Here's Summer...

Music Festivals have long been the bench mark for a British Summer, it’s not just a hint that the cold dark long days are gone for another four months it’s also an exciting time for us to get out the summer wardrobe, don the shades put some sun screen on and purchase the obligatory two man festival tent, that comes with enough space to stash the dirty clothes and half empty crate of beer (you can never have enough beer), into, while you let your half pissed girlfriend squat on your aching shoulders for what seems like an eternity.

However you don’t mind that if only for a day or so, except the girlfriend is developing an addiction to the half baked half raw horse quality burger, that seems to offer sustenance and soak up the cider, beer or what ever she drinks these days. No you don’t mind at all, that’s not the real reason you’re here, you’re here for the banter, and most importantly the music.

It’s the music that drives us to these locations each year, year in year out. Though it’s all worth it, you will get to see some over sized Texan Blondie, whose airbags came as standard as a bench mark for those oil rich country folk, who admire some Li’l Ol’ sweetheart sporting the whitest glint of a smile, in that tight Barbie Ranch Girl outfit.

No you don’t mind at all, because when England fail to meet their mark in the ever so boring World Cup Tournament; you know you have the perfect excuse to go travelling to the other side of the country and get totally muddied and yet surprisingly happy that you are wearing those Wellington Boots from George at ASDA with the pattern or motif on the side, that helps guide you to a similar looking tent.

Though in all honesty apart from packing some spare underwear, lip balm and a few necessary bottles of water and a tube of toothpaste, to freshen your alcohol infused morning breath, what else is on offer at a festival? 

Some more girls

Well the answer may not surprise you at all; it seems to go with the territory not cigarettes but drugs. It seems that every festival has them despite the organisers paying huge sums of money for the Donkey-Kong lookalike security with the invisible rugs under their arms.

Yes it seems that certain contraband works it way through, yes illegally purchased cigarettes are high on the list as well as drugs or legal highs as they are known these days.

They seem to be a wholly excepted part of the culture these days when paying homage to the latest sounds or sounds that make a one off comeback. Then you have differing forms of festivals there is the all-rounder sell out which is Glastonbury, next up we have the super club festival that offer the discerning dance music enthusiast a whole new series of sub-genres breaking down into splinter groups which are derived as thus hard, harder, hard and loud, harder and louder and where are my ear muffs ‘cos my ears are bleeding.

Then we have one off events that hope to make it back the following year if the council permits, and of course these offer very little to the seasoned festival goer.

Which brings me to my case in point about a new kind of festival, which is currently breaking Britain today. This festival is generally about another cultures’ beliefs, this being a Hindi festival. 

Peace Out

 The Holi or Sanskrit festival is a festival of colours or festival of love. Bringing in new life and a new spring in the Hindi calendar. It is not supposed to be a drinking, dance music festival, by tradition though music of the Indian traditional kind is played.

So when you decide to try this festival out your going on the pretence on what has happened at other festivals, though to be honest this just isn’t any other dance music festival, you are advised to wear white, the reasoning behind this is so that the colours which come in perfectly packaged sachets of coloured corn flour powder, are able to establish your undeniable origin.

It may seem like harmless fun, but you realise that when people from other parts of the world namely New Zealand are wearing what can be best described as a highly fluorescent snorkeling face mask and breather you begin to feel quite alarmingly discontent.

Though if am honest with myself I am thinking this could be the latest dance music festival fashion statement and in reality I haven’t got anything to worry about in the slightest, I keep telling myself it will all be okay. 

Holi One

The other negative aspect about this was the apparent singular stage, which was reminiscent of the Kaaba Stone in Mecca. Did I just cross over onto another plain…had I transgressed into another world of religious wonder…err no.

Over the tannoy of the loudspeaker system, I could clearly hear the common expletive ‘fuck’; this would not be considered as being diversely sensitive and respectful to another person beliefs.

Then my thoughts seem to focus on the ever-growing small crowd, which is trying in vain to avoid the now light shower of rain normally, experienced in April. We are perched under a small marquee barely big enough to cover a hundred people let alone the 2,000 souls who have updated their social media status by you guessed it employing the universally known liking symbol into their daily language, that and employing the old scissors / peace symbol gesture, which is meant to imply peace or so they think.

To myself it means something of a sexual or gang land nature, next time you see that gesture with the hands just remember that seemingly similarity to either holding a gun or pleasuring your girlfriend, you will definitely think more laterally.

The girls outnumbered me

The positive side to all of this was the overwhelming gathering of female to male ratio, the guys were outnumbered 6/1 at one point then that increased as the day wore on. So what does that mean in the demographics? This particular event was more appealing to a female audience then male? Quite possibly the musical taste was not to every one’s delight, though I recognised a few tunes, I mainly concentrated on capturing images of the people at the event.

