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Michael Wayne Plant

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© Michael Wayne Plant All rights reserved.

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AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton December 27, 2017
London Street Photography By Michael Wayne Plant

New Year’s resolutions

Hi all,

I hope your Christmas was good, New Year is next and with that comes New Year’s resolutions. What are yours? I know what mine will be:

1) I am going to edit my City of London street photography based project to see how far I have got with it.

2) I am going to spend more time marketing this year. As I want to meet more interesting people. A photographer friend of mine once said to me he had problems trying to get appointments because he felt weird contacting people who where to him strangers, my response was that if he met them in the pub and found out what they did, each of them would find the other interesting, as they both had a common worldview. That is why for me marketing is really a search for new friends to work with. People who have a similar worldview are always great to meet.

3) I am looking for a publisher for my City of London project, so that search begins in earnest.

4) Make more interesting images, both on my City of London project and Portraits of people in both finance and creative industries.

5)  I aim to get Google to recognise my website for London street photography and learn how to use keywords to help with SEO. This will help with an idea I have for street  photography walks in London, that I will launch early in the New Year.

 

I could add more, but these are enough to work and and more only confuses my focus and it is important to remain focused if you want to fulfill your New Years resolutions.

Good luck with yours, whatever they may be.

Michael Dec 2017.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton December 24, 2017

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas

it is Christmas time and I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I am looking forward to a great year of working on photography projects that are inspiring and exciting.

See you all next year, thanks to those who have supported me over the past year, I hope you have a great beginning to the the new year.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton November 20, 2017

Raw conversion software comparison

Raw Convertors for Raw image conversion

I have been using a new camera for a while now for some of my street photography based social documentary work and I have recently become discouraged with the results that I have been getting out of my usual Raw convertor.  I have been using Capture One Pro 9 which does not have a native Raw profile for the camera but as Leica use DNG it will open the files straight from the camera. Part of my raw convertor problem is that I think that Capture One Pro10 will be updated soon, as the pattern has been that Phase One has updated Capture One Pro around December for the past two years and I am not prepared to in Late November take the risk of buying the new version, to only have to buy it again in a few weeks time. So, I decided to experiment with different raw convertors. I have come to the conclusion that a photographer needs to think of Raw convertors like developers in analogue. When photographers used black and white film we were used to using different developers to make the film behave in different ways. If we wanted low grain we might use one developer but if we wanted to push the film to higher ISO’s another. I am tempted to say that maybe we should also think of our raw convertors in a similar fashion. Only problem with that is because Raw convertors now have also become our library programs for cataloguing images it becomes harder to use multiple convertors.

I have been using Capture One Pro for about 2 to 3 years, prior to that I was using Lightroom as it was easy and it was dominant in the photo industry, this was because as a lecturer, I needed to learn how to use it, if I was going to teach it properly. Since I moved to Capture One Pro I have found I like its ability to recover highlights and dig into shadows better than Lightroom, I have learnt how to easily meta tag my images, and manage my library. Now the idea of using another raw convertor up ends that as I have got to the point where I am thinking that maybe it might be easier if my library was different to my raw processor. I do like the idea of process recipes that is also a feature of Capture One Pro, something that is lacking in Lightroom. The reason I am referring to these two programs as they are the ones that I am most familiar with.

The Raw Conversion programs I have been trying out are:

Adobe Lightroom 6 (which I already own) This is going to go to a subscription only model soon, so when I need to buy a new camera that is no longer supported by this release of Lightroom. The thing is this comes with the monthly CC plan for Photoshop, so you are already paying for it if you are paying for Photoshop, It has been problematic as it has been running slow on a lot of peoples computers (mine included) with large libraries. Lightroom will cost £9-98 per month but that also includes Photoshop, which I object to when I can pay if I live in America $9.99 for the same thing. This is one of the reasons I am not happy about Adobe this sort of pricing is not fair as we get support mostly online and I do not see how it costs them more to do business in this country to America.(rant on pricing over).

