This image represents a dilemma of a sort that I'm facing with my flower photography.
On the one hand, I seem to be making more images, whilst fewer of them make the grade for posting here. This could be for one of a number of reasons. Perhaps my standards have risen. Or maybe I'm experimenting more and hence failing more often. Or it could be that I'm just spreading myself too thinly, not concentrating enough on each image.
Or maybe its because I'm not sure what I'm trying to achieve. This image, for example, is fine as it stands, but the whole process of opening up the lens and making something impressionistic seems just a bit too facile. On the other hand, I could have produced a nice clean image, which would have been too straight, a record shot with any obvious aesthetic qualities, despite being monochrome.
Oh well, never mind. I've posted images that I'm not completely happy with before and no doubt I will again. But I could really do with sorting out what I'm doing and why.
Those of you who've followed this blog for a while - I dunno, these people might possibly exist - may remember that I've previously posted a couple of experiments with toning images. Well, here's another.
I should say that my workflow still consists of freeware - specifically RAWTherapee and GiMP. I am vaguely tempted to build a Windows version of Darktable, but only vaguely. Even when you have the skills, building software on your home PC is an enormous hassle.
Picking up on the theme of people pictures, when stuck for a subject, why not use yourself?
The self portrait has become much devalued of late, with the advent of the selfie. On the other hand, my Alpha 77 has a tilt and swivel screen which you can position facing the subject, which makes self portraiture a doddle, so swings and roundabouts.
Anyway, this image is my first attempt using this camera and I'm rather pleased with it, although my wife says that it makes me look like a gnome. I don't see how she can say this, the toadstool that I was sitting on is completely out of shot, as is my fishing rod.
For some reason, I haven't mentioned the latest news from Sony, which is that my camera, the Alpha 77, has finally been replaced. The Alpha 77 II , or M2 depending on which blog you read, was announced on the first of May.
Its taken the better part of three years for the company to get round to this upgrade, which as the name of the new model implies, is more of a tweak than a major revamp, although the new AF system is rather nifty by all accounts.
Anyway, I'll be soldiering on with my current model for the time being, so here's an image of a tulip made using manual focus.
Another image of those two tulips, this time without the pretentiousness.
I have to confess to being slightly in awe of the lack of irony required to give images really pretentious titles like the one above.
A couple of years ago, I saw a magazine article featuring photos of horses entitled "Equus" which really crystallised this sense that the photographer was trying to say something along the lines of "Right, that's horses summed up. What's next?", which is obvious tosh.
John Berger, writing in "Ways of Seeing", makes the point that we shouldn't mystify art because in doing so we obscure the historical reality of the circumstances of its creation and dissemination. He was writing about oil painting, but the point is in many ways more relevant to photography, in relation to which writers routinely invoke the sublime to justify designating as art that which is, after all, the output of a mechanical process.
Wilhelm Flusser tries to get round this issue by arguing that photographic apparatus has the possibility of certain images encoded into it and that art is produced when the photographer exceeds or evades these to produce something original. I must admit that I haven't come to a conclusion about this line of thought, but it seems intuitively wrong to me. I guess that it depends on your views regarding the sanctioned role(s) of images and image makers in our society.
That's not to say that photography can't produce art. However most if it, if we're honest, is craft, and there's nothing wrong with craft-work (or Kraftwerk, for that matter).
Anyway, here's an image of couple of tulips. Enjoy.
