Sometimes it just works out
Every so often a photo needs a very lengthy explanation because it means more than what you see or the story is more interesting than the average photo. The first photo is a cap tip to an amazing photographer called Matthew Browne who has a brilliant book on London (and Wales come to think of it). I have shamelessly copied this photo but I give him full credit for the composition and inspiration.
Using Apple Maps 3D rendering I could twist the aspect to see where the buildings interact similarly to the photo I was trying to copy.
I saw the photo in the book and used a variety of 3D modelling, Google maps street view etc. to be able to work out the location. It is East India DLR station by the way. I would have tried to be a bit more original with the composition but really there are very few options. I brought a super-clamp to fix to a railing.
My wife and I just came back from London and I screwed up, I had been catching Underground Trains on the Jubilee line all trip at 5:15 and assumed all of the tube lines would run at that time. They don’t! We moved hotels and I got to Kings Cross at 5:10 only to find deserted tunnels and the trains didn’t start until 6, we were leaving that morning and I would miss the dark anyway and light trails are fundamentally flawed in the daylight! So I had to bail out, I did get some interesting photos of empty Kings Cross and a cool one of Buck House.
Anyway, a tragic turn of events occurred and I had to go and support my best pal at a funeral. In an attempt to avoid feeling like he needed to be a good host when he had plenty more on his mind than dealing with my tedious nonsense I said there was a photo I needed to take to get out of his hair.
My first mistake. I was staying in a village called Kings Langley (near Watford) which is a 30 minute train ride to Euston, I looked at the journey to the station from my hotel - a very swish Premier Inn, and no Lenny Henry didn’t tuck me in, he was too busy talking nonsense about slavery reparations - was 4 minutes. Turns out it was 4 minutes by car and I was walking - it was a 25 minute walk up a fairly steep hill!. An hour later I got to Euston and then it was half an hour to East India, I got there and it was really busy, still a bit too bright and there were a couple of guards so I pivoted! A few stops down the line was Cyprus. A stop I had toyed with for ages, it is a 15 minute walk from there to a bridge over the Thames that looks straight back at the runway of London City Airport While Matthew Browne also has a couple of photos from this point he isn’t getting the credit here - it is a quite well known spot that I have wanted to go to for a long while.
It is however a ‘goldilocks’ spot. In daylight it is boring, in nighttime it is too dark to pick out details. There was no point going too early in the morning because planes only start flying at 6AM so summer isn’t great. Weather obviously has to be right too because you need really clean skies because you are photographing about 2 miles of city and trying to compress it. Those are the factors that you need to get right before you even arrive.
Once you get there, you also have to take into account every car and bus shake the bridge so long exposures are a nightmare but you need a long exposure because you want the darkness, you are at the mercy of the airport timetable, you don’t know if things are about to take off or land and then there are weird factors you don’t think about until you are there, I had about 3 seconds between the plane hitting its marks on the runway, stopping and firing up its engines, as soon as the engines have been running for more than a couple of seconds the heat haze blurs pretty much the whole image.
To cut an extremely long and tedious story short, I got really lucky! It even turned out the BA text wasn’t blocked by the wing.
Then on the way back I jumped off the DLR at East India and ripped of Matthew Browne’s photo. Which also wasn’t without its difficulties. Very limited places to be, I had to lean over a barrier to attach my camera which was probably naughty, not many trains we running because it was night time etc. But the biggest problem is that in order to get the light trail from the train, you need it to come into the station and when it does so it makes the whole station shake because it is essentially on stilts. Anyway, again I got fairly lucky, it would be nice to have had a bit more blue in the sky but all things considered I like the image.
I am always a bit funny about my photos, I see every flaw in them and being hyper-critical is a driver of continued improvement and I imagine if I was to put these two images into a competition they would probably not score especially well. To be honest, I couldn’t give a damn, I wanted to make something nice out of an enormously shitty trip and I think I did so these are for Rich, the best bloke in the world.
To the city.
London Trip
Editor’s note - this was written while watching the Ryder Cup with some quite excellent red wine. It is not very well written and especially badly proof read. Exclamation points are over-used.
Luckily my wife had a work thing in London so it was only fair that I tagged along to save a few quid with the couple’s railcard. We had 4 full days and I walked 63.5 miles in those days - pretty good going since the St Cuthbert’s way is 62.5 miles. We absolutely wrung the neck of the place while we were there, in a city of £8 pints and £11 tiramisus you have to get value where you can!