They were a great bunch, and after a few beers more and more of those females were approaching my stealth like gait, in the hope of getting a ‘groupie snap’, I duly obliged some of these ladies were quite full on, which in retrospect did make me smile the reason was simple, I love confident women. I like that a woman can be confident and be happy in the surroundings where she may be.

This was getting interesting now, because it seemed that what we all came for, was beginning to take place in a field of sorts. The irony of it all was a security guard played by non other than a Yorkshire man dressed as a gardener, acting like a security guard played by a Liverpudlian resembling cricketer Phil Tufnell.

The scene was becoming more outrageous as the day wore on, we began to get in to a rhythm of every two hours it was powder time! Or Holi One time, though I did overhear a few blokes exclaiming Holi Shit! Holi Shit!  Every time our compère hostess called us up, yes the girl who actually served me merchandise was the one who actually graced the stage to implore us to get to our feet, colourful powder in one hand; Altern8 mask in the other.

It was dreadful to the extreme the powder hardly being ejected into the air as the ‘girly throw’ barely made it past gravity, instead nonchalantly people did the task while supping a beer or guzzling the wine from a bottle, and emptying the contents of said colourful sachet into ones face.

Hardly the elegant manner in which I hoped the powder would be ejected, still none the less; all had a great time. I began to favour this event due to the proximity of the event to the place of my childhood; we were after all partying in Stanley Park, Liverpool.

This sort of made all the effort all the more worth it, I was smiling wryly and realising that I would have to make my way home with others against a setting sun, covered head to toe in coloured corn flour, in the name of Holi One!

The Art of Surrealism

Okay so briefly I touched upon a few photographers who were mainly in the realm of realism and others who are conceptual photographers in my last post. I mentioned in particular Eugène Atget and his work which was an incredible perspective on Paris. 

I like to do some research when speaking about photographers and many of you, who know of Atget's work, will probably know how much his work was appreciated by surrealist photographers and how much his work inspires photographers to create 'another' perspective on a well-documented city.

In Atget's photographs of the deserted streets of old Paris and of shop windows haunted by elegant mannequins, the Surrealists recognised their own vision of the city as a "dream capital," an urban labyrinth of memory and desire.

I have a copy of A History of Photography from Taschen and in that book it displays some very fine works of Atget and his unintentional collection of surrealism. His works are absolutely astounding, what really opened my eyes was he had such a great eye for detail and humour and humility, those photographs are there thankfully recorded and held my attention and I realised that Atget could also build a sense of mood in the frame with the natural light used, not only was he a photographer, he was in fact a light painter!

©Atget, Eugène.

©Atget, Eugène.

His works are brilliant, here is an example of one of his nudes, in this particular shot you can clearly see how greatly he influenced and certainly I would suggest Bill Brandt the low key lighting is not dissimilar to that of Atget. So high contrast and moody at best, looking at this work I marvel at those past masters, and how they created that art form of dodging and burning to create a piece, and photographing a scene that would be viewed and admired and possibly critiqued for years to come.

In essence these works of these past masters are in fact timeless creations, we all aspire to and you can emphasise with the movement of Surrealism that these works are surreal in nature unintentionally but they're none the less surreal. The other key aspect about Atget and his work, is how significant the perspective and compositional elements tie the subject matter together.

The next two examples clearly show the use of the golden rule and the rule of thirds:

Now if you were to apply these rules in to your photography, the compositional elements would make the photograph more appealing and most importantly make sense, so next time you look through the viewfinder try and look for certain shapes, and features be they linear like a fence or railing or even the vertical height of a row buildings.

You could adopt an approach were by you seek out leading lines or curves or even a particular colour, these elements that make up a photograph and make it stand out from the rest.

Eugène Atget had a very keen eye, and these images show how much an influential photographer he really was despite not embracing new technology, it shows that while he was a traditionalist he could create timeless pieces. 

Eugène Atget has a variety of works available in the form of books too, and if like myself you collect Photographic bibliography you will be pleased to know they're plenty to go at. One that certainly comes to the fore if your into fine art, is Atget's Garden Photographs (A Dolphin Book)  A fine collection of photographs depicting some fine sculptures in the many gardens of Paris, not just that but he composes some fine reflections too, use of the equipment he had large 18 x 24 Plates, much like his predecessor Charles Marville (Marville trained as an illustrator and an engraver) his works can be viewed at the MoMA .

