I've always admired portrait photography.

I'm in awe of the likes of Arnold Newman, Josef Karsh, Irving Penn, and Aussies like David Moore, Max Dupain and Helmut Newton. For all that, I've tended to treat portraiture as something of a spectator sport - which is a major failure on my part.

That said, from my armchair (or basement, for my North American readers) I'm going to "have a go" at some recent examples of portraiture.

I should begin by saying that I'm not aware of any all-encompassing definition of photographic portraiture. Wikipedia defines it as:

Portrait photography or portraiture is photography of a person or group of people that displays the expression, personality, and mood of the subject. Like other types of portraiture, the focus of the photograph is usually the person's face, although the entire body and the background or context may be included.

That gives a lot of options and covers a lot of ground. There have been and continue to be glorious formal portraits such as these:

 Norman Lindsay by Max Dupain

And Karsh, like Shakespeare or Beethoven is arguably part of our culture ...

Then there's the less formal school. I love environmental portraits.Check out Irving Penn's Igor Stravinsky:

So, given this latitude ... I was disappointed when I visited the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra to see the 2013 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

I'm not so egocentric that I expect to like everything shown. I expect a full range of reactions from gobsmacked to angry - but not to be disappointed.  There's some damn fine work in this year's exhibition, but there's a lot of rubbish too (in my humble opinion!).

What do I mean by rubbish?  Images that could only be described as "snaps". Yes, I know there's a fine line between photojournalistic or even environmental portraiture - but quite a few were well over the line.

Also, I would expect any portrait to be sharp. Many were not. One in particular was simply out of focus. No doubt the cognoscenti would patiently explain to me that this "artistic", but I consider it shows a lack of craft. Similarly, eyes should be in focus, but noses can be a tad blurry. Several images were the other way around.

There also appeared to be a hefty dollop of political correctness in the selections. I can't believe the selections (from over 1,200 entries, I believe) really had that many "land rights for gay whales" images.

Many of the PC selections also had another characteristic that I find unforgivable: they only made any sense with a written explanation. Photography and portraiture are visual art forms. The image should speak for itself. If an image only has meaning with a hefty panel of explanatory text next to it, then the artist has failed.

To be fair to the Portrait Gallery, they're not alone in all this. I followed a link from a tweet earlier today which prompted me to write this little rant - because the piece on portraiture seemed to be advocating the very kind of "portraiture" I dislike so much!

I'll get off my soap box now.

Have a good Easter.

The value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving

I want to write about the value of photographs - and why they're worth preserving. 

(Those of you who know me and have heard this already may like to browse Wikipedia now or make a cup of tea.)

The poor souls who attend my Digital Photography classes at Erindale are told with some apparent authority by yours truly that a photograph has value if it was one or more of the following characteristics:

• it's fine art. Not many of us produce a lot of this, unfortunately;
• it's of value to you. The grandparent's shot of a grandchild (or vise versa) is a classic example; or
• it's a record of something of value that has been lost.

It's this third point that was reinforced for me recently.

It's Canberra's 100th birthday on 12 March 2013 and for those of you not familiar with the history of our wide brown land, it had a troubled beginning. While it was proclaimed in 1913, due to two world wars, the Great Depression and indifference from much of Australia, it wasn't really developed until the 1960s.

I recently saw some photographs made from the 1910s through to the 1970s showing Canberra "before". These images were accompanied by very good attempts to make the same image from the same vantage point - using landmarks to try to orientated the photographer. The whole show was quite fascinating.

Now these images were workman-like shots, but they were made for a purpose - and that purpose wasn't great art. They were intended as a record only. And it's well that they were made because they are a record of places and indeed, people who are gone forever. Nothing will bring that place back. Even if the unthinkable (and highly improbable) were to take place and mankind were to be wiped out by some catastrophe, the place where Canberra now sits will never look as it did in 1913 - or in 1960.

So my point is that even the most mundane snaps have value as they will inevitably record - and in a sense, preserve - someone or something that is no-longer with us.

And this brings me to another of my hobby horses: an image is only useful if it's preserved and can be found.

These images were preserved because they had been made by a government agency and carefully stored and catalogued. If they had been treated as are so many images made today, I'm sure they would be lost - and so would their value.

When attending big public events, I wonder at the number of people using their phones as cameras. Don't get me wrong - most of the smart phones these days have very capable photographic capability - but what happens then? Are these images stored, or are they uploaded (and down sampled) on Facebook, perhaps? Maybe they're sent by email or SMS - but are they kept? We are told that more photography is taking place now than ever before, but where will the images of the people and places that are gone forever be found in 10, 20 or 100 years?

So my thought for the day is: whatever means you use to capture those "snaps" of family, friends and places: save and protect them for the future!

Thanks for reading this through to the end.  I'll have a little lie down now ...

Shane

And where are my images from the Multicultural Festival, I hear you ask?

Well ..... I didn't get any.  (Yes, I'm embarrassed.)

Despite my great love of street photography, I don't find t easy and have to get into a certain mind set. This weekend past - I didn't.

Maybe next year?

<sigh>

Shane "promises" Baker

Giving street photography another try

It's the Canberra Multicultural Festival this weekend, and I'm going to give street photography another try.

Although I admire street photography at its best - the likes of Elliott Erwitt come to mind - I haven't done much of it.

A few years back, I went to teh Festival armed with an SLR and a zoom and came away with one of my best ever images:

I love this shot. This man with his interesting face is deep in conversion with two friends who are conveniently framing his image. In my perhaps not very humble opinion, it's a genuiely good shot.

But I haven't done anything as good since.

So this year, I'm giving it a try with an innocuous little camera - one that looks like I'm using my grandad's old film rangefinder: my Fuji X10.

