I find neck straps really uncomfortable with any size of camera. I guess thats why I like the Black Rapid sling type straps. All my Nikon pro SLRs are equipped with Black Rapid straps & I could never go back to the old traditional neck straps now. Also the SnapR20from black rapid has been good with small cameras as it houses and protects them allowing easy access via the same sling system.

But what about the cameras that are happy to live in your pockets.. Why have a strap at all?

Well because I’d probably drop it without one. I was directed towards Gordy’s Camera Straps by @JohnPerivolaris. He is an avid user and swears by them.

My custom handmade wrist strap, made to my specifications, cost me $22 with all the additions I requested. Things like the integeral strap bumper. After five minutes fiddling, it was on my Fujifilm X100 and ready to go.

Having the camera at your wrist means it’s always at the ready. That must be a good thing when on the look out for those sometimes elusive.. decisive moments.

I’ll have a play over the coming weeks and let you know how it performs.

The camera was set to manual focus and I tapped the AF/AE button on Steve’s face in the bright doorway which will explain why it’s a little overexposed. I’m not too fussed with the lighting as I was more interested in testing the audio on the Fujifilm X100‘s two small in camera mics. I thought a quick harmonica riff from Steve to be the perfect test.

I think it copes quite well considering I was up pretty close and the dynamics of the harmonica can be quite varied. Especially when in the hands of someone like Steve.

I had a great lesson with Steve who showed me so many ways I can improve my playing. All I have to do now is practice.

I discovered that Steve is also on twitter as @HarpTuition and hope he is re-enthused into using it as he has so much musical goodness to share.

He is also a top bloke. While in my lesson, I had left the lights on my bike and flattened the battery. Steve kindly nipped out and borrowed a battery booster to help me on my way.

The street party itself was a sight to see. So many had put in so much work to make the celebration a success.

Me.. Well I can take it or leave it. It made for a fascinating social study though.

I have a very feint memory of a street party to celebrate the Queens silver jubilee  in 1977. It was before I was even at school. I like it when  communities pull together for something that isn’t out of necessity or some kind of emergency. Villages can do so much when they collaborate.

I’m loving the Fujifilm X100 for image making. It has a great sized sensor in a beautifully well made, retro-styled body.

It does have its issues though. It is sluggish when taking multiple raw photos and its manual focusing is fiddly. They are not really issues that concern my use though, and I feel most of the niggles so far reported can be fixed with a firmware update. For me its good points far outweigh the bad. Great image quality, a hybrid viewfinder, a lovely fast lens and near silent operation to name a few.

That said, for the X100 to be my every day workhorse, the camera I always have by my side, it also to be useable for video blogging. This is my first real test shooting video and although the lens delivers a great quality image, even in low light, a couple of clips appeared to have a buzzing on the audio and then for no reason.. it went. I didn’t do anything to make it go and can’t seem to get it to happen again. Nevertheless, it was weird and I can see myself doing a few more tests before trusting the camera to deliver both stunning video and acceptable audio. Even if just for video blogging.

(I recorded my initial impression of the camera here on audioboo should you want to hear more.)

On April the 22nd I traveled to Damyns Hall Aerodrome to fly in the GoodYear blimp. It was also my first day out with the Fujifilm X100 camera so I grabbed some images & added them to audio recorded on the Zoom H1 & iPhone 4.

It was a great day. I really enjoyed the flight and learned alot. I have an interview with the Engineer here:

..And if you are interested in my first impression of the Fujifilm X100.. I recorded some thoughts here:

Photographers should not put pictures in a box under their beds and be the only ones that see them. If they put film in their cameras it presupposes that they want to record what they see and show somebody else. Photography is about communication. - David Hurn On Being a Photographer : A Practical Guide, ISBN: 1888803061 , Page: 57

The role of the photographer changes often. All the more reason for some of the more established photographic Institutions like Magnum Photos to at least attempt to keep up with new conversations around technological processes and practices.

These last 10 years though have changed at an incredible rate. Not just around photographic practices but around how the photographer can network and collaborate.

Ever since I fell in love with photography I have admired a number of the image makers attached to agencies like Magnum. My shelves weigh heavy with oversized books with names down the spine like Capa, Henri Cartier Bresson, and Erwitt.

So last weekend It was both an honour and a pleasure to have been asked to present at @IdeasTap for Magnum Photos on Social Technology for photographers, sharing some of the tools and methods I use and some of the directions I have diversified as a photographer.

