This Summer exhibition has been our most successful yet and has attracted visitors from throughout NZ as well as lots more overseas tourists.  It is a rewarding exhibition to see if you have not yet been.  Andrew Clifford’s interview with Kim Hill on National Radio certainly attracted people who had not previously been to the Park. Click below to listen: http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20111126-0945-andrew_clifford_sculpture_in_waikato-048.mp3

Autumn: call and response   17^th March – 10^th June 2012

Our next exhibition, call and response, curated by Kim Paton, will present works from emerging artists who must wrestle with the inherent challenges of the site, including the scale and natural beauty of the landscape. Kim has accepted proposals that demonstrate engagement with the physical and historical environment of the site as well as wider environmental issues. The exhibition will include various forms of work including sculpture, installation, ephemeral, performance and conceptual.

Geoff’s comments (Aperture – December 2011) about Photoshop, the media, and the photographer’s responsibility to his subject are worthy of more than superficial consideration.   Unfortunately he has fallen into the trap of using examples from the highly competitive world of commercial photo-journalism on the one hand and mixing them with a situation  that we commoners might experience on the other.    As we all know, they are worlds apart.

Geoff implies that the only use for Photoshop should be to correct any perceived defects in the original image.      So my first questions are; who decides what defects are?   Who decides what is enhancement?   And the biggie, who decides what is acceptable in an increasingly cosmopolitan world?

Grazia is not a UK magazine.   It is an Italian magazine with an English edition, a subtle but significant difference.  The offending picture was not there as a true and correct record of the event.  The image fooled no-one.  As soon as it was published it was picked up as a fake.    It was there to sell magazines – pure and simple, and boy, it sure did that.    It is understandable that the Brits might get up tight about the PSing of their current idol, their fairytale princess.   Of course somebody complained to the Press Complaints Commission.   That’s what the PCC is for.   The big story would have been if nobody had complained.    However the Italian public were not in the least put out and saw it all as a storm in a tea cup.

So, more questions.   Why do so many people still assume that what they see must be true?    And (from a man’s point of view) what idiot believes what they see in a fashion magazine?

I have thought long and hard about Geoff’s suggestion that we take pictures of people in order that somebody, sometime, will get the warm fuzzies.   As a general rule, I take photos of people in order to show as much as I am able of their character and possibly something of the environment that goes towards that character.   If subjects hate seeing themselves in photos then that’s their problem.    Their hatred will always show through and there is nothing any photographer can do about it.   Personally, if anybody intimates to me in any manner at all that they do not want to be photographed then I immediately make it equally clear that I will respect their wishes.   As for pimples, teeth whitening, eye sparkling and wrinkle softening, let’s not beat about the bush it – it’s dishonest in exactly the same way that the Grazia image was dishonest.   You do it.   I do it.   Why not Grazia?

It is not a simple case of trying to put one over the subject.   Is the subject trying to put one over you, the photographer?   Or, what might be even worse, put one over the viewer with your collusion.

Of course we must never forget that one man’s line in the sand may be another man’s ripple on the beach.   But we won’t know which it is until we wade in to see.

Here we go again. If it’s February it must be the start of a new season of Society activities and a gentle reminder from Helen that I needed to compose this piece.

I have to confess that my off-season photographic activities have been very limited.  One of the perils of doing and photographing a sport is that I want to do both at the same time which, until science comes up with a way of cloning me, is of course impossible.  Not wanting to let the side down in races later this year means more saddle time and less shutter time.

I have not been entirely idle with the camera though and just as with sport, in photography practice makes perfect.  Of course for anyone with a true passion for something, perfection is never attained and the journey is what counts.  Lots of instances recently of “Now what does this button do?” “How do I…….?” and the less said about my reaction times the better.

The big photo story in recent weeks has been Kodak’s financial problems and subsequent filing for bankruptcy protection.  I don’t pretend to know the full story but it seems Kodak were either unable or unwilling to adapt to the digital era.  They may have pioneered the digital camera and it might reasonably be asked why they didn’t capitalise on it. Hindsight is 20/20 of course and anyway Kodak made lots of money selling film and paper at huge margins.  It would have been a brave CEO to take this innovative technology forward and effectively cannibalise the company’s core business.  The horns of a dilemma indeed and sadly for Kodak the moment, so to speak, passed.

I no longer use film and I don’t really do nostalgia.  However I grew up with film and learnt photography through that medium.  Brands like Agfa and Ilford just didn’t have the Kodak cachet.  OK I confess to occasional dalliances with Fuji Velvia but I could never quite warm to those eye popping greens.  How exciting it was to send your slide film away in those little yellow envelopes and wait eagerly for the cool plastic yellow box to arrive.  It was almost like Christmas.  There was that frisson of fear that the killer image you took in some obscure corner of Europe might turn out to be a dud.  And EVERYTHING was processed, warts and all.  Many slides ended up in drawers and projector boxes, some found their way into albums.  But most of all they were there, ready for a family evening with projector and screen.

