Postmodernism Ate My Hamster

Postmodernism has a lot to answer for. 

Ever read a novel in which the main protagonist is a blocked writer? That's post-modern mental ju-jitsu for you. Suffering from writers block? Then write about writer's block. If I have nothing to write about in this post, then I'll write about having nothing to write about and hey presto, we have a post written without having to find anything to say.

Eating your own smoke, as engineers like to call it.

Anyway, an image of another one of those roses that were hanging on in there last Sunday.

The Last Rose of Summer

I seem to remember writing, in a recent post, something to the effect that I'd finished with flower photography for this year.

Well, I was wrong. 

Last Sunday, I noticed that three of our rose bushes were still flowering, with one bloom on each. The weather was dull and overcast, damp and cold, but perfectly still - so ideal for photography. I headed outside with my camera in the late afternoon, when the light was softening towards sunset.

The above is one of three or four (or maybe five) decent images that I made, which I'll post over the next week or two. They feature the rather ragged, fag-end of the year flowers that are left just before the first real frosts arrive.

The title is a literary reference for a change, to a rather drippy poem by Thomas Moore, but it seems appropriate.

Ninety Percent Sturgeon

Twenty years ago, when I was a fresh faced software engineer, Sturgeon’s Law was all the rage. This is probably because it enabled this short of exchange:

“Your software is crap!”

“Yeah? Well so is ninety percent of everything else!”

Fast forwards to today, and Sturgeon seems to have been forgotten by the younger generation, as represented by the grad who works in our office. He gave me a blank look when I mentioned Sturgeon and remained resolutely unimpressed when I filled him in on his "revelation".

Anyway, now I'm older and no wiser, I still find Sturgeon’s Law relevant and useful and not just for shutting up those ignorant individuals who have the temerity to criticise the standard of my professional output – should they be able to find any these days.

I find Sturgeon an inspirational and freeing alternative to the reductive mentality of the Jonathan Critchelys of this world. The implication of Sturgeon – that ten percent of stuff is actually valuable – is fine by me. I've done a fair amount of photography and generated numerous images this summer. But of these, there are three or four images that I'm really proud of and that I feel have moved my photography forwards. The rest are disposable, but it was necessary to make them – it would have been impossible to create the best without making the rest.

Having said that, I still regret posting those images of jasione, murky, horrible photos that they are – they were part of the ninety percent, no matter how you cut it.

The image above was made during a day out to Dunster Castle that we took some time in September. We got there on the West Somerset Railway's Dunster Express, which was fun. This flower - whatever it was - was growing on the South Terrace, where we stopped for lunch. I was without my macro lens at the time so this is another effort made with my Tamron super-zoom.

Marigold Again

I read a variety of photography magazines, but the only one that I read every issue of is Black + White Photography. That's not because of the quality of the writing - its pretty patchy, like most magazines and they could do with giving Tim Clinch a bit of a rest. But it does have good production values, features a variety of imagery and steers away from critiquing readers photos, which is a practice that I find very procrustean.  

Anyway, in Issue 156 (November 2013), there is an interview with Jonathan Chritchley in which he says something to the effect that you shouldn't publish an image that you're not 150 percent sure of.

As I'm only ever eighty percent sure of my images at best, that's a whole seventy percent certainty deficit that I need to make up.

The image above is one of these eighty percenters. So, what's my problem with it? 

Well, apart from the fact that I'm aware that I've posted lots of images of marigolds in the past, its a colour image, and I always feel a sense of defeat when I can't make a decent monochrome image from a shot that I've taken. Oh, and the white balance is a bit off...and the composition is nothing to write home about...and, well you get the gist.

As an amateur, I think it's quite difficult to judge the value, or otherwise, of your imagery. Selling pictures to make a living, like Mr Chritchley, is a very direct way of getting feedback on what you do. This links back to the points I made in my previous post about access to arts events and indicates some uncertainty that I'm feeling about how to progress my photography. 

Winter is coming on and my flower photography is over until next spring. Last year, this blog suffered a serious hiatus due to a general lack of anything worth posting. I'm determined not to let that happen this year, but how to produce images to my eighty percent standard during the dark months is a bit of a mystery to me at the moment.

I'll continue to post the stuff that I have backed up, which should take me down to Christmas or thereabouts, then we'll have to see where I go from there.

The Hungry SAW

One of the dangers associated with the practice of digital photography is the tendency encourage solipsism. For a long while, I produced images that were seen by me alone. Eventually, the urge came upon me to get my images in front of people, so I set up this blog and started looking around for other ways to get my images out there.

One potential outlet that I noticed was an annual event called “Somerset Art Weeks” (SAW). This is essentially an open studio type of event, with a central organisation producing maps and promotional literature and the artists providing the venues in which their work is displayed. So, on the appointed date each year, little yellow signs appear all over the county and visitors can follow them with the help of the nicely-produced map and brochure to any or all of the hundred-plus locations.

