Tag: Better Photography

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Looking for the Secret Decoder Ring

I very much enjoy seeing how other artists work, the spaces that they work in and to delve deeper into the process behind the things that they create. At the same time I’m looking and listening for cues that explain what they’ve just created. The secret decoder ring that answers the question ‘what does it mean’?

I’ve had little to no academic training in art – I will exempt the photography workshops and classes that I’ve taken from ‘formal academic training’ – and so understanding what the art world is all about is something of a mystery. Art history, like history in general, is something that I thought to be dry and dull and not worth a second look.

However I keep hacking away and occasionally will have break throughs, or at least will find an answer that is spoon fed to me. This is exactly what happened in my research of the work of Wynn Bullock. If you dig hard enough you can find discussion of the four major principals that governed his work:

1. Space-Time – seeing the true quality of things are recognizing their relationship and interrelatedness with other events
2. Opposites are one – you can’t have ‘up’ without ‘down’, ‘rough’ without ‘smooth’, ‘joy’ without ‘sorrow’
3. Reality and Existence – the known and the unknown
4. Ordering and things ordered coexist yet have independent significance – Ordering represents activities of the senses and the mind. ‘Things ordered’ are those things that result in the stimuli that we respond to.

if you then look at the work with these principals as a guide you can start to understand what he was driving at and judge for yourself did he hit the mark or not.

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Friday Inspiration: Peter Eastway

Peter Eastway

I wanted to continue the Friday Inspiration series looking at the work of the Ninety Degrees Five photographers. Up this week is Peter Eastway.

My introduction to the ND5 group was actually through Peter Eastway. I’ve been a subscriber of Better Photography, the magazine that he edits and publishes, for a very long time now and have enjoyed his various online tutorials. In fact as I was thinking over the summer about the options we have as photographers to express our voice Peter’s work came immediately to mind. I essentially decided that there were two places in which your voice can shine through – in the subjects you choose to photograph and then how you choose to process those images. Peter has a really unique style that, to my mind at least, is largely achieved through his post-processing work. In particular I feel that he has developed a a distinct and unifying color palette, perhaps not intentionally, through the consistent use of a particular set of tools in photoshop. The masterclass tutorials show you his process in detail and are worth a look. For single image processing check out his photo atelier series which give a behind the scenes look at Peter’s thought process.

I found the interview below to be a fascinating look at how Peter thinks and works. Check it out:

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Friday Inspiration: Ninety Degrees Five

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It seemed appropriate, given where my head has been in the last few weeks, to look at the collaborative group Ninety degrees Five this week. One of the questions that I’ve been asking is ‘as a beginning photographer how can you accelerate your improvement’ and realized that being part of a working group can greatly help. While I was thinking about that I was also wondering once you ‘make it’ whatever that means to you then what. Does the group that you’re a part of still work for you, do you move onto a new group that are more aligned with where you’re currently at? Where do the modern day masters go for feedback?

It was interesting then for me to come across Ninety Degrees Five, Les Walkling, Tony Hewitt, Peter Eastway, Christian Fletcher, and Michael Fletcher. These four photographers and a film maker are in essence a group of modern day master photographers who are working together in the way that I described in my blog post earlier in the week. The image above of Dampier Salt Flats is by Les Walkling and is from the Pilbara Project. The projects that the group has completed include ‘South West Light’ and ‘2016 Shark Bay – Inscription‘.

One of the things that came out of the Impressionists was a group sensibility within which the individuals still had a indue voice. I think that could also be said for this group too. The work hangs together as a whole and yet they clearly have distinct voices. Check out the videos below for more about the Pilabara project and South West Light.

The Pilbara Project from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

52 Weeks On: A Pilbara Project Exhibition Trailer from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

South West Light – A Photographer’s Perspective from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.

ND5 – A photographers Perspective – ‘Come on…..really! are you serious?’ from Michael Fletcher on Vimeo.