-identify as straight, yet in the context of a long night out in Brighton (which is known as the gay capital of the UK), after a lot of fun, in the early hours of the morning and in response to a random photographer goading them a little, the new masculinity is able to express itself like this.

I think it's something to be applauded (the expression, not the photograph, which is sadly compromised).

The things you see on Brighton Beach on a Sunday morning at sun rise

The sun rises over Brighton beach around 5am during the spring and summer months. I am there for a Sunday morning but the revellers are there still for Saturday night. Along with the revellers you can find the die hard swimmers tiptoeing down the shingle for their early morning swim entirely unaware of both the bitingly cold temperature of the water and the sprawling hedonism around them. It is, truly, a wonderful place to be. There is a sense of collectivism and love and its hard to know if the groups of people sitting on the beach are formed on the basis of long held friendships or simply the result of being caught up in the moment, of the shared experience of simply being there as the sun rises.

As an observer of these groups, it’s hard to know if you are yourself an outsider invading someone else’s space. The fact that I am there for Sunday morning and not Saturday night and I am on my own, does seem to set me to one side. I don’t know if the apparent intrusion of a man with camera will compromise this project but I am happy to find out. Last summer, I spent a few early morning talking with different groups, sharing ideas, photographing their moments. This has inspired me to create this new project, which I will work on over the summer. I want to capture the moments that make this time and place so special. I will be heading down on a Sunday morning whenever I can, aiming to arrive just before sunrise. I'll try to become part of the scene but I know that this will be difficult.

As for this image, a lot of people have asked me how I got it, was it staged, was it chance, what’s the story with the characters in the frame. I don’t want to spoil the magic and charm of the picture by explaining it; I think that it explains itself more than enough. Part of the skill I have been trying to learn is the ability to coax an image into life. Jane Bown was famous for saying that she doesn’t take pictures she makes them and that’s kind of what I was trying to do here. I had a sense that this couple wanted to do something outrageous and I simply coaxed that feeling out of them. Life is all around us but a lot of it remains hidden. If you can engage with people in a way that lets them open up and show you what they really feel inside, like for instance some latent desire to get naked in public, then that’s not staged, that’s spontaneous. And if one of their friends happens to get in on the action because they are also in the moment, a moment that was a strong mixture of happiness and sadness, a goodbye party before the friends parted to return home to Spain, then who am I to stop him?

The Picture I Would Run into a Burning House to Save

A very good friend of mine asked me recently what I was trying to achieve with my photography; what was I striving for and how would I know I’d achieved it? I showed her this picture of a boy with a dandelion by Laura Panack and said that if I could ever take a photograph as close to perfect as this I would be very happy. 

Boy with Dandelion - Laura Panack

For me the perfection of this image lies in the fact that it distils and presents such a pure visual representations of our humanity. There are many other images taken in either fine art or perhaps more commonly documentary styles that present more obvious or visceral representations of humanity. Certainly there are more iconic images that anyone might immediately recall as being synonymous with the subject. But for me the genius of this image lies in the ordinariness of the moment that makes it easier to connect with personally.

The lighting is the first thing that really draws you in to the image. It has a softness that gives such a wonderful gradation of tone and colour and makes the image feel very organic; it’s melancholic but not sad. The quality of the light is complemented by the delicacy and toning of the boy’s skin, almost like it, and the image, is breathing. That probably sounds odd, describing an image as ‘breathing’, but in my head that really gets close to how this image looks to me and makes me feel.

The boy, seemingly poised at the moment of exhalation, wonderfully mirrors that idea and his careful scrutiny of the delicate beauty of the dandelion before his own exhalation gently blow the seeds away is a wonderfully sensitive moment. You can see his fascination and engagement with something so wonderfully delicate but otherwise so ordinary. And that is where the humanity lies for me; in the deep personal engagement and the delicacy of an otherwise ordinary moment.

Having been a small boy once and having known and experienced the deep sense of insecurity and pain associated with that time, the fact that the subject is who he is and is the age he is, is also poignant and meaningful for me. That is of course a very personal thing; an interpretation based on personal experience that only I could bring to this image (but isn’t that the final and most important aspect of all art?) But still, the fact that most boys of this age are hugely self-conscious and the photographer has managed to capture such a delicate and involved moment of this small boy, without even a shirt on, speaks volumes about their ability to engage with a subject and build trust. Again that reinforces the humanity of the image.

