I’ve though very much about the nature of photography as form of expression or art and of what differentiates a person with a camera from a “photographer” and a “photographer” from an “artist”.

Everyone has a camera, usually accessible at all times.
Phone cameras are half decent at snapshots, while dedicated digital cameras can be small and easy to pack around. These cameras can are are often used to record spur of the moment images and snapshots with the intent of creating a record to be shared with others. But the “person with a camera” is distinguished from a “photographer” not by equipment, but by intent and level of involvement.

The “photographer” knows their craft and their equipment. They are a craftsperson, with a level of mastery allowing them to envision and attain a particular result in particular situations. While they often shoot for the record, they likely also practice picture taking as a hobby or profession, becoming well versed on the techniques of one or many types of photography, be it portraiture, landscapes, wildlife, or any of the myriad other subgenres. Their dedication to attaining a set of skills may allow them to make all or part of their living using all or a subset of said skills. When one knows how to shoot a pleasing portrait, one can repeatedly shoot such portraits, perhaps even convincing others to pay for the honour of having their picture taken.

The “artist” likely also has a set of photographic skills they may or may not use to make a living. Like the “photographer”, they have attained a certain mastery of craft that allows them to envision a project and see it through to the desired end. Unlike the “photographer”, the artist has a unique vision. While the artist likely studied technique to get where they are technically, they are interested in pushing the envelope of technique in a unique way, presenting subject matter that is innovative and provocative. They have developed a vision of what they want to portray, and happen to use photography as an end to achieving that vision. They are not satisfied by developing a reliable technique and banking on it, rather they are satisfied by pushing the technique, scrapping it if need be, in order to properly see through a unique vision.

These thoughts have come to me at times that I have contemplated the legitimacy of photography as an “art” form. I realized that just as someone who can use a paintbrush is not necessarily an artist, neither is someone who can use a camera. Just because the basics of photography are “easy” compared to other artistic forms (though that is very much arguable) does not make photography a less legitimate form of expression. The tools and the medium have little to do with the legitimacy of art, rather it is the artist’s ability to forge a unique vision and use tools and medium to see it through that create a legitimate work of art.

For what it’s worth, the three above categories are just constructs, and I’m guessing no one with a camera always falls exclusively in one of them. I know I dabble in all three. Are they levels of attainment or mastery? I don’t think so. Maybe between “person with a camera” and “photographer”, as technical skills are easy to quantify. However, the differences between the “photographer” and “artist” categories are pretty sketchy and draw some highly subjective lines that depend on evaluation of certain qualities of work and approach.

In terms of esoteric theories of reality and valuation, the artist exudes dynamic quality while the “photographer” practices “static” quality in their work. I’m sorry for the reference to what is by now a rather dated and much forgotten theory, but I feel it certainly brings something to understanding in this context.

I’m not intending this ramble to be in any way a comprehensive theory or framework of any sort.  I’m just really good at overthinking things.  Especially in the winter when I’m stuck inside.

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PS- If you’ve read this far and are wondering what the photo accompanying this post has to do with anyone, click through to it’s Flickr page. I will say it’s a great example of artistic vision seen through.

Almost a year since I put this blog on indefinite hiatus, and I’m feeling like it might be time to start up again.  Like many a blog, there isn’t much of a coherent focus here, but I’d like to start blogging again away.  I might just really like how my photos look with this theme.  So here’s the game:  I post a photo then write about something (most likely tangently) related to it, maybe personal, maybe technical.  Sometimes there’ll be a lot of writing, sometimes not much.  The point is still to get myself talking about my photography.

Speaking of which, I’m featured this week on Awesome Okanagan’s In Focus Friday.  I got to spout off about my work, and there’s a few shots too.  This is coordinated by Jeremy of the I Love the Okanagan Flickr group.  Check out the group if you want to see some terrific perspectives on the valley.

This project is, as you may have figured out, on indefinite hiatus. Please go see my flickr, which is updated constantly.

In addition, I was sent this link a week or so ago, to a photo essay which is part of a project put together by the National Film Board of Canada exploring the human impact of the failures of our economic system. If you are thirsty for some impactful documentary stuff do check it out… (again, that preceding “check it out” is a link).

I do many different so called genres of photography, but there’s a special place in my heart for night photography, for that time when most photographers put away their cameras. The night removes many veils that our society uses to obscure its less “safe” aspects. Without the presence of people, our buildings are revealed for the ridiculous edifice they are. People who society and (especially) police generally see as less desirable or attractive come out of hiding, allowed to be present in the anonymity of darkness. The night provides space for the less typical to exhale.

At first, night photography appealed to me because of its novelty, the prospect of revealing that which the naked eye alone is incapable of seeing. As time has gone on, I learned the above, of the ability of such work to de and recontextualize what we all encounter in everyday experience. The buildings and streets we walk among and on, the people (human and non-human alike) that we do or do not see or notice, the spaces, occupied or not that normally exist beyond our rushed daytime perception.

