Paris - Paul Almasy

In the blooming of post-war Paris, finding its feet after conflict, occupation and hardship philosophy and culture blossomed. Into this world stepped Hungarian photographer Paul Almasy. Taking his camera onto the streets he captured the vibrancy and work-a-day of this European hub synonymous with romance, intrigue and life itself. The pavements proved a great place to capture small pieces of lives that grew into an evocative picture of the fifties and sixties.

This recently published book of photographs from the era underline Almasy's important place among the chroniclers of this great city. Although not the first to present a pictorial record of Paris these pictures are evocative and meaningful.

Published by teNues Media ( https://books-teneues.com/ ) I paid £12.50 for a hardback version on Amazon, although I note that following other recent reviews the price has almost doubled today so look around.

Incidental pictures

Sometimes you have no idea what you will see. This is what makes wandering with a camera such fun. It also teaches any photographer to not only look but to see. Looking can uncover potential but seeing how you can create a photograph from it is another skill altogether.

This photo was taken five years ago during a visit to my brother and sister-in-law in Cardiff. We went for a walk around the Cardiff Bay area, a location much improved over recent years with the erection of a barrier, the inclusion of a marina and wildlife spaces as well as the usual luxury apartments and trendy eateries and coffee bars.

The sun was shining and it was the perfect day for photography buy it was while strolling past a metal fence that I noticed the reflections on the stone. Of course as soon as I moved to take the shot the sun dimmed and the reflection disappeared. Luckily it re-appeared a few minutes later and I got this shot. Abstract in nature and of no particular place it draws the eye at least partly because of the regular lines in the top of the picture and the more chaotic wriggles in the lower half.

A lucky observation? Maybe, but if I hadn't been seeing as well as just looking I would probably have missed it.... This is what makes incidental pictures such fun. The fact you have been able to create something from a moment that is fleeting.

You an orchestra you a bomb

This blog is both a review of Cig Harvey's third collection from 2017 and a recommendation and introduction for her wider work. 

Scanning the photographs in this book it may seem a strange and incoherent mishmash of pictures. From some super focussed pictures: a bird apparently being released by an open hand to the less focussed glove puppet dog eating leaves. From the picture of her daughter standing looking from the broken rear window of a Wagoneer to the seemingly jumbled trees which harbour a dark, slight figure, hardly seen. But it is a triumph of Picasso's words "It took me four years to paint a Raphael but a lifetime to paint like a child." Here is the secret to the photographers art. The less obvious is as important. The small things have stature. Creating atmosphere is as important as giving clarity. Mystery is to be solved. The obvious may need to be better understood.

Here is a book of family, of affirmation and of life....and almost, death. It was produced after a serious collision that left the photographer badly injured, unable to speak and facing a long recovery. 

Over the last four years or so Cig Harvey has become a muse and major influence in how I look at photography. I had come across Harvey before I saw this book, I had seen some pictures in a magazine and then followed her up on the internet where I found an illustrated interview with her on You Tube. A more recent interview is now online and is listed below. 

A British photographer who has lived in the US for some years now (via Barcelona and Bermuda) she is thoughtful, imaginative, experimental and clearly has huge talent. Colour is important to her but she is skilled in using black and white to drive emotion. She clearly wants people to be provoked into thinking and looking beyond the picture that you see as her books affirm and her narrative style lays out the challenges both for photographers looking for inspiration and her viewers.

She has been awarded several prestigious awards in the USA and is represented by several large galleries, including Huxley Parlour in London.

Her books are Schilt Publishing and Gallery in Maine and are often limited editions which makes them very expensive. Her prints from the gallery well over £2000. This book is currently out of print. ( www.schiltpublishing.com ) 

I bought mine via ebay for a reasonable sum :-)

IMRC lecture series - Cig Harvey :- https://vimeo.com/362177565 

Photographs from this book :- https://www.cigharvey.com/youanorchestrayouabomb

Post production

This picture was taken whilst driving through Holderness on my way to Sunk Island in late August 2018. The smoke caught my eye and the road leading to it curved nicely in the direction the smoke was drifting The trees either side of the bend provided a good balance to the emptiness on the right of the picture. The smoke echoed the cloud cover that day too.