[Inter alia, it occurs to me that artists, who have a propensity for bleating on about the environment, have organised an event that pretty much requires the audience to drive to many of the venues in private cars, but I obviously don’t understand the finer points of environmental activism.]

The idea of participating in SAW had been in my mind for a couple of years, and it seemed entirely doable, as our house has a largish room with floor to ceiling windows and external access, that could be set up as a ‘gallery’ for a week. If I made some large format prints of a selection of my images and judiciously rearranged the furniture, I’d be sorted. So, earlier this year I started looking into getting involved.

I perused the SAW website and found that I needed to become a member of the organisation by paying the appropriate fee – about £90 per annum for an individual, as I remember. There were committee meetings to attend and various other flummery, but it all looked straightforward in essence. I worked out a budget of £200 - £300 and a couple of days off work, and got quite excited about the idea.

It wasn't until I read through the arrangements for SAW 2013 – fortunately, I did this before joining or making any prints - that the whole thing hit the buffers. It transpired that a decision had been taken to limit participation in this year’s event to - sorry, to"highlight" - artists groups. No particular reason was given for this, but as I wasn't about to go off and find a group that was in need of a photographer, that was the end of the idea. There were other things that needed my attention anyway, so the whole thing was forgotten.

But not quite. The episode set me thinking about issues of access and inclusion in this sort of event and the arts in general.

In the past, membership of artists groups was socially controlled by gatekeepers – guilds, academic institutions, funding bodies and the like – who limited access to the skills, materials and especially the means of distribution by which art could be made and disseminated.

Recently, digital technologies have undermined this control. Ubiquitous computing, cheap or free applications and broadband connectivity have allowed individuals to create and disseminate their art in a variety of media with little or no reference to other artists or their appointed representatives.

Of course, the public debate about these issues has been dominated by artists’ inability to monetise their work in the digital age, and there are some real issues here, such as the weakening of creators’ rights to suit the purposes of big tech like Google.

However, if you consider that the majority of artists don’t earn their living by making art, then the underlying issues of control and access suddenly assume more importance. The fact is that most artists are more profoundly affected by the blurring of boundaries between themselves and their audience brought about by digital production, than the inability to sell their work for a reasonable price – which most of them could never do, anyway.

This, I think, is why there are so many festivals and other cultural events these days. Artists, faced with the failure of their gatekeeping mechanisms in the virtual space, are trying to shift the battleground back into the physical domain. “Curating” a festival and inviting your mates to take part helps to re-delineate boundaries between yourselves as a group and the audience - to reclaim the power to bestow the designation of “artist” - giving back some of the social control that the internet has taken away.

Bringing the discussion back to SAW, I should say that I have no idea why they chose to limit participation in the way that they did – there may be perfectly valid reasons. And in any case, I'm not suggesting that someone sat down and thought “Right, how do we keep the hoi polloi out of our arts festival?” But it does form part of a broader picture of arts politics in the digital age.

Also, SAW is part funded by the District Council using public money, so as a Council Tax payer I think I have a reasonable expectation that it won’t be allowed to turn into someone’s private arts club.

It will be interesting to see if, in 2014, SAW returns to allowing individual participation or if that drawbridge has actually been raised for good.

This image is another from our visit to the National Botanic Gardens of Wales in September. The post title is adapted from a Tindersticks album of a similar name.

I Speak My Brains III

So, why are there no a-mount announcements? It’s been a while. The fact is that Sony is making a roaring success of its other cameras. The NEX range is one of the best-selling in the mirror-less space and the recent CyberShot RX models – the RX1 and the RX100 - have been very well received (I don’t get the need for the new RX10, but I’m sure it will sell well).

However, all of these are consumer cameras - the pro market has remained largely indifferent to Sony, sticking with Canikon and leaving a-mount looking increasingly like an encumbrance. Sony has quietly shrunk the a-mount line-up down to four models – the A58, A65, A77 and A99 – removing the entry level models as that market has been cannibalised by NEX. This does rather call into question Sony’s decision to purchase Konica-Minolta as a route into the market as the business they now have owes little to this now-defunct brand.

There is one fly in the e-mount ointment, though. I don’t see the third party lens support for it. All of the major players make a-mount versions of most, if not all, of their lenses, but the choice for e-mount looks somewhat less extensive.

Okay, I know that Zeiss make e-mount lenses, which is fine if you have deep pockets, but my Sigma macro lens is good enough for me and a fraction of the price of its Sony or Zeiss counterparts.

Assuming I have the choice, I’d want to see much more third party support for e-mount before I adopt it.

The image above comes from our return visit to the National Botanic Gardens of Wales. I'm not sure what type of flower it is. Again, my Tamron super-zoom was pressed into service in the absence of my Sigma macro lens.