Day 0
We arrived at the hotel at 3pm, nipped to the Apple Store to get a new battery in my iPhone - fantastic service and what a difference 26% of battery capacity makes. We then went to the Theo Randall restaurant at The Intercontinental ( after the most complicated subterranean roundabout crossing known to man. To say the food was stunning in an enormous understatement. While we only had the set menu, everything was outstanding. A mix of stunning quality ingredients and simple but perfect execution. We then nipped to the Southwark Hoxton for a sneaky photo drink from the rooftop bar.
Day 1
Alarm set for 5am was the theme for the trip. Jumped on the tube to Canada Water and a 20 minute walk to Surrey Quays. I had seen a couple of photos from this point but actually there were some nicer spots as I walked up Greenland Dock and onto the banks of the Thames. Then a walk back through Russia Dock Woodland. I then went to ‘Fujikina’ a Fujifilm event and macro photography workshop and to say it was dire would be an enormous understatement. We then went to 50 Kalo - for brilliant pizza and tiramisu, a guaranteed stop on every trip to London - one day we will get to the Michelin starred mother restaurant in Naples.
Day 2
5am again and this time getting off at Canary Wharf. This spot turned out to be a bit of a bust but I then turned round and saw the sun coming up behind the dome and had a nice peaceful long exposure session as the sun rose. That afternoon we went up Horizon 22 which is 22 Bishopsgate the 13th tallest building in Europe (most are in Russia) and the viewing platform is on the 56th floor. It is free and an amazing view but not great for photographers, for a start you have to be ready to book tickets at exactly 10am the fortnight before you go and they go in minutes, also no tripods, photographing through reflective glass and the times are only in full sunlight so not very exciting. As a spectacle, it really is impressive.
The evening was back to Canary Wharf for a fantastic cocktail at Hawksmoor and then a trip to Roe - the sister restaurant of Fallow (of YouTube fame). It was amazing, everything you want from a restaurant and the food was tremendous. I’m not one for gawping over my grub taking 25 photos etc. but the blooming onion was a spectacle and the burger was amazing. We were right next to the kitchen and watching the flashes of flame and meticulous preparation really boosted the experience.
Padella for amazing pasta lunch meant we were absolutely done for and crawled back into the hotel room!
Day 3
Sunday morning somewhat limited options for travel so I went to Westminster to try and get a photo I have tried to get 3 or 4 times and always been thwarted. There are a number of problems - it is a tourist hell hole, full of ignorant tourists barging in front to get their shot, it is a wind tunnel and often full of litter and general detritus but most concerning it is an….ummmm….tramp’s urinal and sometimes they even do more serious business there too the general comments when someone posts it among photographers is “I can spell that photo!” It always stinks there. It is a classic shot that is very difficult to get. I arrived at 5:30 and couldn’t believe my luck - no tramp urine, no no vapid instagrammers and only a couple of crisp packets I managed to kick to the side. I was going to get the shot! I set up my tripod and was just about to hit the shutter and was accosted by a group of 4 ‘youths’, three walked past and one stopped to speak to me. Being a country bumpkin and reading The Telegraph meant I was sure I was about to get robbed or stabbed or maybe both. I managed to avoid any sort of problem and got away, he was charming and I was probably very rude to a charming young man. However they decided to spark up a joint on the steps there so I couldn’t go back. They were there for an hour so I thought I would wait it out and finally got the shot. There is also a staircase going down to the Thames that is ALWAYS locked it wasn’t! So I nipped down and got a shot from as close as I dared - the steps were really slippy! Now I never have to go back there. Result!
The rest of the day was a semi tourist day, we went for a walk around Kensington, had some breakfast, moved hotel and then went to Knightsbridge car spotting. We then had a drink with Alyson’s boss and her husband - we are very lucky in that they are fantastic fun and great to be around, then to Flat Iron for a steak.
Day 4
I had been tipped off that Vauxhall was a great place for long exposures so I thought Monday would be the time to get it. Even at 5:45 there was plenty of traffic. The sky was insanely blue, it was almost surreal, originally I tried to make it more realistic but in the end I embraced it.