What I learn from this that helps me understand my own work better and myself as a person is that the photograph is only part of the output of my work, and perhaps of any photographers work. The process of engagement, the insight and understanding of other people and therefore of myself is every bit as important as the resulting image. I’ve met a few photographers recently whose portrait work I have previously admired but when engaging in conversation with them it’s become apparent that they only really care about the image. The subject and the process by which they engage and the story and insight gained seems less important or not important at all and I’ve found that disappointing.

My instincts are telling me that the best pictures come from those subjects you end up making an emotional connection even if just at a superficial level. In that single brief moment there has to be a sense of the subject as a person with a past and a future, with memories and remembrances and hopes and fears and everything else that makes us people. Most of this may remain hidden from the photographer but there still needs to be an acknowledgement of them in order for the portrait to really work. I always want to leave having learned something about them and want to remember that and keep it as important.

B&W Images and Cloying Sentimentality

I was recently discussing the virtues of B&W photography (and the use of grain in the image). The question posed was how well the images shown below would work if they had been shot in fine grain Kodachrome 100 rather than the high speed B&W stock used.  

'Shell Shocked Marine'; Don McCullen

I thought it an interesting question. My experience thus far is that in general if a picture works well in B&W, it is also likely to work well in colour even if the colour version doesn't work as well as the B&W version.

But I’m not sure that the reverse is not true; it's much harder to get an image to work well in B&W than colour and a good colour picture can lose all its value and impact converted to B&W. I think this is mostly because B&W is reductionist in its information and you therefore place much more emphasis on the balance between light and dark as being what makes the image work. You really have to be skilful with the light and that's probably the hardest part to get right, either because it's completely beyond your control or where it is in your control, it's actually really hard to do.

Landscape; Don McCullen

I've also noticed (and been guilty of myself) a trend towards people converting otherwise dull or boring images into B&W and adding some effects and grain to try and give the image impact and grit. B&W tends to have the effect of sharpening the image but neither this nor the 'gritty' look are anything other than superficial.

The McCullen shot of the Marine with thousand yard stare would, I think, work extremely well on fine grain Kodachrome 100 (assuming there'd been enough light to shoot it). I think the muted camo green combined with the dirt and grime of war would have given a very powerful palette and conveyed a greater sense of being there. I'm not actually sure that it being B&W adds very much since the image's strength is not on the interplay between light and dark, it's on the impact of the moment of human experience and the vacancy in the soldier’s eyes (it was taken after the batter of Hue, aka the Citadel where I think McCullen was also wounded).

The landscape shot though is quite different and I think only works in B&W (where obviously there is no colour version to compare it to but one can imagine). It also works best with the course grain high speed film used. The image works on a number of levels but the interplay between light and dark; the shimmering of the wet road leading into the horizon, set against the dark ground and the light of late winter sky is perfect. It's just the kind of landscape I love. Interestingly I think the landscapes that McCullen's been doing in his later years are perhaps among his best work. I love how the sum of his experiences are being distilled into the images and reflected back. I've read interviews and watched the brilliant documentary about him and it's very apparent that he does not want to be remembered as a war photographer. Landscapes as a genre have developed into something of an over romanticised subject lately, a fact underscored by the dominance and popularity of colour landscapes and the cloying sentimentality of over processed HDR images or even just well balanced images made using graduated filters. Personally I much prefer there to be ‘too much’ shadow on the lands in order to preserve the clouds in the sky (where by too much I simply mean more than might otherwise be considered perfect).

Anonymity in Street Portraiture – The Book of Strangers

Download a copy of 'The Book of Strangers' here

I’ve noticed a pattern of behaviour in taking street portraits. While the majority of people I approach are willing to be photographed, albeit with some degree of persuasion, very few of them ever get in touch afterwards. Despite me giving them contact details and promising them both a hard and soft copy of the final image for free as a thank you, the rate of contact is probably only around three in ten.

Given that the person has invested their time to stop and talk to me, has listened and engaged with the idea I am presenting to them and then been brave enough to let a complete stranger take their picture, you’d think that they would be curious enough to want to see the result.

And yet I wonder whether the answer is that it’s precisely because I was stranger that the subjects behave this way. The preservation of anonymity is what drives this behaviour but it is also what allows the subject to be photographed in the first place.

