Blog Post #73

Happy New Year

Happy new year to all our blog followers! I think 2024 is going to be a pivotal year for the UK and with so much going on around the world we will not escape the effects of conflict and increasing mass people migration. The inevitable unrest (protests etc.) can provide many opportunities for documentary photographers though and I hope to engage in some of this as the year unfolds.

Goals for 2023

I mentioned in my last blog post that I would review the new year goals that I set myself back in January 2023. It makes for painful reading…

1. Investigate and start compiling a submission for “Associate of The Royal Photographic Society”, (ARPS). - Failed

2. Do a second pass on my B&W negative archive to see if I missed any photos I want to digitise. - Failed

3. Get more knowledgable in the workings of my new Fujifilm X-T5 - Achieved

4. Have a go at video - Achieved (kind of)

5. Get more use out of my Elinchrom studio equipment - Failed

6. Try and become more proficient in playing my guitar. - Failed miserably

Given the poor performance in failing to hit 4 of these and just managing a pass on the other two, I will roll these on to 2024 and endeavour to achieve 100% success this time next year.

The 2023 Review YouTube video.

Firstly, thanks to all of you that have already viewed the YouTube video on my Review of 2023. If you haven’t had the opportunity to view it you can do at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPY972Rriww&t=93s

To date, as I write this blog, the video has had 54 views, 4 Likes and 2 comments. Not exactly an internet sensation but I honestly didn’t know what to expect. I also got a few comments on the blog post “comments” section. On the positive side I learned some valuable experience on how to shoot video on my Fuji X-T5. One issue I had was with focussing. Using the camera’s autofocus features the recordings were affected by “hunting”, where the autofocus system in both static and continuous modes struggled to stay in focus and went in and out of focus continually. I ended up using manual focussing mode using peak highlight focussing and this solved the issue. I was using a 23mm lens at a wide aperture so I think the system was struggling to maintain focus down to this combination. Thanks to my friend Paul Russell of Newshot Productions for his help and advice.

Doing a piece to camera was a lot harder than I thought and it made me realise how good these people are that do this for a living. I lost count of how many “takes” I had to do, whether it be stumbling over words, forgetting the script or just sounding naff. In the end I had to settle with what you see in the video. I think I may try it again sometime, it was fun doing it.

Shoot boring photos too

I saw one of these daft questions on Facebook this week that just said “What would you tell your younger self ?”. At first I just scrolled past it but then I thought, from a photography point of view, what would I tell myself or for that matter someone who is now of the age I was when I started out ? It would definitely be to take a lot more photos. Whilst we are always chasing the zinger of a photo or one that will be a competition winner, we should also take shots of what you think are the boring and mundane views. Things such as your village, town or city centre, street scenes, people, areas under threat of development and local events etc. I wish I had done a lot more of this when I was younger and this advice is particularly pertinent to young photographers. If you look at my black and white archive on my website, you will see photos that are getting on for 50 years old. None of them are what you could say are photography masterpieces but from a nostalgia and historical record point of view they are precious. I “sat” on these photos for over 40 years before releasing them on the world using the power of the internet. I knew when I was taking them and tucking them away that there would come a day when I would share them. Such has been the interest in these photos, they have been printed as four books with multiple print runs and many individual prints of some of the images have been ordered.

There are more photos being taken now than at any point in history given the popularity of camera phones. My advice to my younger self or any young photographer today would be to record and preserve the images you take of life around you, ditch the selfies and create an archive that one day you too can be proud of and is appreciated by lots of people.

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and thank you for reading it. If you want to comment on this blog post please do so below or you can contact me by using the “Contact Me” facility in the website header.

Pete