Back to the hotel for breakfast with Alyson’s colleagues then I went to the City to scratch a couple of itches. I love the Lloyds building and wanted to get some shots of it but it is very difficult to do the steampunk design justice and Leadenhall Market before it was heaving. By chance, I saw The Garden at 120 reflected backwards in the glass and it was 10:05 (just after opening) and I had to be back to the hotel for 11am check out so I jumped at the opportunity. If you go to one high view point in London, go there, it is beautiful and you are in and amongst the glass towers instead of towering above them. I loved it.
Back to the hotel for another hotel move! And back to hit the streets. I got a to Oxford Circus and I got a call from one of my best mates to go for lunch (and a stroll around Regent’s Park (also stunningly beautiful but I was being ‘Romantic Charles’ and not ‘Photography Bore Charles’ A Charles my wife is looking forward to meeting one day)).
I saw him back to his train and then straight back to the City and ticking off a coupe of other places. The Church of St Dunstan, Lovet Lane, and then Barbican - I ran out of time and got very lost in the concrete maze that is Barbican! It is amazing. Then a couple of cliched shots at Kings Cross.
Then a trip to Patty and Bun - we had exhausted our stomachs and wanted something light! - a burger place we got a make at home burgers during lockdown. It was very good but a bit we were great and now we have 6 or 7 restaurants and the charm has isn’t quite what it was. The burger was ironically sandwiched between a fantastic negroni and then gelato at Eatily - a Disneyland of Italian food.
That was a 17 mile day.
Day 5
5am alarm once again. The intention had been a very carefully choreographed photograph in East India and then a few directly at The Dome. This time starting at Kings Cross. The Northern line had never let me down - the tubes seemed to run from about 4am. However Kings Cross seemed to be unnervingly quiet. I got to the platform and the sign said next arrival was 30 minutes. I used this as an opportunity to get some photos of a normally heaving tube station being utterly empty, I estimate there were about 10 passengers in the whole station. The Piccadilly line was running to get people to Heathrow so I jumped on to Picadilly Circus and got a photo of Buck House without the hoards of security and tourists. Then breakfast at Lima Stores in Kings Cross and back on the train home to edit 1200 photos and a lie in of 7am!
Personal Project: Swallows in Flight.
Supper: 500mm 1/3200, F7.1 ISO 2500
A few members of the local camera club often speak of the importance of ‘personal projects’ - I have always taken it a bit too seriously thinking that you produce some sort of heart stopping anthology of work - that seemed like a bit of a pain in the neck and too much of a commitment to get involved in, the regularity of my posts on this site will prove my point here!
Anyway, I have found myself in the very fortunate position to have been able to upgrade my equipment, there will be a long winded article about that at some point. I am now a full frame Canon shooter, along with the RF100-500 F4.5-7.1. The main reason for the upgrade was low light performance and the Fuji 100-400 just couldn’t focus when light was failing.
Needless to say, I A) need to get value out of the purchase and B) need to master the equipment. The first thing I did was to go into the field and start trying to take photographs of swallows hunting flies above the crops. To say this is a test is an understatement, the tiny size of the birds coupled with the acceleration, change of direction and distance covered are all very challenging but also the fact that the change in elevation means the AF needs to jump back and forth every time the bird gets lost in the hedgerow.
The performance of the camera’s autofocus is remarkable as is 40FPS - the issues I faced were with only (!!) 24mp, the tiny size of the bird means the ability to crop is somewhat limited and at F7.1 at 500mm the lens isn’t especially fast - this meant with high ISO, the dark features of the birds detail was very difficult to get. I am relying heavily on denoising software. I think this was the perfect test of the camera and lens combination and has given me a good grounding in getting the best out of the camera. I tried this side by side with the Fuji and it just could not do it, nothing at all, maybe a fluke shot in focus but with the ISO being so high there was just no detail.
I think I must have taken 20,000-30,000 shots which at 40FPS isn’t quite as much as it sounds and there were a hell of a lot in the bin! I expect I could probably get some better shots if I was to find £20k down the back of the sofa for an R1 and 600mm F4. I had a lot of fun doing so and have learned a lot - I expect that is the purpose of a personal project. The rugby season starts next week and I am looking forward to some slightly bigger and slower moving subjects!
