The more sites and images I see, the more I notice how a lot of photographers or artists attach the word “photography” to their name… You see it in watermarks… so and so photography.  Or in calling cards… so and so photography.

In this digital age where everyone is a photographer (so that old saw goes), what are your thoughts on this?  It’s a bit inane to be spending some brain time on a topic like this one but it can get to be a drag once you start thinking about YOUR name.

To a certain extent, I sometimes cringe when I hear somebody say, “Oh, I am into photography”.

Take note that I passed that road once as well so I am just as guilty as the next excitable dslr toting newbie out there.

Question is, for artists or photographers of your calibre (and I say this because I think you folks take “photography” seriously), does it diminish to have that as a part of your brand?

There are days when I find it corny and yet if you just say you do “Street”, they might ask you to sweep it or ask you for a brochure is you say “Travel”.

That’s why the longer I get into it, I’ve noticed this certain tendency to withdraw more , to be alone, and sometimes not even participate (with quite a few exceptions like LiF).

I guess I’m not really cut out to be a businessman.  Hahaha!!!

Have a great weekend, guys.

Thanks for the help with interpreting my new images. How does this work as an Artist Statment? I’m very open to edits.

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“A heart that’s full up like a landfill

A job that slowly kills you

Bruises that won’t heal

“…I’ll take a quiet life

A handshake of carbon monoxide.”

(Radiohead)

I’m forty years-old with a wife, two daughters, a house, and a nice car. I have a good job and lots of friends. I have little to complain about. Yet, I often times I feel more isolated than ever. Despite all the good around me, some days I’m happiest alone – isolated from the mounting responsibilities and pressures of my everyday life.

The images are designed to convey the sense of emptiness and aloneness that I often seek as an escape. Yet, I don’t feel total disillusion. The solace of isolation is but a fleeting moment or perhaps an illusion. For that reason, while the scenes are without people, there is evidence that people were there, and will be back again — a coffee cup, sneaker marks, an empty car, graffiti, even the buildings themselves are empty for only the moment I see them with my camera. When I leave, they will be once again occupied — just as I will be once again connected to my everyday life.

Hi guys. I emailed Lawrence about this yesterday and he advised me to post it on the forum.

I’ve been thinking of having my own site to act as some sort of online resume. A blog feature would be nice but not really necessary at this point.
I was looking at Wordpress but it seemed a bit too complicated. i’m thinking plug and play type of a platform as i am really technically challenged when it comes to these things.
A friend of mine also suggested to use blogger, a google platform.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks!!!

I remember that many of us had specific goals at the beginning of the year. I would love to hear where each one of us is in achieving those goals as we got to the end of May and June is here. In my case while I am on track on some of my priorities, it appears that my focus has temporarily shifted… Maybe it is time to reflect and incorporate old and new goals.

Last week I had a few interesting experiences.  I managed to obtain a few books that I thought were inspiring, some even contradictory in approach and philosophy. Here is a bit of the this and that, that occupies my mind and tastes lately.

I regularly purchase LensWork, the magazine. Their editorial page reads as follows: ” The premise of LensWork is that photography is more than mere craft. Photography is, or can be a way of life. Beyond cameras and equipment, beyond film and chemistry, beyond pixels and technology lie the mysteries of the creative life shared by those who strive to communicate and express themselves clearly…”

I think we all have been bitten by the photography bug and some of us would have to agree with the statement made above. However, some of us  have a camera, chemistry, process fetish as well that remains difficult to satiate and that feeds on our photographic addiction to ever more demanding heights.

On “Beyond the Zone System”  Phil Davis expounds on another of his concerns that seems somehow to strike a nerve with photographers still fascinated with process and craft:

“Photography has many faces. It can record scientific data, stimulate sales, document news events, provide calendar illustrations, and keep family memories alive. It is a vital tool, serving some practical purpose in almost area of our society. It’s one of the most engrossing and rewarding hobbies imaginable. It’s also the most widely practiced and most popular art form in history.

Everyone, it seems, is a photographer. Modern automated cameras are virtually foolproof, modern films are sensitive enough to record satisfactorily images in almost any light condition, and commercial processors can provide 1-hour service. It is no wonder photography is considered an easy medium in which to work. Anyone who can point a camera and press a button can make photography.

