So here’s something I don’t do often. A gear review. I have a reason for talking about this particular thing, though, so bear with me. Also, it’s not really a review, either. Have a read, anyway, there might be something in it for you.

I recently got hold of one of Eye-Fi’s rather nifty little wifi sd cards. It has a number of cool features, but it all rests on this; it’s an SD memory card, with a little computer and a wifi chip on it. This means that it can beam your photographs through the ether to a compliant computer. That’s it, really, but they’ve gone and implemented it in a pretty configurable way, and it has made my life a lot easier. Well, maybe easier is the wrong word, but it has certainly solved one particular bad habit of mine.

Let me start with telling you two things: my workflow, and my bad habit. For those who aren’t familiar with the term in terms of photography, your workflow is what happens from the moment after the shutter has snicked shut to the consumption of your finished photograph by someone’s eyeballs. Once you get to a certain number of photographs (more than ten, I would hazard), this gets pretty important, if you ever want to find the damned things again.

So, my workflow goes something like this:
Take photograph
At some indeterminate point, remove sd card, and plug into an adapter.
Plug adapter into computer, and import into Adobe Lightroom. I have this set up to import into a year/month/day folder structure. This isn’t strictly necessary, but its as good as anything else.
Keyword the photographs. Commonly this is the names of the people in them, but also genre (portrait, landscape, street photography etc.), location, and, if it’s scanned, film type, camera and so on. This bit is important, so I try to keep on top of it.
Sometimes I rate them with a “pick” flag, or stars if I think they’re real keepers.

And here’s my bad habit: For the vast majority of my photographs, that’s it. Most never see the light of day in physical form and, if I’m honest, most don’t even get past me. Despite the fact that I post some stuff up here, I’m not a big shower (one who shows, not simulated mini-rainstorm). My wife sees most of the ones of my children, but gets pretty frustrated that I don’t do much else with them.

So, what to do? Enter the Eye-Fi. One of the clever things that it can do (please see the caveat below) is that it can send the RAW file to one location on your hard drive, and the accompanying JPEG (I now shoot with RAW+JPEG in the camera settings). This, I’ve found, is very useful indeed, simply because of this:

My photos now magically appear on my iPhone.

Let me say that again, because, as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of those things like SatNav that is run by wizards, not advanced technology.

My photos now magically appear on my iPhone.

Here’s how it works, as evidenced by my new workflow:

Take photograph.
At some point, when I get home, my computer and camera will be on at the same time.
RAW files transfer automatically to one folder, JPEGs go into iPhoto.
iPhoto uploads JPEGs to iCloud.
iCloud loads JPEGs to iPhone and iPad.
Raw files go into previous workflow.
I share photographs with people by emailing them to them.

Now, you will notice two things. Firstly, I don’t have to do anything at all to ingest the photographs, other than turn on my laptop. That means that I actually get them of the card toot sweet. Secondly, thanks to the magic of Apple, I actually get photographs that I’ve taken to people who might want them. Utter, utter genius.

Of course, there are many different ways to use the card, from complex uploads over public wifi to simply reproducing the work of a USB cable. I like the fact that it a) works, is b) simple to configure and is c) powerful in its flexibility. I won’t go over the myriad other features because, well, I don’t use them, so I can’t speak for them. The cards aren’t cheap (again, see my caveat below), but for me it’s been a very useful tool.

Caveat: Eye-Fi rinse you for features. I had to go for the most expensive version, because I wanted to use RAW files. It’s quite a lot more expensive, to be honest, and you are essentially paying for the same hardware, with a software switch turned on, as far as I can tell: the cheaper versions only transfer JPEGs. The company is, of course, more than entitled to price their product howsoever they choose, but this is definitely one of those times where I feel a bit put upon by a pricing decision. Nevertheless, it was worth the money for me, so I shan’t wail on about it.