The majority of these photos were shot in the same region of settings, 1/2,500-1/3,200 shutter speed, at 500mm F7.1 and ISO between 2000-4000, edited in Lightroom and Topaz.
There are very few images that will win many competitions but it was an excellent lesson in pushing the limits of this technology.
Manchester 24
My wife had to go Manchester for a work conference so we took the opportunity to turn it into a “mini-break” - a phrase that I think has to be accompanied by a hashtag. Needless to say I turned it into a photo trip. with a few highlights, mainly being amazing sun rises and sets. I was also able to tick off another WEX branch - it seems that I am unofficially bagging them like Munros. Manchester is the best so far with London being the worst if you are keeping score. The Leica store in Manchester is also worth a visit, the LCE was a bit underwhelming.
The one thing that surprised me is that normally I use a mid-range zoom for photos (16-55 on a Fuji so 24-80 ish full frame) in London but Manchester seemed to be much more confined and the 10-24 (15-36) pretty well lived on my camera.
I did my usual pre-planning by looking up photo guides of the city and somewhat struggled to find many spots. I think I broke my record for time between checking into a hotel and running out with my camera, about 4 minutes! The first place I found was the area around Lock 92 and absolutely fell in love with it. The still conditions allowed for glass like reflections (once some of the rubbish was cloned out of the images). It was about a 15 minute walk from the hotel and I got so immersed in the locks, graffiti etc. that I didn’t even realise there was an amazing sunset up higher.
The next morning was a bit tight as I had to get back for breakfast with my wife’s colleagues. I scurried out in the dark, back to the same area trying to be as efficient as possible and really I ended up rushing (literally - turns out the little bridges over the canals are not especially high friction and a skinned knee and almost broken camera are testament to that!) The light kept getting better and better, I headed up to Deansgate Tram Station and the surrounding area and got some nice shots.
I had the day to myself and couldn’t find a single thing to take photographs of. Manchester is a sea of construction and about 15 Christmas markets, all the spots I had found had fundamental issues with so my shutter count didn’t progress at all.
Guess where I went for sunset - yup, same place! To be fair, it was next to the conference centre and one of the few areas of that part of the city with a good vantage point. I turned into a tram spotter and was really pleased with the detail the Fuji was pulling out in the buildings.
The next morning was a disaster, I wanted to go to Media City, it seems that my distain for the BBC doesn’t extend to the amazing locations of their studios, Glasgow is amazing too. I intended to get there in plenty of time for blue hour but a mix of Google, my ineptitude and the Manchester bus network all ended up screwing me. I ended up 2 miles away waiting for busses that never came and ended up walking watching the light get better and better then worse and worse! I arrived to a flat horrible morning and the photos were a waste of shutter clicks. I returned the next morning (via the trusty tram) in plenty of time to discover visibility was about 15 metres! Needless to say it cleared and I was treated to some really special light.
I call this one fog of lies!
London October 24
Probably my favourite photo of the trip. The runner stopping for a photo made it. It was 15mm 20s F16 to get the light stars. 125 ISO. Unfortunately I lost a bit of the image because of distortion so I had to crop it.
Again the point of these articles is more for my benefit than yours! There is going to be some rambling and then an explanation of the shots in order for me to be able to critically look at my photographs, I might even find an actionable point somewhere.
A work event for Alyson led us to our second trip to the capital of the year. The previous trip was the first opportunity to test out the new hip and I think I walked about 60 miles in those few days. But was faced with some of the worst photography luck you could imagine - inexplicable closures to train strikes ruining long exposure photos etc. The general policy is I get up at sparrow fart and make my way to the desired location in plenty of time for blue hour to allow for something absurd to go wrong - normally navigation issues on the tube! I then proceed to spam my camera’s shutter for an hour or so, accept the results have let this beautiful city down then go and meet Alyson for breakfast. We then fill the day with generally camera free adventure and I might do a bit of shooting at sunset but won’t let it get in the way of us stuffing our faces - the principle reason for any trip to London.
Day one Millennium Bridge
The rooftop bar. I Don't particularly like this one, it was a bit of a restricted option. Quite a cool viewpoint though. 15mm 1/60 ISO400
We were staying almost next to St Paul’s Cathedral the night before and went for a drink with Alyson’s boss and husband in the roof top bar. Funnily enough I had seen this spot in an Optical Wander video a few months earlier.
