May 27th, 2013
Excerpt from IM conversation friday night. Saturday morning we were on bikes and headed to a Bothy within striking distance of Ben Alder.
We had a look at getting up Ben Alder but aborted due to weather, dug snow holes and rode back out. Good fun anyhow.
I’ve got the go-ahead to share these images now. It just clicked that I was uncomfortable shooting with my 50mm plus primes so I screwed on my slower wide anglezoom and closed in on the crowd. I worked either crouching down or standing up at the front of the stage and made images hoping for focus and relative stillness from the dancers.
I normally decry the whole “If I had XXXX lens I’d have got the picture” thing, however I really did want a faster wide lens. All the same it was fun and challenging and I had to consider what pictures I could reasonably get and which were just wasting time.
The band, Jed, were very good and had ladies hitching up skirts (those wearing skirts) and kicking and swinging away. The energy was pretty intense and I was glad for the dual card feature in my 1D. It takes a just a second to switch cards and then I was shooting again. Anyhow, I’m a wide angle fanboy, it seems natural for me.
I read a post by Katia on David Alan Harvey’s road trip forum and embarked on a train of thought fuelled by the remains of a strong cup of coffee and watching too many of the escapist’s “zero punctuation” reviews. While it started in the familiar “documentary photographer moral dilemma” station, it wound up in a new and exciting destination. There are paralells to my weekend at this point so I have all the excuse I need to illustrate my ranting with pictures of kittens.
I genuinely started to wonder about this “fly on the wall” and “wait and you’ll become invisible” stuff that goes around. This is the staple of a certain kind of photography, and not neccesarily one I subscribe to. My first objection to this is that it is crazy to think that you a loud, luridly dressed, stinky biped will dissappear somehow. You can’t, you won’t, you don’t. People will accept you and get on with their lives or will make you part of what is going on.
This brings me to a shoot not so long ago in a nightclub where I’d wound up with an 85mm lens on my camera somehow and was shooting some people dancing with it. I had to stop, simply because it felt rude and voyeuristic to be working so far away. It felt better and LESS intrusive to screw on my widest lens and go shove it in their faces! I’m sure you’ve now given up on the forolorn hope of my sanity, but to ME it makes perfect sense. I’m not advocating walking up to strangers and touching your glass to their nose, thats pretty obviously rude. I’m suggesting that being ever-so-slightly obvious allows me to judge a subjects “comfort zone” much better than sniping.
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See, if I’m shooting from a continent away with long-assed-glass I’m as close as I can get to being a fly on the wall. I’m safer and I’m less conspicuous. However I have’nt neccesarily been “accepted” into the situation. Its easy to see how this could cause problems.
If I’m within arms reach and shooting, I’m pretty certain that everyone there has accepted me because frankly I AM obtrusive and its really really obvious what I’m doing. No-one can rationally claim suprise that I am taking pictures. If they wish to object, they can do so to my face without difficulty and thats OK, most of the time I’m only willing to shoot what people want to show. I fully accept there are times to fade away as much as possible, but the idea that you’ve dissappeared somehow is dangerous.
To jump on the train for the return journey of thought, if in all cases you ARE part of the situation and not some antiseptic recording device, does’nt that mean that you have a right/duty/obligation to intervene in some situations? If you are powerless, in danger or your photographs will do more practical good than intervention then you have a job to be getting on with. If you can help make things better in other ways, should’nt you?
A little ice water runs down between my shoulder blades when I hear “its for the cover…” or “got anything for the cover?”. Its good ice water though.
If its the former its a bit like a kick in the pants. Pics gotta sing. Trouble is, I was out of ideas. How does one illustrate “Adam Ramsey disqualified from probable election victory by out of hours campaigning. He waits for the verdict of an appeals committee” in a way that catches attention. I came up with nothing. Instead I just batted for a good average. Borrowed Kirsty to hold down a lightstand and umbrella and arranged to meet Adam. He happily went down to the library and spotted one of his election banners lying in a heap. We did some pictures with him sitting by it or standing by it but the paint on it ran onto his nice jeans. Crap. I did’nt figure I had a good enough range (nothing was suddenly like got it!) so he grabbed one of his cardboard backed posters (strategically deployed AFTER the worst pre-election weather) and I made frames like that. Changed up a bit more and then shot one pure available light frame of him reaching for a now-redundant poster. I asked if I could get a shot of him ripping it down but he thought that sounded too negative. If I’d read “the moment it clicks” a week ago, I would’nt have dropped my camera back in my bag when we were done with the flash shots and had to ask him to wait so I could make the first frame. Sod. Next time. Adam mutters “You photographers always use the last image you take…” We don’t. We pray our editors use the best picture we take and don’t hack the crap out of our masterpiece. Anyhow, off camera flash reproduces real nice on newspaper. I just need to switch up, been lighting from the right too much recently, normally with good reason like staircases and walls to the left, its starting to make everything look too similar. This is the shot that ran big on the cover:
Amplifico launched their long awaited debut album on Saturday the 1st of March to a capacity crowd in club Ego. Over five hundred fans were entertained by two support bands, including Aberfeldy, before the headliners took the stage. Despite niggling technical problems, the set was solid and exciting with no two songs sounding alike but the trademark ‘Fico sound still in there. The high point occurred when ‘Fico frontwoman Donna announced a taste of the future with a new song “Fists at the Sky” (which was so new it did’nt have a title when it was played) which was bursting with energy and felt like a clear step up. Being in the crowd for that song felt a bit like watching an old-skool final fantasy limit break sequence, only better. Old Amplifico songs like Combing My Soul For More sounded tighter and LOUDER. They borrowed Vicky Gray from Aberfeldy for backing vocals and violin and the brass component of Bombskare who sewed up a ‘Fico song in such solo style that had Donna faux worhsiping them. All in all when I staggered out, ears ringing, I was excited to imagine where Amplifico are going and how. Amplifico have solid live performances and an album that dares you to turn up your speakers another notch with each play, decent variety in music and undeniable charisma. They have’nt gone to any label and produced the album with donations from friends and wellwishers (who are acknowledged in the album cover notes). There is a lot of question in the media as to how far they can go it alone and online, making it worth keeping an eye on these Fifers. More photos here.