The only thing I haven’t been able to get to work (and by this, I mean “I turned on the checkbox, and it doesn’t work.” I haven’t attempted any actual fixing) is the geolocation feature, which uses local wifi networks to tag your photographs with their location. It’s not a big feature for me, but I’d have liked it as a bonus, I suppose.

In short, I like the card, and my wife likes it. I’m not sure that this strictly counts as a review, but it might, at least, give you an idea about how getting one might be useful to you. And that’s probably more helpful.

So. My mum wanted a set of five photographs for her wall, one of each of her grandchildren. I know that she has just become aware of this blog, so let me say now that it’s barely believable that a lady of her youth and beauty should have one grandchild, let alone five.

It was an interesting exercise. I knew which ones I would choose for my own kids, because I’d recently taken two sharp, well lit and utterly charming portraits. However, looking at recent photographs of the other three, I found that, horror of horrors, they weren’t sharp! Focus was off on each of them, a little short at the primary focus points of the eyes. What was I to do? Run! Run for the hills!

In the end, I picked the most charming portraits that I could find, technical accuracy be damned. I’m looking at them right now, and, to be perfectly frank, not only can you not see the technical inaccuracies in the prints, actually, even if you could, it wouldn’t matter one jot. They look, frankly, great.

All of which made me think of a book of photographs that I recently bought, a book of portraits of philosophers called, appropriately enough, Philosophers, by Steve Pyke. It’s a series of really wonderful images which, after a little delving, I discovered have all been made on a TLR with a close-up lens. Many of them are either out of focus or with considerable motion blur. TLRs are very difficult to frame and focus at close distances; Pryke, in all respects a very skilful and technically accomplished photographer, simply doesn’t care. And, you know what? He’s right not to. The portraits, as far as I can see mostly taken by window light, are absolutely stunning. Sometimes sharp, sometimes not, but always powerful, and evidence of a real connection between photographer and subject. The impact of the the photographs completely transcend their technical aspects.

I must confess to being slightly disingenuous; it’s not that he has technical limitations, its just that he just chooses the technical aspects that he cares about. His treatment of light and shadow is meticulous; his attention to pose and expression equally so. He knows about lighting ratios, as evidenced by the fact that most backgrounds fade to an elegant black, and so on. I would imagine that he has picked up his camera so many times that he has stopped having to even think about these things, any more than a sportsman has to think about throwing a ball or swinging a racket. Nevertheless, a timely reminder that photography is not, actually, all about technical perfection, or owning cameras without any limitations. At its best, it’s about conveying something to your viewer, and the obsession with perfection is just, well, cobblers.

I’d say that I’m a black and white photographer. Not exclusively, of course; more than half of my commercial work is in colour, and a certain proportion of my personal stuff. However, I do prefer monochrome. If I pick up a film camera nowadays, it’ll have black and white film in it (something rated at ISO 400 from Ilford or Kodak, if you’re interested) despite the fact that it will be scanned, and so I could always convert later. The question, of course, is why?

I’m forced to admit that a certain proportion of the reason is laziness. If you want proof, find yourself a colour snapshot that you took a a party. Got it? Now turn it into black and white and up the contrast a bit. Look how much more accomplished it looks! Well done, now you’re a real photographer!

I’m being facetious, obviously, but not completely so. I’ve talked a bit about the grammar of photography, and one of the things that, over the last hundred years or so, that we’ve grown accustomed to is that monochrome equals serious. So, an easy way of saying, “I’ve got a point” is to talk in black and white. It’s the language of Capa and McCullen and Kertez – they’re fluent, and most of us are sputtering beginners, but at least the intention is recognisable.

There are excellent aesthetic reasons above and beyond this, however, so if you do feel moved by, or feel moved to take monochromatic images, don’t despair. It’s not just pretension. In a future post, I’ll give you my thoughts on why.

I think, perhaps, an explanation is in order.

