Don Denton is a photographer, photo editor and photo coach who lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
Interviews With Photographers
October 30, 2010 | Filed Under Featured, Literary Photographer, Photography | 1 Comment
I hope to start posting new interviews with photographers shortly. In order to give you an idea of what I hope to post here are a few links to interviews with photographers from my literary site Literary Photographer. I’ve put that site on hiatus in order to concentrate my energies here. These interviews all have a connection to writing but give you a pretty good insight into the photographers and the work featured.
It’s Not a Mistake If You Meant To Make It
October 26, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Photography | Leave a Comment
Atlanta based photographer Zack Arias had a recent blog post called Imperfect Work: Blowing it on Purpose with samples of work that was technically off but worked for the assignment he was working on. He showed images that were blurred, out of focus, had unusual focus or awkward posing.
They were all ‘wrong’ but they worked for shoot in question.
The one thing the photos are not, is mistakes.
The photographer made deliberate choices to create the an effect even if traditionally that effect has been considered an error.
It’s an important distinction to make especially for beginning photographers. You have to learn the rules before you can break them properly.
When marking students papers I’d often come across a photo that was tilted, out of focus or blurred. The out of focus or blur was usually just sloppy photography. The tilted frames though were often deliberate. The tilt usually added nothing to the image, was usually inappropriate for the assignment. When asked why they had shot the assignment that way the most common answer was that they thought it made the photograph more interesting but they weren’t able to answer why that was so or how the tilt enhanced the image. The reality was they had seen where a photo had been tilted for an effect and it struck them as an easy solution to photographic challenge. Instead of finding a better location, pose or lens they simply tilted the camera and there it was, an interesting photo.
It wasn’t though. It was still a failure, but now it was a tilted failure.
It’s easy to look through magazines, blogs and websites and to see lots of examples of blurred, out of focus, grainy, distorted imagery that is stunning but there is an equal amount that is just lazy or unskilled photography.
Photographers need to know not only how to create effects or looks, they need to know when they are critical for the image or assignment in question and then apply them.
Make sure when you make an error, it’s not a mistake.
I Only Miss The Photographs I Didn’t Take
October 24, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Featured, Photography | Leave a Comment
I think a lot about the images I didn’t take.
I’m not talking about the images that you were unable to capture because you messed up, your exposure was off, you had the wrong lens on the camera, that sort of thing.
I’m talking about the perfect image you see in front of you as you’re rushing to the airport or another assignment that you’re late for. That perfect sun lit sky that has disappeared by the time you find a parking spot.
The other morning I was driving to work and as I stopped for a red light, took a good look at the vehicle in front of me. It was a beat up old Chevrolet pick up truck with a cowboy hat wearing driver. The driver was perfectly silhouetted through the back window by the rapidly lighting morning sky (dark blue with hints of orange). My headlights illuminated the lettering on the back tailgate without taking away from the glowing red tail lights. I saw it all, a perfect, for lack of a better description National Geographic photo, all saturated colour. It was there for a few seconds and then the light changed and we all moved on
At the next light the truck was still in front of me but the cowboy silhouette was now marred by trees in the background. I was stopped at a slightly different angle so my lights didn’t pick out the Chevrolet letters on the tail gate the same way.
That perfect picture was gone, captured only in memory, and replaced in reality by ordinary morning rush hour traffic.
NY Times Asks If Photo Bookstores Can Survive
October 24, 2010 | Filed Under From the Newspapers, Photo Book | 1 Comment
The NY Times Lens blog is a great resource I check on a regular basis but somehow I missed this piece from September examining the closing of a photo book store in Maine.
Timothy Whelan closed his store October 2 but the article examines the challenges faced not only by speciaized stores but by all bookstores.
You can the story here.
Getting Up Close With Bugs
October 23, 2010 | Filed Under From the Newspapers | 1 Comment
I’m not usually a fan of bug pictures. It’s not actually a subject that comes up all that often in my world. These macro images of insects, by John Hallmen, posted in the Guardian are quite amazing and certainly worth a look. Check them out here.
Seth Godin, Bloggers’ Blogger
October 21, 2010 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment
If you read about blogs and bloggers you’re going to come across the name Seth Godin. He’s primarily known as a marketing whiz but he’s a prolific writer and blogger and held in high esteem by many. His blog isn’t always exactly what you’d expect from a marketing business guy and that’s what makes it such interesting reading.
Here are two excerpts from recent posts:
Deliberately uninformed, relentlessly so [a rant]
Many people in the United States purchase one or fewer books every year.
Many of those people have seen every single episode of American Idol. There is clearly a correlation here.
Access to knowledge, for the first time in history, is largely unimpeded for the middle class. Without effort or expense, it’s possible to become informed if you choose. For less than your cable TV bill, you can buy and read an important book every week. Share the buying with six friends and it costs far less than coffee.
Or you can watch TV.
The thing is, watching TV has its benefits. It excuses you from the responsibility of having an informed opinion about things that matter. It gives you shallow opinions or false ‘facts’ that you can easily parrot to others that watch what you watch. It rarely unsettles our carefully self-induced calm and isolation from the world.
and
What does ‘pro-business’ mean?