** A side note on image libraries, I keep all of my images for each calendar year in one Library so that I can find and work on one year at a time, but as I have gone back to full time photography the number of images I make each year has increased, so far this year I have over 27,000 last year I made just under 20,000 images. I found that with Lightroom the more images in your library the slower it got. which is why I moved to images libraries for each year and if I am doing a job that might generate a few images then I will make a specific one for that particular job.

Luminar 2018 I have been impressed with it colours and simplicity of operation, I am yet to see how the library functionality will work, at £64-00 this program is affordable

Iridient Developer v3.2 I really like the control interface on this raw convertor, I would love to see more training (actually) some on this program. As their is very little online that explains how it works. I like the colour rendering and the ability to dig into shadows and pull out highlights with Iridient Developer, at the moment I am considering using this program to convert my images but at £82.39 it is not cheap.

Capture One Pro 9 (the one that started this), I have liked the library part of Capture One pro and have used it to import and catalog all my image for the past three years, primarily because it gave me great colours out of the Sony a7RMKII cameras that I have been using. I much preferred the ability to reach into the highlights and recover detail and dig into the shadows and get out information which I felt this was far better at doing than Adobe Lightroom 6 on the Sony sensors.

Capture One Pro 10 This is the one I like, but for a problem in the colours between my pervious version and the new version, I do not know what it has done to my library but the saturation is different between the versions 9 and 10, Another reason to wait. I like the sharpness that I get with this version and the colour is normally very good for my files on of this software. If you are new to Capture one Pro it will cost €279-00 +vat ($299-00 US dollars) So it is in the premium pricing end of the spectrum, if you are upgrading it is about £99-00 per upgrade, which is why I do not want to buy until I know that I  will not be buying another version in two weeks time.

** update: And guess what I was right Capture One Pro 11 was announced on the 30th of November 2017, one year after the previous version.

OnOne Photo RAW 2018  I like this program even though it feels different to the others, it will cost you $99-00 for a perpetual licence.

and I also experimented with AccuRaw which I like but for the lack of strong highlight and shadow recovery, so I am not going to include that here, Its colour reproduction I really liked. If you do not need strong Highlight or Shadow recovery then I would highly recommend AccuRaw It also costs around £84-00

I was going to include screen shots of the resulting images but decided that this is something you need to try yourselves as each of us sees differently and the images that I like are not going to be ones you like. For now I am reserving judgement as I need to experiment more, I have another 12 days on one of the trials to see what I think of the software then I will make a decision. I still like Capture One Pro but the colours (saturation) for me are off on the new version, I really like the solidity of Lightroom, it just works, and I like the results from Irident Developer but I want more info on how the product works as their is not a lot on this raw converter online. I am still not sure of both the Luminar and OnOne Photo Raw yet so more experiments on both of these.

 

The image below was chosen because it has an area that blows out in the highlights and an area that I have pulled out in the shadows where the guys are, Lightroom did the worst at this area, I would have to mask it and manually make it lighter, if I was to use Lightroom. Capture One Pro 10 messed up the saturation, Capture One Pro 9 is soft in the details on skin and hair. Luminar 2018, was not as sharp in the fine details but I admit I need to experiment with its sharpening tools to see what it will really do so I am going to reserve my judgement on it for now, I did like how the software worked and I liked its colour rendering.

  • Processed with Lightroom
  • Processed with Capture One Pro 10
  • Processed with Capture One Pro 9
  • Processed with Luminar 2018
  • Processed with Iridient Developer
  • Processed with OnOne Photo Raw 2018

Click on an image above to see it larger.

So In summary, I am thinking about what to do and each option will cost. I also to throw a spanner in the works and thinking am considering using Photo Mechanic as my library program, as I have experimented a little with it and heard good things about it. At this stage, I am waiting for Phase One to update Capture One Pro to version 11 and I am thinking about adding Iridient Developer, for when I want something different from my raw images, so that I can have both options for my raw files, I also have the option of use Lightroom 6 for a while longer, as it is on my computer and supports all my current cameras.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton November 13, 2017
City of London Street Photography By Michael Wayne Plant

Why Use Street Photography

“Street Photography to what we recognise today … a documentary form that celebrated the candid public moment” Nick Turpin