A formerly unconscious strand of such work of mine has been the need to see solitude in these busy and inhuman (and inhumane, and inanimal for that matter) environments. There is a certain apocalyptic outlook to be seen through my eyes. A place with less human presence, where the collective monolith of our society, out civilization has gone to seed. But there is also a hopeful aspect here, as this new absence creates a void waiting to be filled with the possibility of a new kind of existence that draws from the very, very old, from a time in which humans did not destroy through poisoned relations with the rest of the world.

So these pictures portray not only the dystopia in which we live that is revealed beneath the veneer of rushed daily existence, but also the utopian possibilites that lurk beneath such seemingly unlikely places. I’m not content simply to take pictures, I have an urge to use this capturing of perception to open up a dialogue that prepares us for an uncertain future, while also helping us see the beauty and the ugliness that exists just beneath the mundane surface of the everyday.

Sometimes I wonder if photography is the most effective medium with which to do this. Certainly a precedent has been set in both writing and music for such work that as described above. But photography (or at least my own) must work with what exists and with the narrow scope of narrative available to it compared with those forms. To attempt a dialogue about an uncertain future, and the past that led us to this present, in a medium that can describe only the present is perhaps setting myself up for disappointment. But maybe having to use the reality I see now to portray any of a number of realities I or others can envision for the future will make that portrayal all the more poignant.

This image was made some months ago, around April of 2009 I think. At the time my computer had been on the outs and it had just had a life saving translplant to Linux. This left me unable to use my standard program for processing, necissitaing a switch to a freeware image editing program. A couple weeks later I was back using Lightroom, but not before I had edited this batch of images in Linux. These images in retrospect were found by me to be unsatisfactory. So now, as part of my usual year end roundup I’ve redone them in lightroom. The result is a far better treatment.

For me, a picture of a picture necessarily evokes some vague feeling of nostalgia, some idyllic but lost past. The discarded polaroid, along with the dirt and dust drive the point home here. What the picture in the picture portrays is vague and can only be made it vaguely, as is the case with the caption. The decay of the photographs portrayed helps to drive home the paradise lost concept. The quaintness of a polaroid photograph, now in the process of being ground into the dirt, rock and rubble.

(An aside: if this seems a bit contrived it’s because I’ve been having a tough time finding the words to go with the pictures on this blog this week, but I didn’t wanting to cop out by posting either nothing or just a shot, so there you have it. Can’t all be winners eh.)

What’s this, a picture of a person? I think this may be the first portrait I’ve posted on this blog.

I shot this with my aformentioned S70, at one of the best little restaurants in Vancouver, Seb’s Market Cafe. The photo started in colour, fairly underexposed. I post-processed it into this. Which leads me to a topic. Many people like to talk about the sterility of digital photography, how many images are too perfect with none of the little idiosycrosies that they (romantically) associate with images shot on film. And indeed many shots on film do have a more organic look to them, at times even ethereal. Likewise, many digital shots do look sterile and robotic.

I would argue though, that the potential to make these digital shots look something other than sterile and robotic lies nearly entirely in the hand of the photographer now. I also think the tools to manipulate ones images are easier to learn, understand and access than they were in the “film age”.

When I take a digital photograph I approach the capture as the method to get the raw materials I need. The cameras sensor gets me a recording of light and it’s up to me to mold it into my vision. I can’t complain if what the sensor produces is too “sterile” or not vibrant enough or whatever, as it is up to me to work with the camera then to take what it gives me and work with that.

As far as manipulation goes, in the film age it would be difficult to achieve many of the things we achieve now at low cost. The above shot is evidence of such. The images out of camera was nice, but it was only a starting point. From it, I drew an image with warmth and texture and nuance.

I know there are digital photographers out there who see post shot manipulation as cheating somehow. There is a common conception that photography should portray “reality”, as if there was a common and shared total reality, as if every photographer sees everything the same way. What should be kept in mind though, is that by shooting jpegs and eschewing post processing you simply let the camera colour reality for you. The people who developed the camera’s jpeg algorithm are post processing that shot for you. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s something to think about.

PS- I just picked up a classic SMC Pentax 55/1.8. On an apc crop sensor dslr this is right around the classic portrait focal length of 85mm. So watch for more portraiture here and on my flickr

I’ve spent a lot of time on this new blog talking about what I would call the philosophy behind my photography and how the mechanical aspects of the work (composition, colour, angle, etc) combine with my conscious and unconscious states of mind to form an artistic impression that drives at a point a may be trying to make. Well today I’d like to talk about things more prosaic.