See you around, Geoff

c/o ROGER BROWNSEY, HONPSNZ , FPSNZ.
8Benmohr Pl. TOKOROA 3420

Advance advice of a print exhibition:

OUR NEW ZEALAND THROUGH THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY

To be displayed in TOKOROA 12-18 OCTOBER 2012

Much has changed in photography over the past decade, we now make our photographs with ‘pixels’ rather than film & silver, thus our Camera Club has decided to change the way we conduct an exhibition of our photographic prints.

The South Waikato Camera Club, with your help, invite your Members to be part of this Exhibition with differences, it will be a simple and inexpensive way for your Members to participate and entry is restricted to Members of Camera Clubs within the Central North Island. The Exhibition will be made up of 60-65 of your prints selected through a process of first viewing Digital Files of your entry then advising you which files to print for hanging in the Exhibition. read more about new print photo competiton Tokoroa

Photographer Roster 27 March to 1st April

Contact Helen if you are interested in participating.

Please find attached the photographers brief. It doesn’t have the schedule/shifts allocated at this point, but please see below a general out line of when the shifts will be…

• Tuesday Afternoon (Registration day) 5.00pm – 6.00pm: 1 photographer
• Wednesday Morning 7.00am – 9.30am: 3 photographers
• Wednesday Afternoon 4.00pm – 5.30pm: 1 Photographer
• Thursday Morning 6.00am – 9.30am: 2 Photographers
• Thursday Afternoon 4.00pm – 5.30pm: 1 Photographer
• Thursday Afternoon (Balloonists Party) 6.30pm – 9.30pm: 1 Photographer
• Friday Morning (School Hop) 7.00am – 8.00am: 2 Photographers
• Friday Afternoon (Town Parade in Cambridge) 6.30pm – 7.30pm: 1 Photographer
• Saturday Morning 7.00am – 9.30am: 1 Photographer
• Saturday Afternoon (Night Glow) 4.00pm – 9.30pm: 4 Photographers
• Sunday Morning 7.00am – 9.30am: 1 Photographers

All together there is 18 different shifts, but to make it easier with allocating photographer passes etc, it would be better if we only had 4/5 photographers over the whole 6 days. The reason why the Saturday night time is from 4pm – 9.30pm is we want to have one camera located in a building at the University and have it continually taking photos throughout the afternoon, so we can see a timeline of the whole event. Please note these times may vary but will always be in and around.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Helen if you are interested in participating.

If you are a digital photographer you probably use Photoshop or something similar.  Contrast, cropping, sharpening and colour balance are standard practice.  You may even remove dust specks.  How about the portrait where you remove a blemish from the person’s face?  Not unusual.  You can easily zap zits, whiten teeth, wipe out wrinkles, remove fat, ditch scars, and well, just about anything.  The ability to misrepresent yourself and others in photos is a real possibility.

So where do you draw the line, so to speak?  In August this year, Grazia, a UK magazine, ran a story on the Royal Wedding.  They wanted a solo cover picture of the Duchess of Cambridge coming out of Westminster Abbey.  Trouble was the only photos they had also featured the Duke.  But of course they did.  The photo editors came up with a cunning plan. Airbrush the Duke out.  So far so good.  Maybe.  Ah, but what about the fact that they were arm in arm and the Duchess’ right arm, entwined in the Duke’s left, was still sticking out at an unnatural angle. No problem, let’s copy the left arm, flip it over and paste it on the right hand side and balance everything up. Brilliant.  Job well done.  Bonuses all round.

Not so fast said the Press Complaints Commission in response to a complaint.  A complaint?  About the British press?  How unusual.  Anyway, the PCC found that the cunning folks at Grazia had made the Duchess look not just slim round the waist but impossibly so.  This would give a false impression of her vital statistics which could easily mislead their many readers into believing that if only they went on diet X they too could aspire to meet an heir to the British Throne, fall in love and marry him in a ceremony which would be watched by millions across the world and then walk out onto the Abbey steps and look just like her.

So what, you may ask, has this to do with photography at the level of we commoners?

Well, we take pictures of people for people so that over the years they and we can look at them and think back to that time fondly.  Many people hate seeing themselves in photos, and anything we can do to make that process a little easier is worth it.  Some people are self conscious of their crow’s feet.  Others their eye bags.  Some have large scars that they would rather not print onto 11×14 paper.  They see these things as defects, but they are what makes that person unique.  So what do you do?  Do you retouch defects out completely?

A good rule of thumb is to remove any temporary blemishes such as pimples since they don’t define the person.  Then maybe soften other defects to make them less obvious.  Wrinkles stay put, but they’re softer and less noticeable.  Eye bags: softer.  Teeth a bit whiter.  Sparkle in the eye.  Above all respect and don’t try to put one over on the subject, you’ll not get away with it.

See you next year.

Geoff

Our lives are dictated by it. From getting up to going to bed, travelling, going to work, fixing appointments and watching sports events with its halves, quarters and clocks (basketball has two of them for goodness sake!) and race placings measured down to hundredths of a second, it seems we are constantly living with one eye on the clock.