One of the highlights was meeting with Magnum Photographer David Hurn. Immensely respected with an incredible body of work behind him, we talked in depth about what we thought shaped the present day photographer.

David commented how he felt he was from “..an age of concentration on specific things..” where as we now “..seem in an age where speed and ‘the next’ is everything.”

I have to agree with him. Yet I don’t feel the skills and practices of this new age are difficult at all to grasp for the photographers that have always managed to morph and evolved as their world quickly changes around them.

I am inspired to get inside the mindset of some of these amazing image makers and work on bridging some of the more recent leaps in social technology.

I know for sure myself and David Hurn will be spending some time sharing our separate skills and I also look forward to learning more about his recent works. In particular, a small exhibition in Cardiff entitled ‘Passing Time‘.

David told me “I devised the ploy of dividing my life into two sections – before 1980 and after 1980 to show the amount of time I have been photographing and to show I am not dead. I made pairs of pictures one from the start section from the final. I made twenty two connections. As a game the young organisers of the gallery suggested that we set up a competition to find three more pairs.”

I don’t think David quite expected the response he received through Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/onthestreet/discuss/72157625197759394/

There is never a boring moment in photography.

Thanks to Magnum and IdeasTap for putting together such an interesting event.

I am inspired into formulating more ways to assist professional photographers in navigating this fast paced, new world of social technology. I’m also looking forward to exploring and learning more about ‘the old ways’ of considered specific forms of photography with David Hurn.

You can find some photos from me here: Flickr and I am @Documentally on twitter.

]]> http://documentally.com/2010/11/01/the-constant-evolution-of-photography/feed/ 3 http://documentally.com/2009/12/15/your-rights-as-a-photographer-in-the-uk/ http://documentally.com/2009/12/15/your-rights-as-a-photographer-in-the-uk/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:35:00 +0000 Documentally http://ourmaninside.com/2009/12/15/your-rights-as-a-photographer-in-the-uk/

•Failure to stop or obstructing a police constable acting under section 44 is a criminal offence.

Police Powers

My first hands on look at what Canon are are doing now with their Ixus range came from @ilicco at the Tuttle club when he showed me his Ixus 110is

I was really impressed with the build quality, the size and the video. I shot a burst of HD video, dragged it to my macbook and had to stop for a moment. Not only was the exposure spot on in a really difficult environment, the sound was great for an almost invisible mic.

So.. when passing Micro Anvika on the Tottenham Court Road I saw the Ixus 120is.. I had to have a play.

The friendly staff let me pop my SD card in and shoot a test video. Once again I was blown away. This is a 12.1 megapixel ultra-compact camera the size of a pebble. It feels rock hard and it has a 28mm wide angle lens in it. Really very easy to ensure you are in the frame when video blogging.

It was just too tempting I had to have it. I didn’t want to pay the street price though. I always feel the sign of a decent store is that they are flexible and willing to bend a little if you choose to haggle. There is very little movement on new camera prices and you will almost certainly get better luck when asking for a discount on memory cards etc.. Nevertheless 5 minutes later I had a new twitter friend and a camera in a bag for a price I could afford.

The best camera you own is the camera you have with you when you need it. For most it is the camera on their phone and I see no reason why you cannot manage with the one in your mobile.

This is (at early impressions) an interesting bit of kit. Enough flexibility in the controls. A great wide-angle.. digital zoom (which i normally never touch) when filming and great ergonomics. Optical zoom whilst filming would have been way better but there are not many cameras on the market that will do that.

I will know more in the long run.

Compared to my favorite pocket HD camera the Kodak Zi6, the Canon Ixus 120is is clearly the more compact. This has meant these last few days it has been my EDC (Every Day Carry). I have shot loads of H.264 video and transfering the .mov files to my mac via the sd card slot is no less convenient than a flip out USB.

This is not only a serious contender to the HD pocket cams we all love to use. This may well knock them for six. It’s not a pocket video camera you can shoot naff photos on, It’s a quality 12 megapixel ultra-compact that shoots decent HD video.

Ask me when you see me or on twitter or pop into my Vimeo channel to see how I am getting on with it.. I may be having too much fun to blog a follow up.

Rainclouds over Damascus by Phil Sands

For months now he has wanted to get a photo agency together. It’s a collaborative effort between himself, his brother Chris Sands and Emma LeBlanc.

They wanted to start a small independent photo agency (called Makoto) specialising in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria – the places they live and work.

