martiuk

Welcoming Winter and Redeeming My Objection To Bleak Seasonal Light
– Great Britain, 4th October, 2012 -



As the summer here in Great Britain is closing, the evenings are beginning to be a bit chilly and darkness is touching us by 18:00, I look forward to later this month when the clocks alter to welcome winter.

Throughout spring and summer the rain seemed never to be far away. Photographically the climate appeared negative; to dampen all thoughts of dry days and sunny vistas and yet even rain never entirely stopped me getting about with camera, enthusiasm and a positive outlook. I remember a photoshoot on a wet cricket pitch outfield in August. A local club had permitted me to photograph a senior member for a charity portrait project (which is still an ongoing fun enterprise). Drizzle fell incessantly and I actually got some fine photographs. The sitter, not put off with the English rain, seemed to enjoy the moment. His dripping brim of his panama hat added to the sense of Britishness - defying the inclement weather, proving that an easy-going and relaxed attitude can overcome nature's troublesome disposition; the surrounding light possessed a magnificent saturation of luminosity, a photographer's dream.

Winter will most probably be dry, dull and extremely long. Spring when it comes will not change the weather's indulgence for gloom. Yet I will attempt through the short days and long nights to improve as well as increase my outside photography, something that I've been thinking about for years, but never accomplished. And what will be my objective? To photograph the magnificent seasonal light.

A CHANGING WORLD

Today has been fantastic. At this early stage of the year, past festivities well behind us the need to switch into normal mind games commences. Freelance photography is a balance of thoughts, mine and everybody elses. It's today I reaffirm that all art is subjective. That it is quite possible that no other living soul will appreciate or admire my attempts to photograph subjects, and to create original artwork for the entire year will be for my own benefit. So be it. When all's said and done does it make any difference? Well of course it doesn't, and no worrying or moithering about it will do any good. Facing facts is what a lot people cannot accomplish easily, but I'm quite philosophical about it - a thinker, a doer, a finisher, and a contented irreverent photographer.

Martha Sandweiss, photography curator at the Amon Carter Museum in Ft. Worth, Texas, is quoted as saying, "The capacity of photographs to evoke rather than tell, to suggest rather than explain, makes them alluring material for the historian or anthropologist or art historian who would pluck a single picture from a large collection and use it to narrate his or her own stories. But such stories may or may not have anything to do with the original narrative context of the photograph, the intent of its creator, or the ways in which it was used by its original audience". Whether this is important is not a question on which I should start a debate, but it goes without saying that Sandweiss was on to something.

We all estimate and judge all images we spy. Why we do that is not clear although anthropical gurus would, I suspect have the answers. We're inundated with images today. Why they remain so important is the real debate. Perhaps it's the failure of language or the simple fact that people do not equip themselves with a wide vocabulary today. Or do they? One has only to recognise the insistence and use for text shortcutting to wonder quite where language is going. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, I guess that's true, yet folk have to want to look in the first place. A kind American lady once emailed me to tell me that my thumbnail images were the most dynamic she had ever seen. She was never able to pass any without opening them up to larger pictures. May be that's the truth for all images? Scanning stamp-like thumbnail images is a skill. From picture editors to individuals glancing through a magazine, all view colour, shape and form in differing ways. One needs to be attracted by the 'stamp' and by opening the photograph engage with it or not. I think it may be useful to aquire the skill of producing petite photographs that tempt further examination - a value-added process probably still undervalued and ripe to exploit. A programme of tuition, classes addressing this very paradox. Remember you read it first here.

For me picture-making is a way of communication; a glimpse of imagination and inspiration formed to deliver a spectacle with an underlying interpretation of what was exactly in my mind when shutter closed and a digital sensor captured the data. For spectators to decipher my intent is impossible unless I record my thoughts and actual details. With a lot of my work just acting as a voyeur is enough, but a new kind of theatrical Bohemianism emerging in my current photography that voyeurism isn't helpful. Avant-garde induces creativity freedom and I'm sure new and old spectators will discover the necessity to express their opinions with something like, 'gd innit 4a olden'. Hold that thought. It may well be, 'crp innit'.

P.S. The transformation of writing to a new virtual shorthand - text; sound bites to communicate rapidly, but I don't understand why, when a phone call is more efficient and productive, can promote ever-improving smart phones. Yet simpler digital DSLR cameras are not happening. New models sustain a level of complication equal only to the flight deck of the space shuttle. The news that a revolutionary new camera the Lytro light field camera is now available will become the best seller in 2012. Keep your eyes peeled for it, and subsequent model improvements month-on-month.

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl8YJk…