The first edit was in colour and I cropped more closely (16:9) into the trees and smoke whilst darkening the exposure slightly, increasing the white so that the clouds would gain more definition and slightly saturating the colour. I also did a straightforward black and white conversion from the original without a crop or changing the exposure or contrast. This was later printed and shown in the Ferens Open.

When I recently revisited the photograph (lockdown gives plenty of time to look at improving older photos when you can't travel for new ones) I decided to see if I could enhance. The second mono photograph has been considerably sharpened (using Topaz) and I also applied a diagonal graduated filter in Lightroom starting at the top right hand corner. You can see the darker sky where I have increased the contrast and again darkened the exposure.

Whether or not it is an improvement is up to you to judge. As Ansel Adams once said " The negative is comparable to the composers score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways."

Quartered

Sometimes you see something when you are not expecting it. One aspect of photography which has alwasy interested is composition. How do you make a picture interesting as well as capturing an image that people understand. I quite like to try and make people look twice.

I was visiting Yorkshire Sculpture Park with my friend Alina. We had already done two galleries in Leeds and then travelled via Wakefiled and the Hepworth so it was time for a coffee before we made as much of the park as we could. 

I found myself alone at the table for a minute and realise that the central pillar of the window alonside the half closed blinds would provide a picture that was neatly quartered if I produced a square crop. The bend in the path led the eye towards the central point and the writing on the window identified the exact spot.

Later when I processed the picture I tried both mono and colour but the mono won as the strength of the sun had drained most of the colour away and left it looking insipid.  

I still like this picture for exactly the reasons I took it and, despite the fact Alina is not in it, it reminds me of the visits we made that day. She returned to live and work in Romania shortly afterwards.

FRAMES Magazine

FRAMES - a new, international, quarterly magazine

This new magazine will launch in the autumn of 2020 and seems to be an extremely comprehensive and high quality product in the making. It's byline is " Excellent photography belongs on paper" and the aim is to make a great print magazine with photographs from across the globe available to all. If you consider the price of individual prints these days then around £20 per quarter for 100 printed pages of a high quality is excellent value.

But there is more. The FRAMES Facebook page is a highly active page with over 4K membership currently, a mix of professional and serious amateurs. You need to ask to be let in but that isn't a problem unless you break the rules. It has some stunning original work and active input from the editor, Tomasz Trzebiatowski, as well as commentary and comment from the community which can tackle such sticky issues as the intrusiveness (or not) of street photography, the legitimate uses of post production techniques (or not) and a range of other photographic considerations. Polaroids, film, pinhole and digital are all here.

You can approach the Facebook group here :- https://www.facebook.com/groups/framesmagazine/ 

In addition the webpage has a range of individual photographs with commentaries by the photographers and interviews with leading lights in the photographic community. You can see the website here :- https://readframes.com/magazine/ and subscribe to the weekly newsletter from there as well. 

Personally I am really looking forward to the launch and a magazine of such a wide range of work without the usual advertisments and technical detail. There are enough of those already. Congratulations to Tomasz on such well conceived concept...and good luck.

A first sight

From time to time I will publish new photographs on my blog - a first sight for those who might be wondering what I am doing.

The last few stormy days coupled with the continued virus alerts have meant that I have not ventured far. Luckily I live in a part of the country where it is easy to escape to solitude, as was the case when I took to the Transpennine Trail two days ago. The trail starts on the East Coast at Hornsea and ends in Southport or Liverpool depending on which spur you take. The big skies of the flat Eastern section are notable and amazing when stormy weather has gathered.

This section follows the Humber from Brough to Crabley Creek along a raised embankment which does nothing to shelter you from the wind. The Humber is a wide river which deposits 25% of all rainwater falling on England into the North Sea. It's tributaries run from the Wolds either side of the river as well as the Pennines, North Yorkshire Moors and Peak District. The river can be seen as the silver ribbon at the bottom of this picture while the clouds build towards a storm. I was concious that the day before the wind had blown a similar set of clouds across the river in less than five minutes which sent me from admiring their formations to sheltering beneath some trees (to little avail - I was soaked with five minutes). This time I made it back to the car without a drenching...