If you take photography seriously, though, it isn’t really that simple. It only seems that way because scientists and designers have worked for many years to protect us from any sort of technical unpleasantness. They’ve devised products and processes of incredible complexity – functional and reliable enough, but mysterious in their workings. We can marvel at the miracle of autofocused, autoexposed color pictures that develop themselves in daylight before our eyes, but this automation bars us from participating in the photographic part of the miracle. We can contribute only after the fact, and in a limited way, by dissecting or manipulating the packaged image that the camera delivers.

In this extreme example, technology provides the product but insulates us from the process. On the other extreme, technicians who supervise the development of color film in a commercial laboratory must be concerned with the process alone; they are denied a product in the usual sense.

Most of us aren’t content to settle for either of these extremes. The automatically produced picture is depersonalized and cheapened by the ease of its creation, and the control of the process for its own sake strikes most of us as drudgery. There’s not much challenge – nor much potential reward-in working with a process that runs itself. It’s human nature to want to create something tangible that others will admire or recognize as significant. ”

What are your thoughts on this?

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I had previously recommended “The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes” by Christopher James as a complete bible on alternative photography processes. I would like to add to that list the following two books:

“Platinum & Palladium Printing” 2nd edition by Dick Arentz

“Photographic Possibilities” 3rd edition by Robert Hirsch, talks /exemplifies  the expressive use of equipment, ideas, materials and processes.

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Although I am  not fond of matte printing paper for a variety of reasons, I have lately been experimenting with split toners on matte paper and also with Marshall’s oil paints on matte paper images. I must say that I have had fun so far but it will require a little more testing before I start posting my first image results. :)

Here’s a question for all of you LIF members: why do you take pictures? Simple question that I struggle to answer. Curious on your perspectives.

Someone asked me on my blog recently who my photographic influences are (other than you guys of course :)… I had a think and came up with this list… i’m actually very poorly read when it comes to professional photographers (even the masters) but know enough to definitely claim I’ve been influenced / inspired on way or another… here’s the list i came up with… care to share yours?

* Ansel Adams – still unsurpassed, even to this day

* Robert Doisneau – my favourite of the master street photographers

* Robert Capa – helped me understand the subject and emotion were more important than the sharpness and focus. also best photographic quote “if your photo’s not good enough, you’re not close enough”

* Diane Arbus – again, underscored for me the importance of having a style, subject and that the classic perception of beauty is not always the most interesting thing

* Hiromix. Japanese photographer. Popularised everyday / diary style photography in Japan

* Gregory Crewdon, mentioned above

* Nick Brandt. Modern photographer who does fine art nature photography… his work still blows my mind

* Ellen Von Unwerth. Probably my favourite photographer

“The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes” by Christopher James
“The Tao of Photography” by Gross & Shapiro

“The Elements of Photography: Understanding and Creating Sophisticated Images” by Angela Faris Belt

Let me know if you have any photography books you would like
to recommend. :)

I’m trying to get to grips with all the different types of film, what’s available, where to print in Seattle, etc. Given we are lucky enough to have a number of film aficionados on this site, I thought i’d take advantage of that and cheat on the homework i set myself this weekend… Kal / David / Lorin / Raul / etc – would be great if you can post your favourite films. So far, in my limited experience I’ve just used Kokak Porta VC and some Kodax Tmax… i bought a bunch from Fuji today which I’ll be trying out over the next week or so and wanted to get everyone’s opinion.

BTW, in some crazy deal, I acquired 30 (!!) old, vintage toy cameras on Thursday. I’ll post more about that tonight!

I’ve been asking myself this question for some time… or rather it often takes the form when I’m asking Akuri “why do i bother with all this?”. To put “all this” into context, in 5 years, photography has cost me over $10k worth of gear, hundreds of hours walking around looking for shots and dozens more staring at a computer screen. What exactly do i get out of it?

It’s been an interesting journey. when i started i just wanted to take pretty pictures. Then of course I met Chuck and his Urban Melancholy series and all that changed. After that I wanted my photography to mean something. I got pretty good at that and took an obvious next step of thinking “maybe I can get really good at this”. Things improved. I was getting lots of pats on the back, seeing the world differently and able to either create or critique images with ease. The motivation was flowing for a while but then things got a bit stale – i needed a new challenge.