As a social documentary photographer you might ask, why do I use street photography techniques, in making my work. Why is it important to my practice as a photographer? Documentary photography is also a technique, which has a rich history and its own set of conventions, just like street photography does. This follows on from my last post about street photography, see here 

“Street Photographers were once men that would take your picture for payment on the sidewalk, that definition changed very quickly when the first roll of 35mm film was put in a Leica camera by Oskar Barnack around 1913. It was really the photographers that took up those small portable cameras over the next 60 years that inadvertently redefined the phrase Street Photography to what we recognise today … a documentary form that celebrated the candid public moment.” Nick Turpin This is as good a description of what street photography is for me. A way of documenting the life that we find on the streets primarily of our cities. Yet for many photographers, once they get beyond the simple act of photographing their family and friends and out in to the wider world the next problem becomes what to photograph. For some, this becomes street photography.

Street photography, for me is an approach to making images that incorporates the social world that we inhabit, it is a way of showing what I see, from my perspective. It is a way of working on the street that enables me to make images where I do not know all four W’s of photojournalism: Who, What, Where and When. Actually I know the last two, and by observation I can sort of deduce the first two but not the specifics. Sometimes the generic person can be made to fill in for the specific. I’m also aiming to make images that are interesting to look at, because I want my viewers attention to be held, I am not interested in what I consider boring images, as they do not keep you interested in the subject, that I want to communicate with you about. In making documentary images it is important to hold the viewers attention, so that the story the photographer is communicating is clearly told. There are a lot of similarities to both conventions. Yet there are also some divergences as well, documentary photographers get to know their subject, take time to get access and permissions. While a street photographer might know the city they photograph, they don’t normally engage with their subjects. The great trick that documentary photographers use is time, they give their subjects enough time to forget they exist and to become background presences, to the action/s that they want to document. They are looking to make candid unposed moments of and with their subjects. Whereas, street photography is mostly about surface, what a place and the people inhabiting it look like. Often, I feel documentary photographers want to disappear and become more like street photographers just observing, making images of what they see, this is the attraction that I find in street photography and why I use it as a technique in my social documentary photography. For me, both are important as I like the idea of access and I like the anonymity of just being a street photographer, this I think if done right can create a story that engages the viewer with greater emotional depth.

In life and with my photography my interest is in money and power or how capitalism functions. As capitalism is the economic air that we breath and it shapes all transactions and power relationships within our society. The more I learn, the more I realise that I don’t know enough about it. However, I want to learn as much as I can about the processes that shape and form our social worlds. Capitalism like all economic systems is socially constructed, as a photographer I grapple with the problem of how to represent a concept, an idea that is a socially constructed. Because one problem in photography is that it is able to show what something looks like, not necessarily a concept, it describes in detail what colour, hue and tone something is, it can show who was there at a event, or a specific time and place. However, it struggles to describe the reason why something is taking place, it can show the results of decisions and this is a problem for me as I am not able to visualise some of the aspect of my inquiry. I can’t show what happened before and after within one frame, that is why the idea of a picture or photo story is important to me. When I am working on the streets of London, I am attempting to make images that reflect the place and the people, who are using this great city.

I do not manipulate my images other than contrast, tone, and density, including the recovery of highlights and shadow detail, all things that would have been possible in a darkroom, for me this is important as I don’t remove or add anything to the frame after I have made the image. That being said, where you choose to stand and when you choose to release the shutter affects what is included within the frame, photographers have used this since the beginning of photography to include or exclude visual information that they do not want, need or find inconvenient to their images/stories.

I find that the approach of street photography is helping me to tell the story of London, as a Global Financial Centre. I look for traces of the financial world on the city, this knowledge is built up by watching, walking and talking to strangers. I have had numerous conversations with complete strangers who tell me sometimes quite amazing stories of their experiences within the city. Some days I feel I am making images that work, others I struggle to get a single image that to me conveys any meaning, that is the challenge of doing street photography in London or any City.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton November 6, 2017
City of London Street Photography By Michael Wayne Plant, Documentary Style Street Photography,

Documentary Style Street Photography

An approach to making work.

Documentary Style, Street Photography.

I think this term ‘Documentary style street photography’ is rather good at describing how I think about my own approach to making images, for my current project on the streets of the City of London as a street photographer.