I was talking about my project with a friend, and showing her the camera that I was going to use. Other than a very generous enthusiasm (she’s a very generous person), her first question was, “and why film?” A good question, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Essentially all of my photography is taken on digital. As soon as I could afford one, I bought a Nikon D100 (frustrating camera, incidentally, especially in retrospect) and I used it all the time. I bought a Nikon F100 at the same time, in every way a better camera, and put around six rolls through it. Ever. The convenience of digital trumps film pretty much every time and, for the last few years, the quality has as well, let’s be honest. So, why embark on a project that is going to cost me about a pound every time I pull the trigger?

Well, I figured that the reason that I really like digital, other than the crazy high, undreamt-of sensitivities of the sensor, is the ease of processing. It’s getting it on to a screen and tweaked within minutes that attracts me, not the fact that I can see the result in the back of the camera.

If I were to name my favourite cameras that I have owned, in terms of usability, style and just plain enjoyment, it would probably go something like this:

Nikon FE.
The first camera that I started doing decent photography on. Introduced to the world in 1978, the year I was born, it’s the first camera I ever fell in love with, and the camera that convinced me that I could probably do this professionally. I recently got it out again for a very specific project, which I’ll tell you about as soon as a can (the project is a gift) and it worked as well as the day I bought it. Better, actually, because I know how to use it now.

Yashica D
I have never had a camera with such a successful hit-rate. Out of twelve shots (It’s a medium format TLR), I’d routinely get nine keepers. Documented my honeymoon beautifully, as you can see from the shot of New York’s Guggenheim, above. You have to bring your own lightmeter, though.

Canon Canonet QL17

First produced in 1972. Small, unobtrusive, quiet, and fun. Also sharp, built well, and gets out of the way when you want to take photographs.

Nikon D700

Bought when it came out in. The most technically advanced camera I’ve ever owned, it does everything one could ask it to do. Hugely. And imposingly. And it makes everyone, everyone, make the “what a massive lens” joke. Which can be distracting.

You will have noticed that the first three on my list are film cameras. The Nikon has, in total, five parameters that you can control – and I’m including choosing the film that you put in the back. Shutter speed, Aperture, an exposure lock lever, and a button for taking a photo. The Yashica doesn’t even have a meter. Dear god, do you have to think for yourself with that camera.

I am certain that using a dinosaur reflects my tendency towards pretension. “Why, yes, you can produce beautiful, life enhancing art when the camera does it all for you, Mr Flickr guy. But can you do it with this?” I hope that it’s more than that, though; more than jut proving tht I can do it without the crutch of modern technology. My reasons are, in no particular order:

There’s no preview. I can’t refine what I’m doing as I go, so no spending hours zeroing in on what I think I want. I’ll have to trust myself, and my subject will have to as well.

It’s a serious camera. It’s big, and important looking. I want my subjects to feel that they are part of something with a little more gravity; cameras are ubiquitous nowadays, but dirty great Bronicas aren’t. It’s a special project, and I want it to feel that way.

A waist level finder. With (most) medium format cameras, one doesn’t hide behind a viewfinder, with a camera blocking one’s face (it’s worse for me – I’m left eyed, so all you see is camera if I’m taking your photo.). Instead, one looks down at a finder at waist level. If you want to talk to your subject, you just look up. There’s a connection there which is impossible to replicate any other way.

Twelve frames. I want a focus. I may run to two rolls if I need it, but I’m hoping to stick to one. That means I have to gain a rapport and, for want of a better word, exploit it, in just twelve frames. I’m hoping, frankly, that it’ll make me a better photographer not to have the luxury of limitless shots.

Depth of field. I’ve never found a way to make focus fall away in such a sublime way as a large piece of film. And I’ve really tried very hard. There’s just something about medium format which is extraordinarily pleasing in this regard.