Next came along some commercial gigs. I had lots of friends asking me to take pictures of their family / wedding / etc. I tried that. Hated it. Decided I’d only do probono work. Then came the really interesting commercial work – The Contender Asia. In a couple of years I’d gone from shooting pictures of flowers to in my living room to being the official photographer in what was probably the best photo job in Singapore for 2007. This opened lots of doors. I could write to event organisers and get access – like when I shot Federer vs Sampras or Sharapova in Malaysia. The first time was really exciting – sitting alongside associated press, reuters, etc. The second time I felt like i’d been here before. Maybe i get bored easily. But what about getting published – this a dream for me when i started. Well, after the Contender series hit the streets, my photography ended up getting into 50+ different newspapers / magazines, etc. The thrill soon wore off.

The money from The Contender Season 4, which followed in 2008, was pretty good. But this time we didn’t publish the photos. Turns out that I have a entire career worth of boxing images that will possibly never see the light of day. That thought would have killed me 5 years ago. Now I barely think about it.

What happened? Did i stop caring about photography or just stop caring about how others saw my work? Did I achieve the goals I set out to achieve too quickly? Did I not set the bar them high enough and i’m stopping way short? Or am i heaping too much praise on myself, I just got lucky a few times and i’m off base in my critique of myself? I’ve been asking myself these quesitons for the past year or so – in the hope that the answer will bring me newfound motivation and direction.

Well the answer came to me in an unexpected form the other day. Ume, one of our beloved dogs who you’ve seen in so many countless images with Akuri, passed away last Friday. We are devasted and shocked. She was far more than a dog to us – an integral part of our family whose daily presence lit up our lives. Her passing happened frighteningly quickly over a traumatic period of a month or so. This is the most I’ll write about the experience online but I did want to share what happened.

Now as hurt of the last few hours of her life are slowly beginning to be replaced by the wonderful memories of her life, I’m finding myself going back through years of archives and images. I notice how the pictures I took at the beginning with poor composition, too much flash, no feeling, etc – they don’t look like her. They’re not bad pictures as such – it’s just that they don’t capture what she meant to us. It’s only as I got skilled at photography in both a technical and artistic sense do i start to see my memory of her captured in a meaningful way. I look at my favourite images of Ume and I literally see her standing right in front of me and trigger a flood of other emotions and memories. These are images that others might not recognise in the same way, but to me each one is suddenly worth a hundred of every one of my other “best” shots.

I won’t say that it took the death of a loved one to make me appreciate photography. I’ve always appreciated it and I don’t believe I take it for granted. What I perhaps didn’t realise however was just exactly how much some pictures would mean to me as time went on. Beauty since faded, locations since left and lives since lost… Perhaps it’s only after the fact we ever truly appreciate the importance of our shots.

Ultimately, I think when I asked myself “why do i take pictures”, i was really asking “who do i take pictures for”? Given that publicity, appreciation, etc never had much staying power as far as motivations, I always wondered who was really my intended audience. Well now i have my answer in undisputable form … i take pictures for me and I take them for my loved ones. If friends, strangers, peers are able to enjoy them along the way, then wonderful. If not, then I’ll be happy knowing that i’m doing more than just recording a particular time, place or event… i’m preserving memories in the way I will want to record them years from now.

We miss you Ume.

So i saw this canon marketing campaign, which I thought was v cool and got me thinking about a challenge to the folks on here.

So, the idea is that you have to shoot with a compact camera this weekend (the older / cheaper the better :), and share your best image or two on this thread. I think it’ll be a nice reminder for us that bigger, faster and more expensive isn’t necessarily better (ok Kal already knew this – we’re still catching up). I’m naturally in and will be taking out my Panasonic LX3. Anyone else interested?

Update – 23rd July 2009 – Responses so far

Jude – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=2916

Lawrence – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=2930

Scott – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=3147

Paul – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=3133

Chuck – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=2948

Raul – http://www.lostinfocus.org/?p=2940

I’m having the worst of times right now NOT taking photographs of the usual things in the usual way. Part of that is because .. um… there’s really not much where I live that isn’t .. um.. the same? Trees, abandoned houses, close-up portraits?

I don’t know if anyone else feels this way or not right now. I have taken some excellent photos in the past few weeks but they are the same in feel and “genre”… I want something different now… I crave it. Maybe it’s because of Spring?

