the photographers

 

lessons with kate - eugenia maximova

do we see things differently?

Here's a really interesting article on how female and male photographers see things differently. Click here to read.

Viva la difference! It's great to celebrate diversity in all its many forms.

this week's photographer

Eugenia Maximova is not a photographer I had come across before and I very much like her work. 

I love this quote from an interview she gave with Kai Behrmann, the founder of 'The Art of Creative Photography'...

'Life is a patchwork, assembled of numerous unique, irregular and often controversial pieces of circumstances and choices. You can arrange what appears to be unpleasant at first glance into a beautiful composition.'

You can read the full interview here.

the challenge

This week's challenge was to take some shots on the theme of, 'say yes to life with a passion'!'

what did I do?

I returned to Villa Park, but this time choosing the start of the story not within the ground itself but on the walk to it.

Witton Road is the bustling, colourful heart of this predominantly Asian area. It's crammed full with groceries, shops selling Asian clothing and sweets and all manner of take-aways.

At first sight it may look ugly, but look again and you will find its vibrant beauty.

The story ends within Villa Park and I wanted to capture that glorious moment when a goal is scored and the crowd erupts. It's like being buoyed on a euphoric wave of emotion as everyone rises to their feet in unison to celebrate.

On the technical side I wanted the photographs to look as if they were shot as a series of Polaroids. I therefore chose a desaturated colour setting on my camera.

what did I learn?

So often the best photographs are to be found right in front of us.

lessons with kate - ruth bernhard

about this series

As many visitors to my blog will know I am a member of a photographic group at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham. Our expert tutor is Kate Green. I've been part of the group for many years now and Kate's cheeky, insightful and challenging lessons have helped me find and hone my own style. I owe so much to her encouragement, affirmation and guidance.

This term I want to take you behind the scenes as Kate leads us through a series of lessons which focus on women in photography, a much ignored subject. 

gender discrimination in photography is rife 

Here's just one example taken from an excellent on-line article by Lucy Buchholz in last February's edition of 'March 8'...

'When searching for top professional photographers, research from Wallflower Studios found that search results for terms such as ‘Best photography Instagram accounts’ and ‘Best photographers’ features 216 photographers on the first page of results, only 61 of which were women in the US and just 46 for UK results. For the US, women were represented 28% of the time; in the UK, the results were even lower at 17%.'

Lucy Buchholz ©

this week's photographer

The scene is set as Kate starts her first lesson by introducing us to the work of Ruth Bernhard.

Ruth was an indomitable force. Born in 1905 in Berlin she moved to America in 1927 to join her father. She lived in the States to the ripe old age of a hundred and one. A woman of passion she had several lesbian affairs before eventually settling down in her sixties with a Price Rice, a black US Airforce Colonel ten years her junior.

Ruth left a body of work, almost exclusively in black and white, which is absolutely stunning. She is best known for two things.

The first was her nude photography, usually featuring the female form. This reached a pinnacle with the publication of 'The Eternal Body' - a book which now finds pride of place in my collection after my dear wife bought me a copy to celebrate my reaching State Retirement Age!

The second was Ruth's still-life work, which placed particular emphasis on curved forms and vulva-like imagery. 

We looked at some of Ruth's photography then Kate set us a challenge to to take pictures based on the theme, 'Never get used to anything'.

Here's what I came up with...

what did I do?

I stared at a pair of boots on the floor. My boots. Dr. Marten's. I didn't look for anything in particular, instead I wanted to see. I let the images come to me.

In a little while light and shade, contrast, shapes and form began to emerge. At that point I got out my camera and chose the settings.  A reasonable, but not unduly high ISO suitable for low light,  a one stop down adjustment on the exposure compensation and a wide aperture to blur the background.

I kept checking each frame as I shot to see what worked, what didn't and what else I might need to see.

what did I learn?

The more I stared the more I saw.

The webbing on the side of each boot formed a bridge of light, the signature white stitching suggested something sealed within, the curves of the boot holes became handcuffs, the labels in each boot took on the form of skeletal teeth as two ghostly faces emerged from the gloom.

And then, the last shot. A warm erotic abstract which I think best reflected what the work of Ruth Bernhard was all about.

I learned to sit still and not rush, to blur my eyes not sharpen them so a fresh reality could emerge.

I learned to play not strive. And to my mind that is a very, very good thing indeed.

spellbound - part two

For the second series of photographs I wanted to create a film noir feel. 

I dialled down the exposure to use the shadows cast on the white back-drop to good effect.  Again, I left in the imperfections at the edges of the shots and applied a silver tone filter to enhance the mood.

spellbound - part one

 

I had a great time on Monday at the Midlands Art Centre photographing a burlesque model. 

My goal was to create two distinct series of images. The first, shown here, was deliberately disorientating - an attempt to capture mysterious movements and moments in time.

The effect was achieved by a combination of over-exposure and use of the in-camera multi-image function. I added a silver-tone treatment in post-production to give the pictures a filmic feel in keeping with the mood of the series.

Finally, a number of the images contained vestiges of the white backdrop against which the model was shot. Rather than cropping them out or using a retouching tool I made a conscious decision to leave the imperfections as they were, again to create a filmic feel.

haunted funfair

 

the clowns are all hung from the lamp-posts

the swans have been long put to sleep 

we crawl through a barbed-wire outpost

in search of some ghostly relief

 

donald duck is training his spy-glass

on the last of the fast-fading sun

and the haunted funfair advances

our nightmares have just begun