Jim's Pictures from Harry Wheatcroft's Christening

Just a few pictures that Jim took at my little nephew's christening.

Lamport and Kelmarsh Halls

Some pics from a beautiful evening with the Leicester and Rutland Gardens Trust.

Results

I've received my results in the post today.
I got a distinction for the 306 Studio Photography.
I got a credit for 211 Presenting Images.
I'm a bit annoyed because I'd done a post  on 211 that has not been marked describing the exhibition set up and reason for choice of presentation method etc. He said he had given me an extension but apparently hasn't.

Moira Furnace

On a warm evening we arrived and I sat next to Jim on a low fence to wait for the others. We sat and chatted for a while and then realised how uncomfortable the low fence was.

Jim and Lu reflected on our outing and we all wandered along.

The brickwork along the canal bridges is a constant source of amazement to me.

And, of course the odd, spiralling flower.

One of the highlights, apart from having a pint in the pub afterwards, was a fox spotted by eagle eyed Paul. Jim's Sigma 70 to 200 was working much better than my old 70 to 210 f5.6 Nikon film lens. so I'm putting these on for comparison.

Spirals

Playing with tilt shift

But now I really do have to get on with some work.

Presenting Photo Images 211

Since the start of this course, I've put more and more thought into how I'd like to present my final images. In some ways my design experiences have been a help, but the constant thoughts of the advantages and disadvantages of the various options means that at some point the chosen method is a compromise.

Helping to sort out the college exhibition was cut short, but we'd managed to make a start and that set the ball rolling. Jim, tutor Steve and I measured up the walls and picked the display options that would satisfy the college conditions both on Health and Safety grounds, cost impications, aesthetics and impact. Using Microsoft Publisher I worked out a possible layout, using a scaled 1:100 plan and final mount size of 40x50cm. This is the maximum standard size we use for competitions.

Black mount card was chosen to stand out against the white wall, foam core mount card just 2cm smaller than the mount helped to stand the images off the wall and give a 'shadow frame' effect. We considered frames would be too expensive and as college requirements could not have glass in them we'd have to take out the glass and replace with persex anyway.  As there were 9 in the group this allowed for 2 spaces each.. The 2 walls where the same sizes.  The white core of the black mount card stands out as an edge making precision cutting of the mount less forgiving.

Those of us with previous mount cutting experience brought our kit in and we shared the 1 pencil supplied by our tutor. We did a verbal risk assessment of our cutting equipment confirming the best ways to reduce problems with the very sharp blades, considering the task I opted to take the remaining mount card home and use my picture framing guillotine to save using the more tricky Stanley knives. I wasn't entirely happy with the crop of my images as by mistake I'd had them printed at A3 full page rather than retaining the original dimensions.

Final Image Presentation
Looking at the various choices, I'd decided to print my final selections for the two themes to serve as a record of the course and a portfolio of images for future use. I've been generally happy with the print quality of my Canon Pixma iP4600 and had borrowed a Rexel binder to make an A4 booklet using double sided matt photopaper but just printing on one side. It worked OK, the downside being that the images are printed at a lot less than A4 to allow for the binding, but it was transportable however it was easily marked.

I'd considered making an on line album, having used Snapfish in the past, and took my hard disc drive to Australia where I could have worked on the upload via tha internet and had the final album posted directly to college.  The problems are that there is no check of the images before you print the whole album and there are constraints on the image size so unwanted cropping can occur. I was given an extension to the course and decided against this method, but will probably print one for my family.

The method I've chosen is to use an A3 folder and mount the images printed at A4 on A3 black card. I don't like viewing the picutres through the transparent plastic sleeves but this does give them some protection from finger prints etc. I also don't like flipping the book to view the pictures so I've grouped all the landscape ones and all the portrait ones together. I've specifically chosen only portrait orientation images for my Hands theme. Having set out to do this I decided to save money and have my Canon original ink cartridges refilled at Cartridge World. Print quality was immediately affected and I ended up ditching the refilled inks anyway.  I'm reasonably happy with the calibration of my monitor to my printer and used Fujifilm Premium Gloss 270gms for the Hand theme images and Ryman double sided matt 200gms for the family portrait after unsuccessful results with other combinations (Canon Photopaper Pro II had a slight sepia tinge.)

This is going to be the front cover

Burton Hospital Exhibition Progress

I have written permission from Stuart Alcock, property manager at Calke for us to go ahead with this project.
He has been very encouraging and has also asked if they, the Nat Trust, could sponsor the frames, which I thought we might agree to (!) I'll get a sample frame and see if I can meet up with the hosp for the next step.

I could do with Ruth and Suzy's email addresses, just to keep everyon informed rather than just relying on the blog. Contact me on pip@groundbreakingdesign.co.uk

Cameras, My Kit and Sensor Sizes

My first 35mm SLR was an Olympus OM10. I got some great pictures of dinosaurs as they roamed the earth.

The Nikon F50 was a big step up, offering programable modes.