A lot of people, perhaps most you might know, seem to hate having their photograph taken. Certainly in my experience, both of wanting to photograph friends and, in the past, having my own picture taken, I’ve experienced resistance. The painful refrain of ‘I hate having my photograph taken’ is so familiar and has been the cause of many a family argument.

When a person’s image exists constantly for everyone to see, everywhere they go without restriction, it’s strange to think that the simple act of creating a two dimension photographic image of that person would cause such stress and anxiety. It’s true that the frozen moment is in some way lie; it’s only a facsimile of the person in that one moment and we do not experience people in such frozen states; we experience them on a continuum. The old adage that the camera never lies isn’t might not be quite accurate then but we are getting a little too metaphysical. It still doesn’t explain why people are so reluctant to have their picture taken.

I suspect that the more likely explanation is that the act of taking a picture forces you to confront the fact that you are indeed being very closely ‘looked at’ and that the existence of the photograph forces you to also look at yourself, an act that is deeply uncomfortable for most of us even if there is an inbuilt pleasure associated with the act of looking, what Freud called Schauluast and what was subsequently interpreted as scopophilia.

This project started out as an exploration of self through the exploration of engaging with others. I have previously written about Laing’s argument that we are ‘all strangers to one another’; that we cannot know each other because we cannot experience each other’s experiences. Be that as it may, I wonder whether the greater obstacle is actually that of being a stranger to our own self. Looking at our own image us is a challenging experience; it forces us to look at who we. So when a complete stranger approaches us and asks if we can take our picture it is precisely the anonymity between the subject and the photographer and the subsequent distance between the subject and the image that is made that allows that process to work. It is the anonymity that is important.

Why then agree to be photographed in the first place, what does the subject get out of it? I suspect that the process appeals to our in built altruism, our desire to do things that please other people because that makes us feel good about ourselves. I also believe that the subjects share the same process of engagement that I as the photographer experience and crave. Which side of the camera you are on then becomes immaterial to the experience; it is the temporary unravelling of the inherent strangeness between people that is pleasurable. An exploration if you will but one where ultimately the preservation of anonymity is critical to the success of that experience. Once the image has been made, photographer and subject part company, the strangeness between them is preserved and so the experience is a safe one.

That picture of the guy with his son in the shower

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-36322279

I'd already seen this article elsewhere on other photographic sites. In this article by the BBC, the text refers to 'dual standards' contrasting the reception this image had with an almost identical one that featured a mother and child. This is less about dual standards and more clearly about unconscious gender bias; it reveals to us the way we encode paternal relationships as being pejoratively different to maternal ones.

As for merit of photograph, it is at once both sensitive and revealing. It shows the vulnerability of both parties in the shot; the child who is seriously ill and the father, who is aferall naked and revealled to the world.

Leica Summarit 75mm on the Sony A7rII

There are always things that are so vastly expensive compared to what most people are prepared to pay for them, that they confuse and befuddle those same people by their very existence. But the existence of expensive products is not difficult to understand. There are always going to be people with very large personal fortunes and they are always looking for things with price tags commensurate with their purchasing power. At the extremes, price becomes as irrelevant in all regards, by which I mean it ceases to be an inhibiting factor in decision making or in assessing relative quality. All that matters is that a thing is expensive enough to justify you, the super-rich, buying it.

I don’t struggle with how much things cost. It is almost certainly a character flaw of mine (which I could unpick but wouldn’t be terribly interesting in a photography blog) but the idea that for example, you can spend over £100,000 on just a pair of hi-fi speakers doesn’t bother me and if I was a billionaire I wouldn’t hesitate.

In the world of cameras we are to some degree similarly indulged. Five figure systems are readily available from Phase One, Hasselblad and, of course, Leica and in particular Leica’s lenses seem to defy all others in their ability to be incomprehensibly expensive, especially in their M-Mount range.

Oddly however, I have a feeling that the most expensive Leica lenses are perhaps the least usable. I’ve never tried to produce critically sharp results with a wide open 50mm Summilux and while I have seen other photographers post such pictures, I am pretty sure it would be beyond me to do consistently. Similarly, shooting a 90mm Summicron at f/2 would be equally tricky, even on something like the A7 series with focus peaking and magnification turned on, I would find that hard and would always be stopping down a little for fear of getting it wrong and losing a great picture.

