Big Blue

With my image pipeline drying up, I've been reviewing some of the images that I made earlier this year, trying to find something suitable for posting. I've found that a bit of additional post-processing can liven some of them up enough for this purpose.

So we have this image, made at the National Botanic Gardens of Wales back in September. I've no idea what type of flower this is. I used the blue channel for the mono conversion to make the seeds pop (pun intended) a bit more than using the other channels would have allowed.

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.

I Speak My Brains II

In the past I've been deliberately obtuse about the reasons why Sony have had to develop a new lens mount for their mirror-less cameras – but I do understand, really. It’s because the flange distance on the a-mount lenses is prohibitively large and would have driven up the size of the camera bodies, thus negating one of the main benefits of a mirror-less design.

[Canikon have this problem as well, which is why their mirror-less offerings eschew their long established standard lens mounts.]

The A7s are currently the world’s smallest full frame cameras, smaller even than the Olympus OM-D, as Sony are keen to point out. However, the current drive for smaller and lighter bodies can only take them and their competitors so far – what then?

I guess that I'm looking to Sony to start innovating in terms of form factor. Despite all the advances of the past few years, cameras are still basically a box with a lens on the front, a screen on the back and some buttons on the top; surely, with the mirror and the OVF gone, we can do something different?

This image comes from a return visit that we made to the National Botanic Garden of Wales in September to see the IGPOTY exhibition that was running at the time. I found this mushroom on one of the nature walks. Without my tripod or remote release, I had to put the camera on the ground and use the self timer to make the image. I should also say that I was using my Tamron super-zoom as my macro lens was being repaired. Despite all these factors, I think that the resulting image is passable. 

Goodbye to the Gardens of Wales

OK, this is the final image that I'm going to post from the session at the National Botanical Gardens of Wales. This is because there aren't any more images that are good enough to post.

Its a dahlia - that much I know. In the flesh, it was deep orange, but I've done away with that using the channel mixer, for the purposes of servicing my pretensions.

Something different next time, then.

Visit to the Great Glasshouse Part II

Ah, the joys of having 24 Mega-pixels to play with.

This is another image from my visit to the National Botanical Gardens of Wales and specifically the "Great Glasshouse". Within, the plants are arranged into beds of varying depth and width. I had my 50mm prime with me so shooting flowers in the centre of the beds was a challenge.

But high pixel count saved the day!

The image is the result of a rather severe crop of the original photograph, but I still have plenty of resolution left, so hurray for Sony and their mighty Exmor sensor! 

Visit to the Great Glasshouse

As promised, an image from my visit to the Great Glasshouse at the National Botanical Garden of Wales.

This is obviously of some sort of succulent - I've no idea what. I should say that I've no real interest in the plants that I photograph beyond their sculptural or other photogenic properties.

Plants, especially flowers, are also very useful for highlighting transience as a central subject of photography. When you look at a photograph of a person who is unknown to you, you speculate as to when the image was made and where that person is now. Their mortality is a central issue here - you're trying to judge, for one thing, if that person is likely to be still in the land of the living. However, unless there is strong internal evidence in the photograph, speculation is all you have.

With a flower there is no room for doubt. That organism will have inevitably perished and the image that you are looking at is the only record of the short period when the bloom was at its best. The epitome of transience, captured forever(-ish) by the power of photography.

Bank Holiday Boar-dom

On August Bank Holiday Sunday, we visited the National Botanical Gardens of Wales. This was supposed to be the answer to the question "what activity would suit a five year old and a seventy-eight year old?". In the event, my mother-in-law chose not to accompany us, so it had to suit a five year old and two grumpy forty-somethings - which it did, to an acceptable level.

The image above is of the gardens' wicker figure of Twrch Trwyth, the mythical great boar hunted by King Arthur, which is probably emblematic of the Saxons. Its about seven feet tall at the shoulder and stands at the top of a slope above the ice house, which my son was investigating whilst I was photographing.

I took my Alpha 77 along for the trip, with my 50mm lens attached, as I was expecting to do some macro work - which I did, later in the afternoon - rather than landscapes. So, getting this image involved some pratting about on the slope to get the composition that I wanted.

The weather was good, but a bit windy for making images of the planting and, yet again, I'd left my tripod at home. However, the place boasts a "Great Glasshouse" and I spent some time in there, the results of which I'll post shortly.