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It seems like I may finally have run out of things to say.

This blog was always an experiment. I’ve enjoyed it greatly. I’ve enjoyed meeting you all. And now I’m bringing it to an end.

The domain will expire in the new year at some point. Everything will remain available until then. My contact details have been lodged here – a page that will outlive the domain expiry.

I may one day blog again. Or I may not. For now, I just want to take some photos and to see some of those photos on paper.

Thanks for stopping by.

Colin

There has been an outbreak of people asking (example) whether the advent of Google’s Street View imagery means the death of conventional photography. Why bother? people ask. There are Street View books, magazine articles, favorite image selections in blog posts and on and on and on. Won’t Google document the world? Can’t everybody else stop now?

Even allowing for some obvious questions about image quality (resolution etc), and the fact the Street View cameras won’t get everywhere, I think to ask the question is to misunderstand what documentary photographers have done in the past.

I’m not knocking Google’s efforts here at all. I love Street View. I’ve sent people google-links to the place I happen to be standing so that they can see something similar to what I can see. It is fun. It is educational. And it is undoubtedly documentary.

But it isn’t edited.

I know people edit it after the fact – that’s where the book comes from, after all. Although quite how long the intense interest in Google’s imagery will go on once we have all got used to the fact it exists remains to be seen. But after the fact editing is different, I would suggest, from editing live. And editing live is what a still photographer does. Where you stand and when you press the button are conscious decisions. Big, important, conscious decisions.

It is possible to over argue that Google’s pictures are neutral. Selection does go on at some level. But on a neutralness scale, the Street View pictures rate as “pretty neutral”. Whereas nobody would argue the same of Don McCullin, Sebastião Salgado or Henri Cartier Bresson.

I might characterise Google’s approach as record everything, whereas a still photographer has both an opportunity and a need to try to sum up in a single frame.

There is room for both, but let’s not confuse the two things.

It is amazingly easy to get out of the habit of taking pictures.

I’ve read enough of the trials and tribulations of people in other disciplines to know that photography isn’t unique in this regard. Any creative (suspend thoughts about misuses of that word) endeavour that isn’t an hourly paid job awkwardly combines effort without deadline.

Och.

I’ve finished flying around the world. I might write a bit about that on 57 North. Or I might not. I only have one measly internal flight booked for the whole of the rest of 2009 and *nothing* planned for 2010. I’m going to start my ‘roll a day’ photography programme. But next week :-)

I know full well that when I’m spending signficant time behind a camera that blogging thoughts will flow freely. In the meantime, continue enjoying the silence…

Right now I’m filling my new 1Tb backup drives (which takes some time at USB speeds), cleaning cameras and generally picking up where I left off.

More soon.

Photography is a broad church. Earlier this month I wrote a post that made it sound like I’d forgotten that.

I actually agree with Stephane’s comment:

For some it takes a lifetime to explore what others see as a narrow view. The path is beaten to death, we know. What we don’t know is what the others found following it.

There were two separate things going on in my mind. The first was whether I was still learning from the path that I was on. The second hits at the fundamental art problem – which is the disconnect between the experience of the producer and the experience of the consumer of any given artwork.

The photograph that I linked to was a timely reminder for me that there are other paths to explore. It was also a picture that I happened to like very much as a consumer.

The first point is, I think, fairly straightforward. The second is a constant source of confusion amongst consumers of art.

I can’t tell by looking at a random sunset grabbed off the net what the picture means to the artist. I can only say what it means to me. I might apply a stereotype about people who make that sort of picture, but, and this is the critical bit, stereotypes aren’t always a good guide.

It is very difficult to talk about a piece of art without making judgements that stray into the realm of the artist’s intent. If you have no idea what the artist was doing then you can’t comment about whether they’ve done it well. You can only talk about your reaction to it or make suppositions about their intent.

I walked around a charity art show (donated pictures – proceeds to help fund a hospice) at the weekend. There were a handful of interesting pieces, but for the most part the pictures weren’t stuff I’d have hung on my wall. It is very easy in such a circumstance to think of those pictures as bad art, whereas I’m guessing that at least some of them were significant for the producers, and all of them represented, at a minimum, the expression of a will to help fund a hospice.

For all I know one of the pictures there represented the a once in a lifetime eureka moment for somebody. And equally, looking at the fact that pictures were selling, some viewers were getting more out of the pictures than I was.

I’m still struck by how narrow a view the average landscapist takes of the world, but I’m not suggesting that my introspection means anything outside of my own mental state and practice.