Square format. I like it. If it’s good enough for David Bailey…

There are other reasons, like never having been able to replicate the tonality of black and white film to my satisfaction, and so on. But when it comes down to it, I want to restrict my choices and get on with the task that I’ve chosen. I think the phrase is “the tyranny of choice,” that stage where (as with digital) you have so much choice that you can’t settle on anything. I have, essentially, removed all of that choice by my decisions.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

So, my apologies, to, well, everyone I know. I’m afraid that I’ve decided on a project. Or rather, a Project. Quite a long one, in fact, and of decidedly indeterminate length.

To backtrack: someone asked me at the weekend why, other than having a little more time on my hands, I had decided to start the blog up again. The answer is that I am going through one of my periodic rekindlings, a resurgence of love for the form. I’m buying photo books again, I’m looking at photographs by others, and I’m taking more photos. Just not the photos that I thought I’d be taking.

Photography is a funny old thing. It’s hard to pin down why you like a particular subject, or genre, and, as it can be such a technical exercise, often difficult to tell the difference between photographs that you admire and those that you like. And I have, slowly, come to the conclusion that I’m actually a portrait photographer. Of sorts.

Certain photographs move me. My wife, as ever, managed to work out what kind years ago: we would go in holiday, and she would always complain that my photographs didn’t show any people. They were always of things, buildings, landscapes. I, of course, used to pooh-pooh these complaints, confident in the knowledge that I was A Photographer, and she probably just didn’t understand the aesthetic brilliance of my work.

She was, of course, completely right.

All of the photographs that I like, or nearly all, are of people. I buy books of formal portraits and look at the photographs to relax. I don’t even read them for the lighting information or technical mastery – I’m looking for the connection, between subject and observer, or sitter and photographer, or even just the photographer’s vision. And, as such, it strikes me that I should probably be shooting that, if it’s what strikes a connection with me.

So, enough of the two veg, and on to the meat of the matter. My project is to take portraits of people who come to my house. It’s a simple as that. I’m going to do it on 6×6 black and white film, square format, with a Bronica SQa. I’m going to take a maximum of one roll per sitting per person, which means twelve shots, and hopefully around half an hour with a willing subject. I also want it to be a collaboration, where we work together to get a portrait that we both like.

What I’m not going to do is take lots of photographs in the hope of something useable showing up. I’m not going to be able to preview what I’m doing, other than using a digital camera as a “digital Polaroid” to get lighting. I’m also not going to try and get concept photographs like the one above (which I took on what is now an ageing Nikon D200 when I was testing lighting set ups). I don’t want photographs that will look cool on a Flickr stream. I want to hang them on a wall, and enjoy them.

Hopefully, everyone will enjoy both the process and the result, and I’ll get better at something that I love. So, again my apologies if you know me. But at least you’ll get a nice photograph out of it.

Incidentally, everyone that I’ve mentioned it to seems to like the idea.

Apart from my wife.

I wrote a post some time ago about off-camera lighting, with the promise that I would “let you know if anything interesting develops.” Well, I’d hardly say that anything actually interesting has come about but, given my last post, I thought that this might be a good time to take a look at the topic. I’m certainly far more comfortable with the whole subject than I was two years ago.

First things first. I’m talking here about flash photography. All photography is, of course, about off-camera lighting – most of the time an unimaginably large, nuclear fireball about 8 light minutes away (note – photographers spend a lot of time attempting to replicate the Sun. Especially somewhere like England, where it’s something of an endangered species.) There is something quite magical about off-camera flash. You can entirely change everything about your subject with a brief burst of light that is, to all intents and purposes, invisible to you, but all that your camera sees. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this.

If you know your stuff as a photographer, you know that (apart from ISO, or “film speed”) you have two options for controlling your exposure. Aperture (the size of the hole in your lens that light can get through) and Shutter Speed (how long you let the light in for). So far, so good. If you’ve bought an SLR and ever taken it off Program mode, you are almost certainly following me. However, adding flash messes with that steady relationship in rather counter-intuitive ways.

