Why take a Photograph?

I was recently challenged on Photography – what are you doing it for? What are the reasons?

That was an interesting question, and it really did challenge me at a deep level.

I thought about the genres I enjoy. These include

• Landscape
• Still life
• Wildlife
• Portraiture
• Aircraft
• Travel
• History
• Flowers
• Macro

Quite a wide range of subjects: clearly I enjoy taking photographs. I do as it happens. But why?

I’m sure it’s partly because my dad was semi interested in photography, always seems to have a camera – be it a cine camera or still – and encouraged me to get involved with photography when I was quite young.

There was a Photography club at school that I flirted with but really it was not particularly influential on me.

My dad used to buy Amateur Photographer magazine but didn’t seem to spend much time reading them or learning. However, they were in the house and available. I spend more time looking at the adverts than the articles. Could have saved me a lot of money had a paid more attention early on.

After reading all of the adverts I purchased my first “Serious” camera a Canon AE1.

Around about 1984 or 85 my football team went to Germany to play against Wolfstein, near Kaiserslautern. On the way back we had stayed in Rotterdam; the car got broken into and my camera was stolen. Worse still it had all my pictures of the trip on it.

Eventually the insurance money came through, but we didn’t have a lot of cash back then and it took me quite a while to get a replacement in the form of a Canon 650.

That camera served us well for many years, although I’d have to say I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. But it did have AF and at least most of the rubbish photos I took were sharp. Some though are etched in the memory like this one of our daughter and this one of our son. There’s also one of us on holiday in Rhodes before we had family, taken with the EOS on a wall using the self- timer. It’s just to say I wasn’t always old!

I declared I would never go digital, but around about 2003 we got a Fuji A200 2.0MB digital camera! And one of the first pictures we took was one of my favourites. I thought it was amazing to be able to instantly see what you were taking and so, so portable and convenient compared to carrying around the SLR and array of lenses. So the 650 was consigned to the cupboard. It was now fully digital!

As I progressed with digital, I began to get more serious about photography. Basically, my pictures were utter rubbish compared to what I was seeing in magazines. So I wanted to improve.

I enrolled on a course with Amateur Photographer which was very good, and taught me loads about metering, whites, blacks etc. I then enrolled on a course with the Photography institute which was outstanding value for money, with top class photographers as tutors. The feedback helped build my confidence.

I then joined my first camera club, Mid Calder camera club, which was a superb little club with lots of good photographers. Perhaps that’s when the problems started, though, because I kept getting rubbish scores. Work took me to other camera clubs, which I enjoyed, but I kept getting very poor scores for photos that I considered decent. I think the worst was this image here which someone thought merited a score of 12!

I’d been to numerous workshops on landscape photography and spent a fortune, and thought I was producing decent quality images – yet some judge reckoned it was an incompetent image. I’m thinking “what’s the point?”

I had decided to do a course with the Open College of the Arts. Although my tutor was OK that experience did nothing for my confidence as a photographer – and after attending several tutorials in Glasgow on a Saturday morning. I’d showed the image below, which had actually done well in the camera clubs, and was curtly told “models are out.” I’m sitting thinking, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t but I’m out.” And I was.

Now I’ve started a course with the British Academy of Photography, whose tutors all work as photographers, as opposed to being just academics. So far, the experience has been positive, although you do have to put in a lot of work.

After a lot more failures in the most recent camera club, I have eventually decided I’m no longer interested in club competitions. I will do what I like, and enjoy my photography, but it’s not about competitions. Not for me anyway. Not anymore.

Back to the question. Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it. Camera club judges were stealing that joy.

Looking at my Flickr page it’s obvious the biggest collection of photographs are in the genres of landscape, wildlife and portraits. So why do I take these photographs?

Ever since I was young, I liked to be outside. I don’t know why, I just do. It is a pleasure being out in the landscape, on your own, just soaking in the atmosphere. Especially at sunrise or sunset. If you capture a nice image, that’s good. If you don’t, just as good. It’s just the ambience of being out in the open, preferably with few people around.

Wildlife photos are usually captured outside as well. As mentioned, I love the outdoors. The beautiful wildlife we have, red squirrels and the birds, I could happily look at them all day long. And it’s usually peaceful at hides, apart from photographers.

Finally, the controversial genre. Portraiture. When I started studying photography, you were often asked to produce portraits. Naturally, I used the family to model, although getting them interested was not always easy. I always quite liked the lighting flash produced but hadn’t even heard o a modifier such as a softbox, prior to studying photography. I was quite into the technical side of cameras, flash, flash triggers / controllers and the like and enjoyed fiddling with that. I’ve always quite liked studying – I got my QS degree, in 1982, and subsequently did another degree with the OU and an LLM with Strathclyde, and always enjoyed the research side of things, especially the historical stuff. But paying money for models? Hiring studios? Trust me, it’s not cheap.

I was discussing this with the owner of 244 Studios, and he came to the same conclusion as me : like me I love the interaction with the subjects. Nearly all of them are very chatty and engaging, and I enjoy the chat. I’m not sure if it is because an outgoing sort of personality is part of being a model. Probably. Then you have to consider the end result. You have total control of the lighting, and can set the backdrop and instruct the model how to pose. It’s not like being outside. Some of the results, I consider spectacular, although as usual when I used to enter competitions the judges disagreed. But you could replicate a Yousaf Karsh image, or a Rembrandt and they would fault find and criticise (it seems nowadays only composites are “in”) – so I’m really not interested – I’ll do my own thing.

Going forward I have done too much portraiture of late, and want to refocus on landscape a bit more. I have a cunning plan which will open up new possibilities in this direction – more of that to follow.