Delving into digital, next came the Kodak DC280.
Announced June 99.
Sensor Size: 7.32 x 5.49mm
Pixels 2 Meg

Next was this little beauty, bought to take pics of my brother's wedding.                                      Announced Aug 2002                                        Sensor size 7.18 x 5.32mm                             Pixels 4 Meg

The Nikon Coolpix S200. Is a great handbag camera, I usually have it with me.            Announced  Feb 2007                                  Sensor size 5.75 x 4.31mm                                    Pixels 7 Meg

Nikon D90                                                               

This is the main camera I've used for the C and G course.

Announced July 2008.

Sensor Size 23.6 x 15.8mm

12 Meg

I chose this camera for many reasons, but a priority was that I could use the lenses from my old 35mm film camera. They have auto focus and the camera body drives it, they work well and properly set up I often found that auto focus is better than my eye sight and is very quick.

The Live View mode is very useful especially for macro photography. It also allows you to talk to your sitter for portrait photos without them thinking you are peering through the lens at them.

I find Nikon menus quite intuitive, probably just because I'm used to them.

It's a robust body and the 18-105mm lens gives me a good range, although my brother's 18-200mm was great for out and about photography.

For the future, whoever said digital is cheaper needs a rethink. I'd like to have a full frame sensor, but it's important to consider the Ying and Yang balance (Tom Ang).

Ying - female, light, airy, minimal. Nikon S200

Yang - male, heavy, complicated Nikon D3x

Dorothea Lange 26 May 1895 - 11 Oct 1965

I'd read a 2 page article on Dorothea Lange in the Taschen book and wanted to understand more about this pioneering woman.  During further study I found this fantastic web site of her, and others, images with high quality and definition images.

http://www.shorpy.com/dorothea-lange-photographs

She is relevent for her inclusion of hands in many of her pictures

 

I ordered her biography and another small book called Phaidon 55 Dorothea Lange.

Interestingly, she was also a friend and contempory of Imogen Cunningham who Ruth has studied and mentioned to me. Cunningham's images of artistic nudes and plant forms are next on my list for study, but Lange deserves in depth attention first. The were part of the San Fransisco art scene of the 1930s.

 Women photographers of that time were preoccupied with how to combine career and artistic development with keeping men happy and taking care of children, or living without husbands which some found equally hard.  - A Life Beyond Limits.

Destitute pea pickers living in tent in migrant camp. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. February 1936

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

This is Lange's most famous picture and was taken as one of a series of images when she worked for the Farm Security Administration. Controversy also arose over this image as it was retouched in the darkroom to exclude a distracting thumb in the lower right corner.

She felt her life had been shaped by to major incidents, the onset of Polio at age 7 and the desertion of her father five years later. The family moved in with her maternal grandmother, a cultured perfectionist who drank heavily and had an explosive temper who dominated her mother. Dorthea was determined not to be a passive woman.

Originally she worked as a professional portrait photographer, picturing some of the wealthiest and most prominent families in San Fransisco, but during the depths of the depression in 1933 she took to the streets with her camera. Her emotional life was also falling apart and her marriage to the eminent painter Maynard Dixon was on the rocks.  Her photography underwent a shift as she began to talk to the people she photographed. She divorced Dixon and eventually remarried Paul Taylor an agricultural economist. Through travelling with him during his field research she came into contact with those most affected by the depression, drought and increasing mechanisation of farming.

In 1935 she joined the staff of the State Emergency Relief Administration and was hired to photograph farm labourers.Through this work she became a staff photographer for the Resettlement Administration, later the Farm Security Administration. The FSA provided an extensive record of the transformation of American agriculture and the migration of Americans, driven from their land by the tractor and the Dust Bowl. from Phaidon 55.

July 1937. "Sharecropper family near Hazlehurst, Georgia." Nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration.

November 1936. "American River camp, Sacramento, California. Destitute family. Five children, aged two to seventeen years." Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration.

John Szarkowski, curator of photography at New York's Museum on Lange. 'She was marvellous with gesture. not just the gesture of the hand, but the way that people planted their feet, cocked their hips and held their heads.'

October 1939. "Mr. and Mrs. Wardlaw at entrance to their dugout basement home.

 Dead Ox Flat, Malheur County, Oregon.

" Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Resettlement Administration.

June 1938. Outskirts of El Paso, Texas. "Young Negro wife cooking breakfast. 'Do you suppose I'd be out on the highway cooking my steak if I had it good at home?' Occupations: hotel maid, cook, laundress." Medium-format nitrate negative by Dorothea Lange for the Farm Security Administration.

In 1941 she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and could have led an easy life, but after the attack on Pearl Harbour she gave it up to work for the War Relocation Authority covering the rounding up and internment of the mistrusted American Japanese.

Her images were so obviously critical of the way these people had been treated that they were confiscated by the army.

In 1945, Lange was invited by Ansel Adams to accept a position as faculty at the first fine art photography department at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). Imogen Cunningham and Minor White joined as well.  She was co founder of the magasine Aperture.

She had various health problems throughout her life related to her childhood illness, and died at the age of 70 from oesophageal cancer.