Until the new Techart focus adapter for M-Mount lenses on E-Mount bodies starts to filter through and be confirmed as a reliable product (I had ordered and pre-paid for one but cancelled the order when I learned that it would not be delivered until June) the more interesting choices for Leica lenses on Sony E-Mount bodies remains, I believe, their more affordable range of Summarit and Elmarit glass.

Which bring me to my ‘review’.

I love the form factor of Leica and other ranger finder lenses; I love the simplicity of a manual focus lens and the sense of connectedness you get from that process. I do think that photography is infinitely better served by having fast and reliable autofocus but I also believe it is enriched by having a choice.

I chose to buy a second hand Leica 75mm Summarit for a number of reasons. Firstly because I couldn’t get over how ‘cheap’ it was, both outright when compared to the equivalent Summicron and relative to the new price. The second hand lens I bought was maybe one or two years old and looked like it was new and it cost me 50% of the new price.

Secondly, because it was so small compared to any other option. Yes, it is ‘only’ an f/2.5 (the latest version is billed as f/2.4 but dealers have told me that the older version itself was ostensibly also f/2.4 but some technicality meant it was sold as an f/2.5, a little bit like how the original BMW 316 was actually a 1.8l engine), but at 75mm, I would be very nervous of shooting at anything larger than this anyway. It would be nice to shoot at f/2 for portraits but as I said earlier, I would be very nervous of nailing the focus.

So f/2.5 is just fine and if I was to go longer, probably the 90mm Elmarit would be similarly fit for purpose.

Thirdly, while the 75mm focal length might feel like a bit of an orphan compared to the standard 50mm real world view and 85mm portrait view set up, it actually works really very well for street portraits. Most of the portraits I shoot are a three quarters to one half presentation of the person because I am interested in how posture and stance adds to the story and presentation of that individual in the final picture. Composing this way with an 85mm lens puts you too far away from the person to enable you to continue to build rapport. 50mm works really for this and most of the portraits I shoot are done with my A-Mount 50mm f/1.4 Plannar. But sometimes I would like to have just a little more perspective compression and while I love the way that the Plannar lens renders colour and contrast, sometimes a subject needs something a little softer and more forgiving.

This is not to say that the 75 Summarit is ‘soft’ in its resolving power. Far from it. It’s as sharp as anything else I’ve used, including Zeiss 55mm FE 1.8 Sonnar and the 35mm FE 1.4 Distagon. But in comparison to those lenses, the Summarit is a little less aggressive with colour and contrast. It’s more soft pastel tones than full bodied oil paint. You tend to see where it will just naturally work in a more complementary way with the light and the subject. Generally speaking it works best with softer light (as do most things), with more gentle and faded colours and lower contrast situations. The portrait ‘Parent’s Evening’ show this very well, with the pastel yellow hoodie rendering in a lovely soft way against the grey concrete pillar.

It’s also a lens that works very well for black and white, especially in early evening light or where you want to soften the skin tone and give a slightly ethereal look.

It will still give strong contrast, but that strong contrast will not feel overly brittle; the experience is more like high cocoa content dark chocolate rather than raw sugar between your teeth, which some lenses can feel like. The images ‘Stand a Post’ and ‘Shutters’ show what I mean; pin sharp, strong contrast but still with a warm, slightly organic feel to them.

Overall I am very happy with this lens. It represents a ‘sensible’ choice both overall and for the specific use of street portraiture. Focusing at f/2.5, still requires a degree of concentration, but is nevertheless easily achieved.

There are a few things to be aware of though. The older version is now being sold at a substantial discount and can be found for under £1000. While it is ostensibly the same as the new one, a key difference is that it does not come with a lens hood; this must be bought separately and will cost around £60 new (the same hood is used for both the 75 and 90 Summarit). I first tried to find one second hand on eBay but had no luck. Which is odd because the lens itself is readily available on eBay. Expect to pay around £750 for one, almost regardless of age and condition. The other thing to bear in mind is that they don’t sell that well second hand. The price of £750 seems to be the absolute max they are advertised for, but they also seem to hang around on eBay for quite a while; their doesn’t seem to be much demand for longer length Leica lenses in general so if you do buy one and then want to sell it on, you might have to wait a while for it to sell or sell it for less than you paid for it. I bought mine from Aperture in London and though this was several months ago now, the other 75/90 Summarit/Elmarit lenses they had in are all still available now. This means you might be able to get one for maybe £600-650 on eBay with a best offer. Given that there is nothing to go wrong with a manual lens this might be the more prudent way to purchase one.