What makes a policy or a politician pro business? Some would tell you it includes:
Lower or eliminate the minimum wage
Eviscerate OSHA and other safety and pollution inspections
Make it difficult for workers to easily switch jobs from one company or another
Educate the public just enough for them to be compliant cogs in the factory system
Fight transparency to employees, the public and investors
Cut corporate taxes
I think these are certainly pro-factory policies. All of them make it easier for the factory to be more efficient, to have more power over workers and to generate short-term profits.
But “business” is no longer the same as “factory”.
You can read more these posts and of Seth Godin here
If You’re Stuck On The Centre, You’ll Miss Everything Else
October 21, 2010 | Filed Under Photo Coach, Photography | Leave a Comment
I hate making mistakes.
I especially hate making mistakes that are so basic I should have stopped making them years ago.
When I teach photography one point that I really try to drive home is that photographers have to pay attention to the foreground and background in their images. Our eye naturally goes to our subject and we don’t notice unfortunate details in front or behind the subject. We then end up with wires sticking out of heads and oher such rookie mistakes.
Last week I photographed Daniel Laskarin, Victoria artist and UVIC professor, for his new show Agnostic Objects (things persist) at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. One sculpture, called TurnyGurl, caught my eye and I really wanted to photograph Laskarin with it. The sculpture has a round circle that rotates while at the centre a video screen projects an image of a woman’s head turning. It was oddly mesmerizing, simultaneously (if that possible) the video screen pulling you into the centre while the outside circle was grabbing your attention as well. I wanted Laskarin framed by the circle and the girl in the video looking straight ahead. I got that but………………
I didn’t move the electrical cord on the floor. I saw it when I was first looking over the artwork but when I started shooting I was so focused on Laskarin’s face, the pink circle and the video screen that the cord just….evaporated, until I looked at the images in the computer.
Always, always check the foreground and back ground before you press the shutter.
I Keep Forgetting The Blog Is Just The Delivery Platform
October 20, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Personal | 1 Comment
Why am I blogging?
Well, the common wisdom when I had my website built was that you had to have a blog with your site. Everybody was doing it. If you wanted to draw attention to yourself and your work then you had to blog. Just having galleries of your photos wasn’t good enough. A blog however, if you posted at least twice a week, would have editors flocking to your site.
The reality is , of course, different. Posting a few photographs on your blog is no guarantee of anything especially if you start losing interest and only post now and then. Which is what had been happening here.
It was important to realize that the blog wasn’t was was important, the blog is only a platform for delivery, the content is what is important ( repeat to self Content is King, Content Is King).
I wasn’t sure what to do about my blog so I did a little research, mainly going back to blogs I like and taking a closer look at what it was that I enjoyed. I also checked out bloggers who blog about blogs and blogging, some of the more interesting ones anyhow and a couple of trends did emerge.
One was the advice that it wasn’t enough to just post a new photo, or piece of art or an update on what you ate for breakfast, that’s not enough to hold your readers interest, at least not very often or for very long. The other was that you should post on topics that you are interested in because you can usually find a group of readers who are interested in the same topics you are. If you write about those topics, in a manner that’s entertaining, controversial, timely and/or at the very least well written, you’ll pull in the people who have that common interest.
It all sounds obvious and it is, the challenge is in the doing, on a regular schedule and for a long period of time. The time part is especially important because that’s how you start to keep the readers that enjoy the same subjects you do and enjoy whatever it is you’re posting about them.
So, what am I going to do?
I’m going to keep blogging but on a far more regular basis (he says with fingers firmly crossed). I’m going to post on topics I find interesting. There’ll be lots of stuff on photography and photographers. I enjoy when I teach photo classes so I’ll try and make sure some of the posts are educational, maybe lessons learned from my assignments. I’ll write about other subjects I find of interest, things like the media (all of them), blogging and bloggers, public relations and marketing, travel, hockey, music, coffee, scotch and beer. Not necessarily in that order.
I’ll post photos too. Sometimes connected to the article, sometimes just because I like the image. I’ll keep posting the odd punk photo too because I know there is a group of people interested in those and because I am too.
Let me know how I’m doing.
Tim Ray and AV
October 17, 2010 | Filed Under Photography, Vancouver Punk | Leave a Comment
I’m continuing a long slow sort through my boxes of negatives. A good lesson as to why you should keep your work not only organized and catalogued as you create it but make sure you have adequate written information with the photographs. There are so many envelopes of negatives documenting events that I only have a vague remembrance of.
I came across a folder of images of Tim Ray and his band AV who were part of the early Vancouver punk explosion. I’ve been having difficulties with my neg scanner (the old software doesn’t seem to like the new computer) so I can’t scan my negatives right now. I did find this print though and scanned it on the flatbed.
The photograph shows (L-R) Tim Ray, Bill Napier-Hemy, Unknown to me, Colin Griffiths in a dressing room at one of the clubs. Napier-Hemy and Griffiths played in the Pointed Sticks as well.
Tim was an interesting guy with quite a theatrical performance at times. I was just looking at negatives that show him starting out a show while his upper torso was encased in a large bag that he then punched his way out off. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait for the fixing of the scanner before I can show those.
Annual Pumpkin Harvest Adds Colour To Gloomy Day
October 3, 2010 | Filed Under Photography | Leave a Comment
It’s now October and this time of year I always take a drive up through Saanich agricultural zone to see if the annual pumpkin harvest has started. It was cloudy out but the rain was holding off a good sign as they won’t harvest in the rain. It turned out to be busy in the fields with workers from both the Mar and Michell Farms busy loading the big orange vegetables (?) for transport to markets and stores.