And here’s why: flash is quick. I mean, super-quick. Much faster than your fastest shutter speed. Thousands-of-a-second fast. So, if you use flash, it doesn’t care about your shutter speed (although, don’t, in general, try it above 1/250 of a second. Don’t ask why; just don’t.)

So, what does this mean? It means that, in full daylight, you can cut out all the light apart from the light that your flash is giving out, which is exactly what Zack Arias has done in the link above. He will have done something like put his shutter speed at 1/250, and his aperture nice and small, around f16. Try that now – point your camera at a shady wall with the following settings: ISO 100, 1/250, f16. You’ll get black, or something close to it. Now imagine that you had a light source that just didn’t care about your shutter speed, and could paint in light wherever it wanted? See how that could work? You would have complete control over what was lit, and what wasn’t, and the quality of the light, and how hard or soft it was, and so on and so on.

That’s why Anton Corbijn gets paid £40,000 for a photoshoot*, and you (or I) don’t.

So, to come back to my last post. You’ll note that there is, essentially, no dark shadow anywhere, nor is there an evidence of motion blur from my caffeine-addled hands. Both of these things are deliberate (although the expression is purely fortuitous. I’ve no idea how I produced something that cute). Let me run through my thinking:

1) The light from a bare bulb above one’s head is, most of the time, not a pleasant light source for photography. It’s too small, and too feeble, therefore unnatural and prone to camera shake.

2) By shooting at a small aperture, fast shutter speed and low ISO (probably f5.6, 1/200s and ISO 200, I’d guess), I essentially took a photograph which would come out black.

3) I added the light I wanted by firing off a flash. Remember, flash doesn’t care about shutter speed, as it goes faster than any shutter you’ve got, so I just need to pump enough light at that f5.6/ISO 200 to register an image.

4) I fired it off-camera. Flash from on top of a camera, fired indiscriminately, looks like – well you know. You’ve done it any number of times at parties. That pasty zombie look.

5) I decided that I wanted light that came from everywhere, eliminating deep shadow. So, I used the white room around me. I fired the flash at the ceiling; this effectively gave me a huge, soft light source (as opposed to the tiny, hard light source that comes from aiming a flash directly at a subject). The light also bounced around the white walls, filling in from the sides as well. In the photo above, shot ten minutes later, I used the shower curtain as a massive diffuser, but the principle is the same.

6) I checked the back of the camera, having taken a test image. It was too bright, so I closed the aperture to about half it’s original size, letting less of the flash light in. Turns out that this was perfect. Well done me.

7) Took a few photographs.

8 ) Made my Mum happy by sending one to her.

And that’s the process. Hope you enjoyed it. In an unusual gear post in the near future, I’ll let you know what equipment I used.

*true story. In a former life, I worked at Warner Music, for David Gray’s label, Eastwest Records. Anton Corbijn took some photos for us of Mr Gray, and I saw the invoice – that’s not bad for an afternoon’s work. And yes, the photographs looked amazing.

So, those few of you who follow me will have noticed that I’ve been a little, well, absent. Those who know me will probably guess why. Those who don’t can probably surmise from the photograph that accompanies this post: it turns out that two children under two actually take rather a lot of time out of one’s day, time that might otherwise be spent, say, blogging.
Nevertheless, time is not the only reason. It turns out that, with the arrival of the progeny, my photographic focus has shifted somewhat. I started this blog in order to push myself to take more photographs. It turns out that it wasn’t a blog I needed, but children.

I would estimate that 90%, if not more, of my photographs since my son was born two years ago have been, well, of my kids. I’m getting pretty good at it. The problem is, of course, that these are personal, and not really for public consumption. Please don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean that I don’t want people to see them – I’m not one of those who believes that posting photographs of one’s children is somehow going to lure paedophiles to the warm glow of one’s home. That way madness lies.