The idea grew out of a certain frustration over the photography of which we see more and more, particularly on the internet – Images divorced from context, divorced from the world and, in fact, divorced from any real meaning they might otherwise have had.

Too often photos are not even captioned, and those that are don’t always seem to offer enough explanation. They reduce everything to the 125th-of-a-second that the photo was taken in, without offering any of the before or any of the after.

Without this, the images become very disposable. With the glut of photos out there, it just becomes a morass. Click, click, click your way thoughtlessly through to the next link, the next meaningless photo. Everyone seems preoccupied with the image that punctuates the ‘breaking news’ too concerned to be first to really care about the story.

It’s the opposite of what journalism, or photo journalism, or documentary photography – whatever you want to call it – ought to be.

Calligraphy in Syria by Phil Sands

Phil talked to me of how the conception of ‘Makoto‘ gleaned inspiration from the book ‘Vietnam Inc‘ by the late Philip Jones Griffiths. A man I was fortunate enough to meet at The Frontline Club a few years ago. He says.. “What makes it so important is that his photos were accompanied by these incredible, searing, passionate, insightful explanations. He gave the context. That’s one of the reason it was all so powerful.  In that book Philip Jones Griffiths sets out the marker that we should all aspire to, the standard to aim at.”

I have to agree. The internet should not become a medium for shoving out more photos, at a faster rate, skimming ever more over the surface. It should be a way of accessibly going into more detail, of accessibly providing deeper insight. Micro/rapid blogging still has a place to disseminate but micro blogging should not mean micro context.

Makoto is also something of a reaction against parachute journalism, which has been really rammed home with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A decent number of photographers who were in Iraq for the war (the war that hasn’t actually finished) have now packed up and gone to Afghanistan, as if somehow one war is interchangeable with the next, as if the Afghans are the same as the Iraqis.

There’s surprisingly little commitment to sticking with a story. It’s as if everyone has Attention Deficit Disorder. Either that or photographers are generally on a mission to collect as many visa stamps as possible in their passports.

Makoto wants to make a point of not being like that; Chris Sands has lived in Afghanistan for coming up on five years. Back in 2005 it wasn’t remotely trendy but he was there, doggedly chipping away at his work. Learning about the people and the place. It’s now grabbing all the headlines but presumably it won’t be in a year/two/three/four from now. But he plans to stick with it. Similarly Phil Sands his brother arrived in Iraq in 2003. He has stuck with it since.

I feel that by concentrating on a place, by trying to specialise, it’ll pay dividends in the breadth and depth of their work, in the details. In a simple way that might show through in a photo essay that has images in it spanning two or three years, not one week or one month.

Return of resistance fighter bodies Yarmouk Camp Syria By Phil Sands

There’s also a matter of respect. If you are reporting on a place properly, you come to care about the issues, about the people. It’s hard to walk away from that and, if you’re doing your job properly, perhaps you can’t or shouldn’t walk away. That’s also an old fashioned journalistic axiom that is being abandoned – live on your patch. Try to live as close to the story as you can. How many times are Syria stories reported from Lebanon? One British newspaper used to report Afghanistan from Pakistan, for God’s sake, even though the British Army was (and is) at war there. Why not just report everything from London and have done with it?

So, context and commitment. These are their goals. Time will tell if they succeed in coming anywhere near hitting them.

I remember getting Phil an old Nikon 301 and giving him a five minute lesson on ISO’s before he flew to Iraq for the first time. He has worked wonders with that camera and every camera he has had since.. A wordsmith using pictures the right way.

But that’s the other thing about their photo agency. The key idea is that the narrative behind the photos is as important as the photos themselves. In journalism, what’s the point in a technically perfect photo if it’s just hanging in isolation; at that point it’s just an art object.

We need to know the back story. The subtext. We need the ‘why’ answered. The nasty, irritating, all-important why; that thing that no one much bothers themselves with these days because it just to much like hard work to understand. Again, if the photographer doesn’t understand that, how can the photographs hope to portray it?

This is the reason each photo essay on the site is an essay. They start with a written explanation that anyone looking at the stuff should read. The words say the things the photos cannot. And each photo is captioned. Not in some narrow sense of saying what the picture shows, but by putting it into a context – putting it into a place within the wider narrative whole.

The site is at www.makotophotographic.com Please spread the word.

If we are to protect ‘quality’ journalism when we need it most, we need more sites like this.