In writing about Walker Evans, I happened across a piece written by J. David Sapir called Walker Evans and his’ Documentary Style’ a personal reading. I read it with interest as I had studied my MA in Photography and Urban Cultures in the Sociology department of Goldsmiths University, it resonated with me.

The line in particular “If photographs are to provide evidence of the World they must be stripped of their style, denuded of aesthetic value.” That is for me a reason why Walkers Evans is significant as a photographer, but his work still had a style as do all photographers work have a style his is a reflection of his time that he made his images in like all work is in fact reflections of the era that they are made in. I once wrote a piece for one of my classes that explored this notion of each era has a look and this was both a reflection of the politics and the technical tools that where available to the photographer, at that particular time.

Digital has changed photography, but it also can if treated with respect get out of the way and allow plain seeing to happen, however the processing also needs to reflect this idea of simple processing so that the digital aspect of contemporary photography does not call attention to itself.

When I really think about it, using a documentary style in street photography is what most street photographers actually do, if street photographers are concerned with life as it is lived. Yet a lot of documentary photographers, also use street photography as an approach in there work. As they want to show how life is also lived out on the streets and they are also looking for that candid moment.

This idea of a style in photography is important as is about our conventions that we use to create meaning Walker Evans is quoted as saying: “When you say ‘documentary,’ you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder….That’s a real document. You see art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I’m called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.” (Evans W,  1983)” {Available online from: http://documentaryfoto.posthaven.com/a-documentary-style Accessed on 6th Nov 2017}.

So if we think about Documentary Style, Street Photography it is also a style and a process for making images that comes with conventions combining two genres  in the work that is being made. Whereas some documentary photography is set up, and while not made to look like it has been, it does have to have the collaboration of the people being documented to make it work. Whereas, street photography is candid, not set up, that is its attraction for a lot of photographers, because it is about the moment that is observed that is important to them.

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton October 30, 2017
Walker Evans & Company

My Photographic Heros no 12: Walker Evans

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was a documentary photographer, famous for working in the 1930’s his images helped to define along with Dorothea Lange what the Depression looked like in America. I originally learnt about Walker Evans as an influence on another of my heroes when I was exploring the work of Robert Frank, I came across an essay by Tod Papageorge called “An Essay on Influence” Which was a wonderful exploration of how a photographer is influenced by another.

The idea that so often gets referred to in regards to Walker Evans’s early work from the 1930’s, is that he was into what could be described as plain seeing (see this article for more), that for many people they do not see what the fuss is about, yet it is quite hard to have plain seeing in photography, even more so with all the possibilities that digital photography can give with post-processing.

Walker Evans is also famous for calling documentary photography a style.

YouTube videos with and about Walker Evans

What I learnt from Walker Evans

Walker Evans, used a large format camera to make his images, taking time to make them, constructing the images to reflect his ideas on and of the situation that he was photographing. He was a Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer under Stryker and would be given shooting scripts to work towards while making images for the FSA, I think the idea of having a script could be helpful as it enables you to plan and think about he images you need to tell the story. It forces you to think more deeply about the images you are making. Not directly by Walker Evans but in theory and discussions on his work the term Vernacular as in Vernacular culture comes up a lot, so I learnt about this aspect of our visual culture and how this affects my own work.

I think the biggest thing I took from Walker Evans work was try not to adorn your with with affectations or styles, as these will invariably date and become out of fashion.

Links to articles on his work.

Walker Evans’ love of the vernacular at SFMOMA’s enormous retrospective. written by Diane Smyth. BJP Website

Amercian Photography by Walker Evans by Ben Cosgrove Time Magazine Lightbox

17 Lessons Walker Evans Has Taught Me About Street Photography by Eric Kim This is a good exploration of ideas that one could take form Walkers Evans approach to life from the perspective of a street photographer.

American SuburbX website featuring interviews and text on Walker Evans and (The Poetry of Plain Seeing)

Books by/on Walker Evans

Walker Evans: American PhotographsWalker Evans: American Photographs by Walker Evans (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

This is the one to get by Evans and MOMA. it is one of two that I would consider his seminal works the other is immediately below.