No. I simply mean that it’s boring. Grandparents love photos of Noah and Holly, Uncles and Aunts to a certain extent, and friends can cope with a few here and there. But, frankly, I doubt you could care less. So, with a dearth of interesting images, I rather dried up.
So, although I can’t promise that I’ll not post photographs of my little gene-bearers, I’ll try to expand my repertoire a little. I’ve even thinking about photography a bit, and a couple of blogs have got me thinking as well. Maybe I’ll treat you to a couple of my more choice bon môts.

Yes, I’m the kind of guy who uses the phrase bon môts. I don’t apologise for it.

A couple of notes on the photograph above, jut so that it’s something a little more than just a photo of my newest offspring. Holly was being changed in a smallish, all-white bathroom. It was dark outside, so the only available light was a tungsten bulb above her – not the greatest circumstances for a great photo.

So, what’s a photographer to do? She was in a great and photogenic mood, so I did something that I haven’t done for ages – I turned to a splash of off-camera flash. I took a flashgun and put it on the toilet (I know – classy). I attached a wireless trigger (I’ll go into these at a later date, but basically they are little widgets that allow you to be up to 100m away from the flash, as opposed to attaching it to the top of the camera) and aimed it at the ceiling. The light bounced off the ceiling and all the walls, nicely approximating that “it’s everywhere” light you’d get by mounting a whole load of strobes around your subject. I set the camera on full manual (no reliance on the camera’s metering – I relied on experience and had the exposure nailed within two test shots) and from then on, I fired away.

As I said, I’m getting pretty good at this photographing-the-children lark…

The fact is, it’s much better than the photographs that I took with my big, serious camera of exactly the same location, twenty four hours later. I’ve included mine below. Distinctly average, and this is probably the best. The fact is, my thirteen year old nephew went out with a camera with which he had no experience, and, with nothing but a fresh eye, ignored all of the obvious, picturesque shots, and returned with a set of photographs which blew mine out of the water.

Congratulations, JJ. Damn you.

Clearly, some of have a talent for this kind of stuff. And some of us are just hacks.

They are, of course, landscape and wildlife photography.

Now, I’m not one for labels. However, labels are necessary, if only as a shorthand. “I’m a landscape photographer” tells your audience volumes, even if it is stunningly imprecise. However, I think that we can spot photographs which fall into these categories pretty easily. There are photographers, and photographs, which transcend these categories, of course, but the categories remain useful.

I have, perhaps, taken three or four landscape photographs of which I am proud in ten years of photography. Not a great hit rate. Both of these categories suffer from the same problem, namely that people believe that a photograph of a beautiful thing perforce creates a beautiful photograph. This is, of course, poppycock. I would no more expect my saying the words “I saw a beautiful sunset yesterday” to convey the grandeur of that sunset than I would expect a poorly through through photograph. You would be surprised how many photographers do not realise this – or, perhaps, if you have been subject to endless holiday snaps, you won’t.

I would say that my hit rate for wildlife photography is even less impressive, serving essentially as a visual note to myself saying, “I saw this thing, on this date.” Little more. It is only recently that I took a “wildlife” photograph of which I am happy. Please note the inverted comas. This photograph is as constructed as you get; a tame owl, the tamest that the birds of prey centre had, that had been brought out for us to pet. This photograph says more about portraiture than it does about wildlife. Nevertheless, I’m happy with it. The elements came together perfectly, and the arrival of a small child, silhouetted in a doorway and and framed in a pupil, made an otherwise unremarkable photograph something, I would hope, just a little more remarkable. Well, worthy of a small remark, at least.

A week or two after taking this photograph, I received a book of Nick Brandt Photographs. Now there’s a wildlife photographer who takes a good portrait.

I’m sorry. It turns out that keeping up a consistent blog is hard, and conflicts rather strongly with the twin concepts of “fatherhood” and “spare time.” Those very few of you who have subscribed to this blog, my apologies, and thanks for your patience. I’m going to try and get back on track, perhaps aiming for three blog posts a week.

Stay tuned.