Not much in the sky, the mist makes Tower Bridge look a bit out of focus. I like the symmetry. 210mm f8 for sharpness (meh) 6/1s 125 ISO
Alyson was quite restricted for breakfast time so I kept close for the morning shots. Pretty uninspiring light just led me to the Millennium Bridge. I had a rare day on my own which I used to look at camera shops as the weather was too miserable to get soaked. I managed to get to my first Arsenal home game for 13 years - yes, the Emirates is still uninspiring.
Day two Primrose Hill
Towards the city. 81mm F16 20s 125 ISO I wanted the lights in the foreground which meant I had to slap the horizon right in the middle of the frame.
I have seen a lot of photos from up there and given we were staying at Old Street I thought it was worth a punt. I got up at 5:45 feeling knackered after the football, looked out of our room window (the elegant luxury of a Premier Inn), saw how crap the weather looked and got back into bed. Honestly the thing that got me up again and into the shower was more because I wanted to burn some calories to allow for forthcoming gluttony. In every situation like this, I am glad I did get up.
This light lasted literally about 15 seconds. 210mm f16 1/8s ISO125.
The light was uninspiring but suddenly changed as the heavy showers cleared and produced some nice pockets of light. One of the resident nutters informed me of the pitfalls of listening to mainstream media weather forecasts before she disappeared with the rain. Primrose Hill is really nice if a bit one dimensional.
A Dishoom bacon naan and pulled pork roll wrap proceeded a trip to the F1 exhibition - a few OK shots but almost impossible to get nice images there with possibly the highest concentration of ignorant pricks in the western world.
Some helmets
Max Verstappen's World Championship winning RB16
I then made a horrendous decision. Westminster Bridge at sunset. It was heaving. Photo deleted!
Day Three and Four - London Bridge
I have always wanted to get some shorts of this stairway and the way that and the bridge wrap around The Shard. I then walked down towards Tower Bridge but didn’t want to get too close after getting hassled by security guards last time demanding I show my permit! I got a couple of quick uninspiring long exposures. We decided to be tourists and go to Battersea Power Station (Borough Kitchen is a brilliant shop and worth the visit alone) to jump on an Uber Boat to Canary Wharf- something we always wanted to do. I discovered that the triangular statue (another place I have wanted to photograph from was literally 25 yards from where I was standing a few hours earlier so the next morning I headed back via St Katherine’s Dock to grab a better photo of the statue and Tower Bridge.
It wasn’t a vintage trip to London with the camera but it was still great fun. It possibly encouraged me to say with Fuji - so that should save a few quid!
File Management, Sharpening, Backing up and Keywording
A photo from the Johnnie Walker Experience - I thought it would be awful but actually really very nice.
Introduction to the blog
Following on from a presentation regarding keywording, file management, sharpening and resizing at camera club I have a few thoughts. I have realised that I have not been engaging enough with the topics of the camera club so I have decided to start writing blog posts about them to engage my brain and try and focus my exceptionally short attention span! I also intend to have some actionable points in order to try and continue thinking about photography in the quest to improve.
The point in these posts is not to say I know better, it is to say I do it my way and to think about the two methods and engage some critical thinking. Writing and publishing it is more an accountability exercise than anything else but I think given there are very few notes given to members after a talk, it might be useful to see my nonsense. If people have an issue with what I say, or see something I have got the wrong end of the stick with please contact me. Someone has given up their free time to do a presentation, the least we can do is process the information instead of gazing vacantly into space! I have been guilty of that in the past.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated by my level of improvement so trying to kick myself up the backside and push myself.
Sharpening
Sharpening is an area I have often struggled with especially with wildlife photography and over sharpening in Lightroom creating a halo effect. Because I use Fujifilm cameras, the process is slightly different and I really must dedicate more time to learning. I use Topaz as an extra sharpening and de-noising tool but find it either has excellent or terrible results. I seem to struggle to see the intricate differences of sharpening an image so am too heavy handed. The problem was that with the slides shown by the speaker, I doubt the projector was able to really do them justice.