So how about a challenge? One where anyone who wants to participate takes at least one photograph in a different style than they usually do? Or takes photos completely different than they usually do – outside their comfort zone even? I’m not talking porn (although … )..lol.

We could even post, say, within a week and tell others in explaination why we think our photo is outside our “box”. 

I’m going to do it this week sometime whether anyone joines me.

BUT for now.. I leave you with one of my new and very “me” photographs..

Here I sit in my studio, alone late on a Friday afternoon, poring over literally thousands of my archived photographs on dozens of old hard drives.  I am in the midst of putting together a new print portfolio for my agent, and I am finding it to be a formidable task.  Distilling my entire life’s work down to 100 images that span across myriad genres and subjects and “demonstrate both my skill and versatility as a photographer” is extremely daunting.

Interestingly, I am finding one of the most difficult aspects of this task (and generally about being a photographer in general, especially as a profession) is being truly and honestly self-critical of my own work.  Removing all the extraneous emotion that was involved when making a photograph — the people I was with, the people I met, the adventures I had, really all the memories of the experience that are inextricably linked to the moments surrounding the time when I pushed the shutter — and seeing a photograph as simply a piece of “visual art” is very challenging.

As photographers, often we show someone a photograph that really gets us excited, but are disappointed when it is met with a lukewarm response from the viewer.  Sometimes its just an average photograph.  But a lot of times its a pretty good photograph that is tainted (albeit positively) by the memories of our experiences surrounding its creation.

I actually thought I was getting better at being self-critical of my photography.  At least until today, as I stare at folders-upon-folders of “short-listed” photographs that will never fit into a portfolio…

This is one that will definitely make it in.  Or I will try to squeeze in.  Or will never make it in.  Or not.

2008 was great for photography for me in some respects. I had the Contender Asia final, the Contender Season 4 season and a number of commercial shoots. So while the year was a great success on that level, on the other hand, I did very little photography for myself – the kind of photography that got me started on this in the first place.

So I just spent the Xmas break looking through some of some of my Pbase favourites’ and the most popular galleries on that site. With the exception of those people who have continued to push their limits, boundaries and comfort zones, very little has changed. This is a good and a bad thing. It’s good because my favourites’ consisted of mostly excellent photograhers and that certainly has not changed. On the flip side, I’ve also noticed a trend amongst the general populus of photographers to move towards heavier and heavier processing, more obvious poses of pretty models and lots more “me too” images. The photography and processing has gotten more and more creative and simultaneously the images mean less and less. Mutton dressed as lamb we’d call this back in ol’ blighty. It used to impress me but digital photography, Photoshop and photographic workshops have all amazing tools in the hands of average photographers and now a glimpse through popular galleries looks more and more the same. Even more than it did a year ago. Popular photography, at least on pbase, is dominated by the same old usual suspects – followed closely by the crowd who wants to be just like them. Nothing wrong with that of course – but it bears no resemblance to what I consider to be photography. There are exceptions of course. Those who fall into that category already know who they are.

In contrast, this site has been an inspiration to me. Seeing everyone’s work continue to be posted on here while I was tied up in other things makes me believe that if you start something interesting enough, it quickly creates its own momentum and takes on a life of its own. That’s what has happened to Lost in Focus. It started slowly at first but in the past few weeks and months I sense a crossing of the Rubicon. Not every image has to be a work of art – but what we strive for will ultimately determine how interesting the journey is along the way, and ultimately the destination too. Keep that goal in mind and everything else starts to change naturally. Amazing photography when in that mindset almost becomes the side effect. To point out one individual whose work I think lives and breathes that, we need to look no further than Kal. Kal is someone someone whose work I always liked, but seeing how he seemingly effortlessly transformed his work to a completely new level with a film camera in his hand has truly been an honour. There are countless other images on this site that shout this also. When I think about the images I want to create, I think I owe it to myself and the peers whom I respect, to try to create genuinely original work. Again, not a masterpiece for every shot – but to never compromise on honesty and to be critical with myself and others. This means investing in subjects, trying new things, not getting pulled along with the crowd and continually reminding myself not to settle for less than I’m capable of. It’s such a pleasure to have this forum to share work on. Lost in Focus 2009 is really going to be something.

Here’s an image I took yesterday to punctuate how I felt as I start to get serious about my own work again.