So it would be nice once in a while to get your own back. Beat the system. Show them who’s boss. Become a Time Lord in fact. In photography, you can do just that by using your shutter to freeze or str…….etttt…….chhhh time.

One of the fundamental tools that a photographer has is the ability to record time. Modern cameras have the technology to record smaller and smaller time intervals. It is quite feasible that your camera could be capable of recording 1/4000^th second or less and, with a strobe light, even smaller segments of time can be recorded.

This capability allows us to freeze motion. We can also capture the progression of time by photographing a subject in quick succession using burst mode with the camera to produce a series of images showing, say, the effort of a runner crossing the finishing line. A sense of motion and passing time can be presented in many interesting ways.

By slowing down the shutter speed, any moving object can be blurred. This can be a bad thing which we might try to avoid but it also has the effect of establishing a sense of motion (and hence the stretching of time) in the photograph.
Moving the camera while shooting is also something we avoid. But moving the camera while focusing on a moving object, (panning) will also generate a sense of motion and time.

It’s also possible, if you didn’t capture it in the camera, to generate a sense of time and motion in your photos by using post processing techniques such as motion blur and multiple layering. The ultimate weapon in the battle against the clock is of course the ability of our camera to make time stand still completely and forever by recording that special time or place we want to remember. That is surely the beauty of photography.

See you around. Geoff

Nepal Tour October 2012

Contact Paul & Giora at  Nomadic Planet Ltd

P.O. Box 13 411, Armagh Street, Christchurch, New Zealand

Phone: +64 (0) 27 435 7474 (Paul Daly)

Phone: +64 (0) 21 767 883   (Giora Dan)

Web: www.nomadic-planet-images.com

E-mail: info@nomadic-planet-images..com

Looking for photography ideas?

Techniques

• Black & White landscapes (think Ansel Adams)
• Fast motion
• Macro shots
• Pinhole photography
• Fisheye
• Tiltshift
• Long exposure
• Double exposure
• Aerial photography (think balloons, kites, rockets and cheap cameras)
• Time lapse

Locations

• Music festivals
• Botanic Gardens
• Sailing regatta
• Flea market
• Aquariums
• Your own garden
• Abandoned buildings (be very very careful & respect your local trespass law)
• Museums (check before using a tripod)

Objects

• Doors (as in the opening in walls not the band)
• Storms
• Gates
• Bats at dusk
• Campfires
• Stained glass windows
• Birds
• Plants/Flowers
• Food
• The moon
• Graffiti/Urban art
• Shuttle/rocket launch
• Smoke/Fog

Themes

• Your daily routine
• Travel diary
• Your country (culture/food/places etc)
• Growth of something over time (your hair, a plant, your kid etc)

Recent forced changes to your humble correspondent’s lifestyle, (i.e. redundancy) has meant a promotion to the role of Head Chef here at Dickinson Towers.

For many years, my role in the supply chain of home food production has been as an avid consumer rather than as a producer.  Not for me the magic, alchemic world of combining water, fats, carbohydrate and proteins to provoke a Homer Simpson “Mmm….pizza” like moment from the diner.  I recall an embarrassing moment some years ago of asking my 16 year old son how to switch the oven on.  Hmmm…….  So when I was casually handed a copy of Jamie Oliver’s “Ministry of Food” with its optimistic sub-title of “Anyone Can Learn To Cook In 24 Hours” I was, shall we say, unconvinced.

Unconvinced, but undeterred, I worked my way through the book inspired by some rather wonderful photographs.  Ah ha……………….you were wondering when I would get round to photography, weren’t you?  Clear, step by step photos and the end product were enough to get me started and positive noises from my other half between mouthfuls of food gave me the confidence to move on from the basics to start experimenting with different flavours and combinations of ingredients.

And that got me thinking that cooking and photography are very similar.  You don’t necessarily need fancy tools, all you need is a working camera to cook up your image and a basic knowledge of the ingredients that make a photo.  Remember too that the Aperture/ISO/Shutter Speed triangle is like a recipe and like a recipe it is not a legal document, it is a starting point.  Throw in 500g of exposure control, 250g of fill flash, a pinch of differential focus and a good dash of your own personality and taste to cajole a tasty and satisfying image from the one pot you call your camera.

I have a couple of other books by Jamie Oliver (OK I admit it, I’m a fan) called “Jamie does Spain, Italy, Sweden, Morocco, Greece and France” and “Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals”.  They feature photography by David Loftus www.davidloftus.com/  Both books can be found in Hamilton Library and are well worth a read.  They contain not just images of dishes but travel images, portraits and action photos.  They have great colour, mood, tell stories and demonstrate some really cool composition and focus techniques.  They also give a feel for the soul and food of these countries.  If you have visited any of them you will know what I mean.  If you haven’t, you will want to.

I am not sure how many of you actually photograph food and/or cooking.  I have to say I have only taken the odd one but I’m even inspiring myself as I write this to give it a go.  So how’s about cooking up some mouth-watering food images over the summer?

Bon appétit!  Geoff (October 2011)