The similarity between Marville and Atget is incredible; from studying Marville we can begin to understand Atget. So was Atget following in the footsteps of Marville? He was definitely an influence in Atget’s' work. Looking at the garden photographs we can see that Atget viewed and photographed them as a pedestrian would also view them as a passer-by if only to stop and take a brief look, one would then enter the world as Atget perceived it.

This is very exciting to me, it seems am going further back historically the more I look at Atget. Over the last few days though, interestingly I have been posting my works on my site here

This series of images from myself are very surreal in perspective, though they do convey a message of realism. You may recall an earlier post referring to  metaphors in photography 

Looking at those images it is hard to clarify why am talking about Atget, he photographed people too though, when I photograph people I interpret their persona in my self portraits and try to re-enact the scene through my own expression. 

Check out those latest works and share the links too. 

Have a great weekend all.

A Three Legged Thing

For every photographer there comes a time when you decide on purchasing a tripod or upgrading to a newer model.

Tripods come in varying sizes in leg length and of course the varying leg angle that can applied to those legs for specific types of photography, so for instance if you’re filming or if you’re shooting stills than your choice is a very broad one at that.

Many manufacturers of tripods have a low budget end user profile, and offer the budding beginner a chance to start off and get some stable platform landscape shots added to their portfolio. I myself have had owned several Manfrotto Tripods some with independent legs and  a few with the leg struts, which act as a platform to place a camera bag or other equipment to add greater stability to the set up.

However just like higher budget cameras or pro camera set -ups, you have to look at  the equipment being used and ask why am I not spending a decent amount of money on a stable tripod platform for said camera? If your a landscape photographer and your shooting large format then you need to look realistically at what plate to accommodate your camera.

So let's say for instance large format cameras have a big base for a seating platform as do some medium format cameras, then of course you have video cameras and they will need a stable platform to shoot on, with a certain degree of versatility to perform 'tricks'. 

Vinten V3-CP2 Vision 3 Carbon Fibre Tripod is a versatile and very responsive Tripod. Matching that with the design materials being Carbon Fibre. Carbon Fibre is a strong and lightweight material often used for sea and freshwater fishing rods.

So you can imagine what they put them rods through, the Vinten V3-CP2 3 Carbon Fibre Tripod is capable of holdings weight up to 10 kg / 22 lbs. Enough for a field camera or Professional Camcorder such as the Canon XF305 the BBC use these cameras out in the field so next time your watching David Attenboroughs' natural history programme bare a thought for the camera crew and how they're shooting those extraordinary scenes in the Sahara Desert.


They used a unique dolly system and elevated platform to shoot those scenes, so where do you want to take your photography?

 
For myself I shoot a lot of different subjects I have shot sporting events like the English Half Marathon and I have shot landscapes and moving pictures. My main tripod was an Manfrotto 394-H Tripod which is ideal for a beginner / intermediate photographer or videographer.


Though being honest if you own a heavier camera it is best to invest a little more money, and move from aluminium to carbon fibre. The reason is corrosion I enjoy shooting near the coast and the salt air, sand and seawater can take its toll on the material. So care should be taken I used a decent cloth which I inserted in to the bottom end of the bag, so that when placing the tripod in legs first the cloth would take the excess water from the feet.

 
That and a trusty aerosol can of WD-40 lubricant spray does exactly what it says on the tin, it protects and lubricates. Ideal for keeping your tripod equipment, in great condition; particularly if you’re like me and shoot in all weathers.


So my latest equipment is an upgrade from a standard three legged thing to one that does much more, and can offer more leg angles for shooting, thus I am much more of a versatile photographer. I purchased a very unique tripod which offers more for your buck than your regular tripod.

The legs invert and fold back 180° onto the centre column, this is perfect for the photographer who is on the go, and much like the Benro Travel Angel features a detachable leg to form a professional monopod. So far so good, I will be field testing this tripod and will discuss these features in more detail.

One great feature is the ball head it comes with dual spirit level bubble on the plate, ideal if you want to perform some 'tricks'. So what tricks can we perform with a tripod?

Well if your into film making a couple of shots which are ideal with this sort of tripod is to raise the front leg of the tripod and using the tilt on the head of a fluid video head or ball head with large plate.

This makes for a smooth dolly type shot and for the budding film maker it's an ideal way to be creative and start being more versatile.

Another trick is to use a rubber band around the operator handle on the video head for smoother panning. Yes, yes of course you can do this using your video software however it's great to know these can be done manually saving you time in editing later.

They're many other aspects with tripods too, you can double up on them if you have the budget and shoot some incredible time-lapse photography and 3D videography / photography.

Obviously with 3D photography two cameras are involved in the process as well as reasonable editing software.

So until the next post get out there and start thinking laterally about your tripod and the special features that some offer for all budgets.

Bye for now

David