Manchee .....

..... in a plant pot.

This afternoon I called around to visit Kate who I photographed the other week to drop off a couple of prints and a disk with all the photos on ( apparently one of the photos is going to be used in a book about her work next year ). We sat in Kate's back garden and had a cuppa and a nice chat about work, life, education and her ' witches' potions' of natural dyes that were in Kilner jars on the kitchen window ledge. Manchee was jumping around the garden snapping at flies and generally being a terrier. I used the magic word ( sausages ) to get him to prick his ears up and look at me for this photo.

After leaving Kate's place I went shopping and must have looked like an alcoholic with a sweet tooth as all I in my basket was three bottles of value gin and two bags of sugar. Although I do have a sweet tooth and have been known to partake in a tipple or two, these were in fact two of the three ingredients to make this years batch of sloe gin. I had a walk down to the place I usually pick sloes but for some reason there were only one or two on the bushes this year, I don't know if the birds have already eaten them all but I doubt they have been picked by other sloe gin makers as even the tops of the bushes high off the ground were bare.

This evening I decided to have a change of routine and instead of having a night out in Bradford, went along to the local camera club meeting to see what it was like. I kind of knew before I went that it wouldn't be for me, but it confirmed to me what I do and dont like about different kinds of photography.

The speaker tonight was talking about action photography and put on a slide show of his work. There were photos of jet skis in action which were nice enough, then he went on to show photos of humming birds ( mentioning all the countries in the world he had travelled to and the very expensive lens and cameras he had used to take them ) having travelled half way around the world he had used numerous flashes, artificial backdrops ( to keep the background clean ) and cut flowers with sugar water in them to attract the birds. The resulting photos were pretty enough but the whole process all seemed soulless and artificial.

The next set of photos he showed were of dancers and unsurprisingly all the women were either topless or completely nude apart from stockings ( the few men in this set ( he said he didn't like photographing men ) all had clothes on ). I've nothing against nudity and indeed have studied life drawing on and off since the age of 16 so understand how the human form and representations of it are an art form, but these photos didn't really warrant nudity and a dance or gym costume being worn wouldn't have detracted anything from them, it all seemed to be nudity for the sake of titillation.

The other thing that struck me was all the talk was of how the photos would be judged in competitions and what judges like and don't like. I know lots of blippers go to camera clubs but I don't think they're going to be for me, it made photography feel like a science rather than an art. I know I don't produce technically perfect photos but that's not what it's about for me. It's more about capturing a moment and a connection with the subject in front of the camera. This photo would no doubt be thrown out of a camera club competition for being too cluttered in the background and having imperfect lighting, but I'd rather say the word sausages and capture a moment of connection then set up an artificial background, numerous flashes and capture a picture that's technically perfect but lacking soul. Sorry for the mini rant, but today's blip is .....


..... Manchee in a plant pot.