As you can see, it doesn't look like much. It's not likely that people will feel confronted by it. The alternative is for me to use my D800. Even with the "nifty 50", it looks a bit intimidating - though nowhere near as scary as an SLR mounting a 70-200 zoom!

Nevertheless, I may try the D800 - just as an experiment.

So with gear decided, the other issue is tactics. Apart from street portraiture, where the photographer literally asks permission to photograph people, there are basically two tactics. One can stalk one's subject with a relatively short lens, shoot from a distance with a long lens - or stake out a space and wait for them to come to you.

I'm going to try the latter - with the X10 and maybe with the D800.

I'll let you know how I go!

Shane Baker

I want to talk about how we assess photographs.

And I apologise in advance, because I’m probably about to offend someone. 

But first, I must tell you about dog show judging - because I find parallels with the photography world. 

In the Australian dog show scene, and I suspect in the rest of the world, there’s a thing called “face judging”. Who is holding the lead in the ring is at least as important as the dog at the end for some judges. I’ve seen some horrible examples put up by dog judges, and in every case, at the end of the lead, you’ll find a “face”; someone with status in the dog world.

More on that in a minute.

The other feature of dog judging is the phenomenon called “fault judging”. Basically, when you look at a dog in the ring you can judge it two ways. One way is to look at all the dogs (with a full understanding of the standard for that breed) and pick the best example in the ring. The winner may have faults (although no major faults) but overall, it will be the one that is closest to the ideal Pug or Great Dane or Labrador or whatever.

Fault judging is when the judge looks at a line of dogs, finds their faults - and then picks the dog with the fewest faults. It may look horrible, but hey - it’s the dog with the fewest faults! (No-one can fault that! (Boom, boom!)

So to come back to my heresy: there’s a lot of fault judging and face judging in the photography world.

The internet has given all of us an unprecedented opportunity to show our work. (More power to the World Wide Web!) But it has inevitably led to a lot of images being shown that should never have seen the light of day. At the extreme are those people who simply upload the entire contents of their camera’s card to the web site of their choice, and wait for the plaudits to flow.

Others of us try to be a bit more discriminating. I place images on my web site (shaneb.smugmug.com - check it out!) either because I think they’re good shots or simply because people may find them interesting. (Hopefully, they’re both, BTW.) I also post snaps for family and friends, but these are generally in folders that aren’t inflicted on the unsuspecting public.

Unfortunately, some well-known photographers who should know better (and can do better) sometimes place pretty average images on the internet - and they’re generally greeted with rapturous applause by their followers.

That’s face judging folks. 

To be fair, I’ve had plenty of “what was I thinking?” moments, after which I’ve quietly deleted an image from my web site. Clearly, so do photographers who are better and more highly regarded than me. That’s part of being human. What I can’t understand is when a famous photographer posts a snap - and the internet explodes with praise.

We all have to do better - both as artist and audience.

And now to fault judging. In photography, I’ve seen it in the flesh and I’ve seen it on line: someone puts up an image,and armchair experts immediately work it over for faults. It may not be sharp, composition could be better, too much/not enough contrast, blown-out highlights.

You know the drill.

Check this out:

Robert Capa - D-Day landing.

Horrible? Not level, not sharp, print includes sprocket holes. The fault judges would put that on the reject pile in a heartbeat.

Or what about this? Badly composed, huh? What's the subject; surely not the doves??

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Henri Matisse

Both photographs work - despite their faults. Maybe even because of them?

So my thought for the day? We need to 

1. Be rationally critical of our own work.
2. Recognise that even the best of us don't always get it right. No need to criticise, but let's not applaud by reflex, either.
3. Assess an image, either it's one of ours, one by friends or one by the famous simply by asking whether it works. 

My apologies to those I have offended. I didn't mean to.

Shane Baker

Wisdom of the podcast.

I listen to podcasts; several in fact.

I know I'm not alone in this, but I'm surprised at how many of my photog friends don't subscribe. They're free, easy to listen to in your car, or on public transport (which I try to use on a day to day basis), and while there are duds, there are many good episodes.

One I listened to recently was Martin Bailey interviewing Don Komarechka. Don's a nature photographer from Ontario, who in addition to beautiful landscape work, shoots the most amazing snowflake photographs - see http://www.donkom.ca .

At the end of the podcast, Martin asked Don for three tips. He offered up the following gems:

1. Quoting a Life magazine photographer who was asked how he got such great shots: "Use f/8 and be there."  

In other words, whether you just get out of bed or travel, but put yourself in a position to make great photographs.

2. For his second tip, Don noted that many people return from trips with mediocre images saying "you had to be there". One of the reasons their shots aren't that great is because they don't try different angles - "work the shot" as they say. 

So the second tip was: "The world isn't 5 and a half feet tall."

3. The third tip was: Tell a story with your images, if you can.

He conceded this wasn't always possible - but we should look for it.

How true!

Happy Australia Day, 2013.

Shane Baker

Canberra

A warm welcome to my first post

Welcome to the first post of this new blog.  I plan to post at least weekly, sharing my thoughts and learnings about photography.

I should tell you a bit about myself. I'm a Canberra public servant of necessity, and I photograph by choice. It has to be said that I spend more time thinking about photography than doing it - and I guess this blog is a symptom of that!

For the gear-minded, I shoot with Nikon gear (though I have a lovely little Fuji X10), use Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop (if necessary) and print using an Epson 3880.

For those wanting to inflict further pain on themselves, I have a Smugmug account at shaneb.smugmg.com .  I post images there from time to time and you're welcome to check those out and leave your comments.

I also tweet (very occasionally) as @ShaneBakerACT.

I hope you find the blog of interest - and I genuinely welcome your comments and thoughts.

Shane Baker
Canberra