Another Bessa 3 experiment at Quarr Abbey. Nothing to object to in this out of focus rendering (although this isn’t a severe test).

A few notes from the field before I forget them (some, but not all, of these points will apply to the micro 4/3rds Panasonic cameras as well).

The EP-1 is a pretty camera. It delivers results that are good when compared to my Ricoh digicam (which is what it replaced), but nothing like as good as my Leica M8 (which is what I know best and also what the Olympus now competes with for my attention). The standard 17mm lens isn’t great, but it is OK. Reviewers who have used both say that the Panasonic 20mm is better.

Some of what I thought were the shortcomings of the 17mm lens turn out to be shortcomings of the camera. The slow (as in slooooooow) focus and not really crisp files are down, respectively, to poor autofocus and (probably) the anti-aliasing filter. Everybody agrees on the former and my experience of Zeiss lenses on the camera suggests that latter.

In size and image quality terms the EP-1 sits roughly half way between a digicam and the M8. That’s quite an achievement, but may not be what I want. Here are a few bugs:

- the autofocus is too slow to use the camera as an autofocus point and shoot (I mean seriously use it, not Xmas party use it), but

- the camera is a pain to use with preset manual focus because you get insufficient feedback and it is far far too easy to knock the focus out of place.

- putting an old manual focus lens on an adapter gets over that problem but immediately brings up the problem of fuzzy corners. Film rangefinder super wide angles weren’t designed with sensors in mind. Without the clever angled microprisms that the M8 uses the pictures go off in the corners (and this despite the much greater coverage circle of those old lenses), so

- put the Olympus lenses back on…oh, and get gross barrel distortion.

Moving on to other things: the camera got a bad rep at its launch for its clumsy menu structure. This was fair, but not a deal breaker. I found that I could work my way around it well enough. However, although I learned all the key camera operations and controls when the camera was in daily use, as soon as I stop using the camera for a bit I forget how to use it. The controls are about as muddled as any I have come across. And OK, I’m at a bit of an extreme in that I like manual-no-electricity film cameras and think that a film Leica has a few superfluous bits, but I was happy enough with the Ricoh in use. For a main camera it wouldn’t matter, but for a camera designed as a carry around spare or lightweight fun device then ambiguous controls and forgettable layouts is going to be critical. The less often I use a particular camera the more obvious it has to be.

I end up thinking that I can’t use the camera for serious work and that it is too big as a pocket compact.

I was hoping for a camera which would bridge the gap between carryable but poor results and excellent results but too big. The EP-1 is so nearly it. I’m tempted by the GF1 (but for the lack of stabilisation is a downside that I need to think about). And, of course, there is the X1 soon. But for the moment I think that the good-enough-small-enough camera hasn’t arrived and I’m going back to carrying a full sized rangefinder.

Apart from the possibility of creating a pleasing snap, this was an experiment in handholding the Bessa 3 at 1/8th (which, considering that the lens is 80mm, is very slow).

My conclusion is: possible. Everything is slightly soft (although the wide open lens probably contributed to that too), but this is fully usable. No extra processing has been undertaken to combat the softness.

When I bought my Olympus EP-1 I ordered a Leica M to micro 4/3rds adapter to go with it. I specified the Panasonic branded one because Pany make a great play about it being Leica engineered (and therefore it really ought to be accurate) and because there really should be no warranty problem with an in-consortium item (when it turned out not to be accurate).

It still hasn’t turned up.

My experience of owning a Panasonic camera in the past (an L1 – remember them?) is that although the cameras have merits the supply of accessories and parts borders on the hopeless. My dealer says something similar. Even Panasonic batteries are on four month back-orders…

I’ve been loaned a no-brand adapter by Ffordes on approval (nice people, etc), so I’ve finally got that Zeiss 21mm mounted. I’ve now got to spend a little time checking that the adapter is a good one (sigh) – specifically infinity focus and across the frame flatness. Apart from not wanting to commit to shooting with an untested component, even no-name isn’t cheap.

I’d be tempted to order the micro 4/3rds Panasonic 20mm f1.7, but nobody has one and nobody has a date for their arrival. You’d think that a company the size of Panasonic would be able to get the supply chain sorted out. After all they are adding camera retail onto the back of an existing large organisation, not starting from scratch like Zeiss recently did.

Not for the first time in my photographic career Panasonic has lost a sale to me and stands approximately zero chance of binding me into a system camera.