File management
The presenter suggested a format of storing images in a series of folders. I don’t particularly like this idea as it becomes very clumsy for finding images. I use Apple Photos (which is also available on Windows but not on Android) to catalogue and index my images - it provides a very quick system for finding images, it also means I have a 100% quality JPEG of every image worthy of keeping on my phone (when I have mobile reception or Wi-Fi at all times) which is very helpful for reference or showing off! I have never used keywording because although I see the merit, I have always thought life is too short. I have recently noticed that Apple is using AI to start categorising images which is very handy - for example you can search ‘bridge’ and it will find them all.
An example of the album naming system - it might also be in chronological order. It also shows the 3 years of photos I lost.
Backing up
I have a very painful relationship with this subject after being meticulously backed up, my external HD died and in the process of copying my spare HD to a replacement one, we were hit with a power cut that seemed to wipe both drives leaving me with a lot of photographs lost - I suspect I have a lot of them buried elsewhere but the thought and pain of the tedium of finding them is crippling my desire to do so! This new system will have all images stored on my External SSD, a backup HD and on iCloud.
File Management System
I have spent a lot of time trying to create a plan for a file storage system that incorporates a good backing up system and also hopefully manual keywording will become a thing of the past.
Given the sporadic nature of my photography, I do a lot of rugby games and what I consider “event” photography so I tend to use an event as a reference - for example If we went to Edinburgh like we did the other week, I would treat that as an event and the photographs would be stored in a folder named 20240930 Edinburgh. That means that in the events folder everything is stored chronologically and makes it easy to read.
While there are only so many events but I often take photographs of birds in the garden for example or a Milky Way shot, these don’t count as an ‘event’ so I have a catch all for everything else which I call ‘Monthly Misc. The plan is I pile all of my RAW images into a folder during the month and then edit them at the end. It is very easy to scroll through all the different monthly misc images in Apple Photos so quite easy to find images. The issue is my laziness mixed with excitement. If I take a photo that I must edit there and then, the workflow gets a bit clumsy, especially when I don’t edit the 1500 bird photos that month! It might well be worth my while manually keywording these images as there could be a photo of pasta next to a goldfinch next to a moon!
I have been developing a file management workflow which is far from perfect but a combination of a bit of thought and a bit of discipline, I am hoping that I might be close to a final system. This is based on previous experience, shortcomings and regrets. Memory space is cheap these days - there is not really much excuse for regrets.
Objective
To have all images saved as -
- Original RAW file - this can be revisited for re-editing in the future when software advances are made or as a redundancy if image files change or just to give me an opportunity to re-edit images from scratch at a later date when my skills improve.
- Edited TIFF or DNG - I have yet to work out the benefits of which of these will be better. This can be revisited if an image is to be adjusted for competition or printing purposes.
- Full sized JPEG - Mainly as a file to be loaded into Apple Photos for indexing but also as a quick way to share and have an emergency backup if all else fails.
The purpose is to have relatively quick access to images on both my desktop and laptop. Ideally on my iPad for editing with a pencil. Also having all three sets of images backed up on 2 separate hard drives and on the cloud. It also gives me the ability to go back to the edited version of a photo if I wanted to print or submit it for a competition.
Process
Import images to Photo Mechanic.
Cull images.
Copy selects to RAW folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD RAW EVENT].
Copy RAW FILE to backup drive and cloud.
Open selects in LR and edit.
Export as TIFF/DNG to Edited folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD EDIT EVENT].[image name:YYYYMMDD RAW EVENT].
Copy EDIT Folder to backup drive and cloud.
Export as 100% JPEG folder [Folder name: YYYYMMDD JPEG EVENT].[image name:YYYYMMDD JPEG EVENT 000].
Copy JPEG Folder to backup drive and cloud.
Copy JPEG images to Apple Photos.
Create an event album.
Keyword images (?!)
Format memory card in camera.
Actionable points
Further expand my knowledge on sharpening. This is an area of weakness in my photography. A previously edited image has been panned for over sharpening on a photo critique site.
Consider the benefit of keywording and finding an efficient way of doing it.
To get past 1 blog post!
To be more disciplined in my file management system and not take lazy shortcuts.
Critique Night
It all begins with an idea.
I suspect this is going to be a very rambling stream of consciousness even by my rambling standards. Just to clarify the purpose of these blog posts - these are for my benefit, they are only being published to promote discussion and as an accountability exercise.