The above image was shot with my shiny (nearly) new Canon Powershot S70. In the past I’ve shot extensively with compact digital cameras mainly for reasons of budget (I shot a lot with film slrs manual and automatic as well). For a long time a DSLR was just not in the cards financially. As such I’m familiar with the tradeoffs involved, even more so now that I’ve shot equally extensively with a DSLR. Compact digital cameras are capable of much more than many photographers will give them credit for. We’re now seeing a new wave of enthusiast and even interchangeable lens compacts by Olympus, Canon, Sigma, Panasonic and others.

Many of my favourite shots, the ones that really stick in my memory, were taken with two such cameras: a Fujifilm E510, and a Fujifilm E900.  The E900 if I may say was a raging overachiever with a 9 million pixel super CCD that gifted its shots with beautifully organic colours and rendered a lot of detail while allowing me for the first time to shoot and experiment with ccd-raw files.

When my refurbished E900 kicked the bucket (sadly after only 9 months or so), after shooting film for a few months I decided to finally pull the trigger on a DSLR which I love.  But I’ve missed some things.  One is the ability to have a camera I can take anymore, including to the pub to take humiliating shots of my friends without worrying about its bulk or its being handled by drunken bar patrons and pals.  Two is the unobtrusiveness that allows one to blend in to the landscape and get shots otherwise improbable.  Three is the compactness of the kit that fits in a coat pocket or can be easily carried and handled in one hand.

So I did some research and decided on a Canon S70.  Sure I would’ve loved a new S90 or a Panosonic LX3 (or a micro four thirds camera for that matter) but I set myself a budget of not much more than one hundred dollars.  The S70 shoots raw, it has a good and wide (28mm equivalent) lens, it’s fairly small, it looks sharp, and it has a sterling reputation for taking quality photos. It also has a built in intervalometer which I’m stoked about using to make hokey time lapse movies.

So I’ve been carrying this camera around for a week or so , taking a lot of throwaway shots while I learn to use it well. And it turns out Lightroom 3 is out, so I got to use a “new” program to edit my photos from my “new” camera. I was impressed more than anything with the flexibility of the files. I didn’t think I’d be able to get much more detail or range out of them then the camera could, being that small sensors don’t have the best reputation in this regard. But the little S70 blew me away with its 7 megapixel files. The above picture is a good example of this. I was able to recover considerable detail in the sky especially and even add some fill light without bringing up a crapload of noise. This bodes well indeed. There were a few more keepers as well. So here’s my somewhat arbitrary conclusion: If you are shooting with a compact, even one that’s nearly three years old, don’t think for a second that you (or your camera) are not capable of mind blowing results.

I moved to Vancouver a year and a half ago. Between then and now many things have happened and our lives have changed in big ways. Throughtout it all I’ve shot many photos here and in the past year and a half I think I’ve really come into my own as an artistic photographer. I’ve managed to develop a real vision for what sort of stories I wish to tell. While living here, I’ve gone out of my way to go out of my way. I’ve tried to walk through lesser known neighborhoods, to find the hidden Vancouver so to speak. And by hidden I don’t mean underground art shows or concerts or scenes.*

I mean walking through everyday neighborhoods, through industrial areas, paying attention to things others don’t pay attention to or bother to look at. (Writing this it sounds pretty hyperbolic and I’m suddenly not sure if I’ve done such a good job at photographing it as much as talking about it. Either way it’s a work in progress). I’ve enjoyed doing these things so much, and I’ve discovered worlds within worlds and places I had no idea existed.

When people describe something as picturesque, I think they generally mean a beautiful vista, vibrant colours, and other trappings of a stereotypically “good” photograph. When I think of something picturesque I see something akin to the above scene. Apparently I’m not the only one, as there was a sign on this building advertising its availability for movie shoots. For me, this photo describes well the winter hear, dark, damp, and in places (if I may be allowed the alliteration) dickensien. This has proven to be one of my favourite things about living in a big city, you can be here for years and never see all there is to see.

As for the mechanics of this shot, things are again quite processed. A heavy hand on the fill light and an equally heavy hand on the shadows produced the grainy, painterly look. I think it’s very noir without using the well worn grainy monochrome trope.

I’ll be leaving Vancouver late this year, and I’m going to miss it a lot. I’ll likely return quite a bit. In the meantime I’ll be taking as many of this sort of photo as I can.

*I don’t even mean going down to the DTES and taking poverty porn shots, it’s been done over and over and seems more and more to be a cover for photographers who simply want to be lauded for going to the “scary” DTES and taking “socially aware” photos. All the while pretending that taking yet another set of pictures of poor people somehow helps them (please note that I’m not saying it can’t help, rather I don’t think it often does help to objectify homelessness). Whatever I have to contribute to the discourse and action regarding such issues won’t be through the photographing and objectifying of the poor. Maybe this is a good subject for another post?