"it's about the cumulative damage done by suspicion"

Good film by Rajesh Thind on the issue of being confronted by officers who have very little understanding of the law when it comes to taking pictures and filming in public places.

I mentioned my ordeal in a previous post, and now security expert Bruce Schneier has weighed in with a good article in The Guardian.

The Times also had a piece on the subject from which the beautiful sentence to this post title was lifted.

Here's a download on what our rights are. I just wish they would show it to the officers, because I'm pretty sure we photographers know the score.

Results are in

© Daniel Berehulak

Its Friday and I'm off to an exhibition which I've played a small part in, but more importantly, the results for The Press Photographer's Year 2008 are in! That Daniel Berehulak gets everywhere, doesn't he. Good stuff.

My brand new glasses

© My optician

I mentioned that I had to go for an eye test a while ago, and I ordered some new glasses. Well, they have now arrived, quite stylish, no?

Back to work

© Magnus Andersson

Yesterday was my last day off and as always when you've gotten used to doing nothing for so long it was impossible to sleep. Why, oh why must the brain worry about it? I was actually looking forward to it, but not my brain. Maybe time to see a shrink?

I was knackered before I even got in the car this morning, and when I finally had done the last job for the day - or so I thought - I was looking forward to the sofa. Instead I got a call from the office with a job I had to go to right away. No sofa for me.

Another day, another murder in south London, this time a 15-year old girl stabbed several times in a lift. The picture above is of the forensic guys about to go in and examine the scene. She's the 16th teenager to be killed this year, which means it will be a new record again. The total tally last year was 27, and the halfway mark has already been passed at the beginning of June.

Driving me nuts

© Magnus Andersson

The Ansel Adams exhibition was quite special. Seeing his exquisite prints reminded me of my own feeble attempts at applying the zone system to my early dark room experiences. Of course I didn't get anywhere near his results but that didn't really matter to me though. It was the magic of seeing the image - the one I had had composed and shot earlier in the day - appear from the blank paper right in front of my eyes, this time as a monochrome image.

The image above is of a decimated forest on the west coast of Sweden, early 90's I'd say. I shot it on my dad's SLR, a Konica AutoReflex T, purchased during my parents honeymoon (I think), somewhere around 1969. I remember using a 35/2, tripod (ha! daylight), and a red filter, using T-Max400 (or possibly Tri-X, but the grain looks a bit more like T-Max).

I'd cycled from our hometown on the coast into the countryside to join two of my friends in their summer house. They'd taken the car out earlier, but I was desperate to join them so I hopped on the bicycle instead, not quite realising it would nearly take six hours to get there...

I'd been on the bike for four hours when I saw this scenery and decided to take a break and set up the shot. When I got off the saddle I got the fright of my life. I'd been riding with a backpack full of beer plus the camera, and the blood flow to my balls had been stemmed by the added weight. My nuts had gone numb, quite literally! I had to stand by the way side massaging my groin for along time before I could continue. Read what you want into that, but I wasn't nice at the time.

Anyway, I think the Adams' show is part of a touring exhibition that normally 'lives' in Germany, so keep an eye out for it, it might come your way. Well worth it.

Sucker punched

Picture: traveldk.com

Just when I sit here and lament over the crappy weather in London at the moment, this comes in. That hurts. Who wouldn't want to work in Honolulu, Hawaii?!?! I wish I could at least afford the air fare for the interview...

Rainy day

As you know I am off work this week and enjoying it! Brighton yesterday was a success, I managed to burn a lot of money in exchange for food, clothes, CD's and stuff. Tomorrow we're off to see that Ansel Adams exhibition in Oxford that I've mentioned earlier. I think there's over 70 prints on show so it should be nothing short of amazing. Last day is June 1st for those who can make it.

But my plans for today went out the window. I was going to jump on the bike and get lost in the Lee Valley again, but the weather is quite wet so instead I've been having a one-man-workshop at home with various lighting setup's.

The above self portrait is a very simple one; just one SB-800 at 1/64th power hanging from a door frame via a super clamp pointing straight down, triggered by an SB-80DX on the camera. The bounce card was out on the SB-800 and I was very close to it, almost right underneath it in fact, hence the strong light fall off.

A bit tricky to frame as I was holding the camera myself; the bounce card kept cropping up in the top of the frame...it was shot at 1/250th, f13, ISO 200, so there's no ambient light. Post-processing: turned up contrast (low & high end cut slightly), desaturated & cropped it, touch of USM, that's it.

70 minutes fo your life

Picture: David Hobby

This is ridiculous. I've just watched a clip on youtube and it was 70 minutes long. Normally I don't get too much joy out of that site, other than the odd 'loving' cat up for adoption, but this is fantastic stuff. Part of the Authors@Google series, where they film guest speakers and put it online, this time featuring a photographic legend; Joe McNally.

Check out Joe's blog here. He's also mentioned on Strobist, with a ridiculous looking flash set up, seen above. See more shots from that shoot on David Hobby's (aka Strobist) flickr page here.

I'm also enjoying my time off this week, sleeping late and watching entire seasons of good TV series such as Prison Break and The Wire. Very productive, I know.

Also planning a couple of trips, one to Brighton for some shopping and to look at the sea, and another to Oxford where they are exhibiting original Ansel Adams handmade prints. If you've ever seen one you will never forget it. He invented the zone system, you know. I used to read those books when I was much younger and it really made me understand photography a whole lot better.

Shockingly, a photographer I know - who shall remain nameless - hadn't heard about the zone system at all. I worry sometimes...

No picture today!

Because I'm off for a whole week. I'm pretty sure, no, absolutely positive that I wont post anything during this time. Sure. Yes, ok.

In the meantime, read my favourite blogs at the moment here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

A word of advice, some of them require a good working knowledge of Swedish, aka Hurdy Gurdy.

The same old shit again?

On my way to photograph the woman above I stopped into a bookstore/cafe to pick up a coffee. On one of the displays was the book I've been waiting for since the winners were announced a while ago; World Press Photo '08! Go and get your copy now, pronto.

Legendary snapper Gary Knight, also chairman of the WPP jury, puts in his foreword: "A principal purpose of the World Press Photo contest is to celebrate great achievements in press photography, and it is disappointing that so much of what was submitted was familiar. One wonders why some photojournalists spend their time and energy telling us what we already know, in a style borrowed from another photographer". Harsh words indeed, but they also needs to be told. Photojournalism is considered to be in a bit of a crisis right now, with shrinking budgets and competing new media cited as main factors to this decline. But what he really is saying that as PJ's we need to develop our own vision and go with it, not give in to recreating pictures that have worked in the past, to constantly push the boundaries of visual journalism. Not all assignments can be done in radically different way, but if you don't strive for development you end up with stagnation and risk losing your audience.

Anyway, the woman I was going to photograph is called Gina and had just completed six marathons in six days. She is 63 years old. Over the weekend she is running two more marathons. In total she has now done 278, and is soon of to South Africa to run the Comrades, a nice little 56 mile jog.

Picture: perfect example of a familiar image in a borrowed style! But its not WPP photojournalism, its a portrait of Gina, so hopefully Gary Knight will spare me this time.