The camera club members seems to have an obsession with the merits and pitfalls of competition photography. Judging by the general lack of number of images submitted to the competitions, it would seem that the general consensus is that members are not that bothered. In stark contrast, members seem to be very happy to put images in for critique nights. My question is what is the difference other than assigning a ranking/scoring system?
When I joined the camera club I was utterly incompetent. I was roughly capable of taking a photo but only just. I remember the first few theme competitions came and went with me saying I wasn’t good enough to enter and was given some words of encouragement. I submitted some exceptionally dicey images - they were obviously not good enough to be in the top three but encouraging words from judges about how to improve things and my confidence grew. Generally speaking the judges are not monsters - they are not there to be horrible about photos, they are judging because they like photography and want to help people improve - OK, a few are there to stroke their own ego!
Everything is a case of you get out of something what you put in. While I am fiercely competitive when it comes to most sports, I don’t think I really am with photography. I enter photographs into competitions mainly boost the numbers but also to get critique, critique is everything.
If there is one thing to take away from this drivel it is this - People pay to have photographs critiqued, if you are having a free opportunity to have images critiqued take it with both hands!
Even if someone is talking absolute nonsense and saying something you totally disagree with, at least it is engaging your brain about it. Why are they coming to a conclusion that is so different to yours?
Accepting criticism
If someone is (constructively) derogatory about your photo how do you react? There are a few things like it is too noisy when your camera is at its absolute limit in dark conditions or it would be better if you were 3 steps to the left which would have had you plummet to your death down a cliff etc. it can be difficult to stand by and listen to people say things like that when the defence is so obvious. However, if there is a fundamental compositional issue like that, I think you have to be clever to avoid it being a fundamental flaw to the image. The two options you have are to A) blow the photo out of the water making it so good that the viewer can’t help but love it with its flaws or B) don’t submit it. If you accidentally made a cake and iced it with salt instead of sugar, I doubt you would put it into a competition. Don’t give judges easy flaws to find.
A passable image but it always feels compositionally off, A few feet to the right would make it much better but I would be in a very watery grave!
There are other things that make you go aaaaaah, yes! That would have made it so much better. I remember a photo being critiqued that had a barrier in the way and the judge suggested moving the height of the camera to turn the barrier from an eyesore to a leading line. The photographer went back and took the better photo and it looked great. Now when I go to take a photograph and there is an obstacle I look to see if I can use it.
Again this comes back to the same thing, make the best of the situation. Learn from what people think. Reflect inwardly, photography is hard, sometimes you have to accept that the answer is to get good. I doubt the reason people take better photos than I do is dumb luck, I suspect it is because they work harder, have learned more and made many mistakes to learn from.
Don’t Make Assumptions?
When the speaker mentioned this, I was slightly surprised. I always sort of thought that you shouldn’t have to make assumptions. The photographer shouldn’t need you to be making them. The way things like depth of field and various composition rules should mean the photographer is able to dictate to you what you should be looking at. We looked at an image that people seemed to criticise the amount of sky shown but also the proximity of a rock to the bottom of the screen. It seemed very obvious that the two factors were constraining the photographer so have to use this particular composition.
I also think it is vital to ask what was the photographer’s purpose of taking the shot - a story to tell, surely if they have told the story properly you shouldn’t have to assume.
I don’t know if it is better to know what sort of equipment is being used or not. On the one hand if someone is using very entry level gear that is obviously constrain the quality of the image you can afford them certain concessions. Whereas if the same photograph was taken with a top of the range camera and lens the photographer has no excuse to not nail all the technical factors.
Being Positive
I think it is easy to be a snob, or jealous of other people’s photographs and turning a ‘critique’ into a shit slinging contest. I have seen weak photographers hammer images that they could only dream of taking and I think this gives ‘competitions’ a bad name, in fact giving photography a bad name. Again, this comes back to the fact that you get out of something what you put in. These armchair experts are always found out so don’t worry about it.
One of the quotes from the club website is “if you can’t find two positives to talk about in your critique, you aren’t looking hard enough”. I think that is an important thing to accept. That said, I think it is important to look at photographs with positivity first.
There are thousands of groups on the internet where photographs are shared. People normally just leave a like or heart or something like that. I have started to find something I like about the photo and make a comment. It is a rare win-win, the photographer gets a bit of positive feedback and I have looked at something critically.
Actionable points
To find 10 photos a day to comment positively on.
Critique my own images like a bastard.