 

 

 

 

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker EvansLet Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

This is the other book to get, I studied this as part of my MA in Photography and Urban Cultures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Evans & CompanyWalker Evans and Company by Peter Galassi (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

 

 

Walker Evans Hungry EyeWalker Evans: The Hungry Eye by Gilles Mora, John Hill,(Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Evans - American Photographs.

Walker Evans – American Photographs. Books on Book (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Evans: Aperture Masters of PhotographyWalker Evans: Aperture Masters of Photography by Walker Evans, David Campany (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

 

 


Walker-Evans-Magazine-Work
 Walker Evans: The Magazine Work by David Campany (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Walker Evans by Clement Cheroux

Walker Evans by Clement Cheroux (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton October 25, 2017
Street Photography Ethics

Thinking about Street Photography Ethics

Some thoughts on the ethics involved in making Street Photography images.

I originally started to write about my approach to street photography and before I knew it I had started on the topic of Street Photography Ethics. As it is such big and for some contentious topic, I thought it deserved its own post, so todays article is on Ethics and Street Photography. I do not have any definitive answers and this is only my opinion on the subject. I know people/writers with far more clout/knowledge than me who have written on this subject. So here goes:

Up front, my position on Street Photography Ethics, is that I think that it is important to make images of our society, as it is, unvarnished, ie without the consent of subject. My reasons for this are quite simple and it has to do with if we do not make images, people in the future will not know how our time and things looked. For example, we cannot go back in time beyond the beginnings of photography, to see what life was like visually. We have limited ability to visualise what life looked like, painting kind of does, but not really show what life was like prior to the invention of photography. This is in part the nature of how paintings are made. In addition the people who commissioned most paintings controlled the creation of the type of paintings made. (See John Berger’s Ways of Seeing TV documentary available on YouTube), so that invariably when the people commissioning work are the subject matter, we invariably get a propagandistic view of how they wanted to be seen. This leads to the other reason that I think it is not a good idea to ask a person whether you can make an image that includes them, is that it leads to images that tend towards flattery as we photographers want our subjects to like the images that we make. Which, I believe is not always a good idea especially if we are attempting to make images as a critique of the society that we inhabit.

Another of the issues that photography in general faces concerns informed consent, how can the subject give their consent to the image that is made and its use. This applies equally to both street and documentary photography, As a photographer I can ask my subject, ‘can I make your photo’ and yet at the time of making the image, I have no idea how it will be used. ‘Can I make a photo of you?’ is a different question to ‘what will you do with the photo?’ This is the more important question that is often not mention by the photographer, primarily because they do not know where the image/s will appear and how it can be used after their creation. Often when I am on the streets of the City, I get asked what am I doing and I answer that I am making a series of images on the City of London, that I am working on an exhibition and looking towards getting a book published this seems to answer the question. But when I am elsewhere in London I making images I do not have a project, I do not even know if I will ever use the images. Sometimes I make these images for practice, other times because I found something of interest to me so I am making images, in these circumstances I do not have a satisfactory answer to this question. I can say that I might use the images on social media, but hardly anyone ever asks what sort of agenda do you have in making images, this I find interesting.

We also have to remember that all images can be taken out of context and used inappropriately, so it becomes a moral and ethical conundrum that is difficult to solve. I have decided that by myself I am not going to solve it. Yet I still feel compelled to make images, I justify this by it is just what I do, I am a photographer and it is what photographers do, we make images. Mimi Mollica has an interesting take on this, in an interview he did with Ben Smith, for his A Small Voice podcast. Mimi’s take is that we should do it, in part this justification comes also comes from the fact that every day we walk out our doors into a public sphere of the street where we are being watched by CCTV cameras. Here in London, we have more surveillance than anywhere else in the world, so our privacy has been completely eroded anyway and me photographing on the street is actually more visible, because when I am operating the camera, I am in full view of my subjects. If someone does not like my presence they can always turn away from me and the camera, thereby rendering my image a dud. Whereas, turning away from CCTV cameras creates suspicion that you are doing something wrong.

Joel Colberg has an article on his Conscientious website taking a different tack on this subject. I disagree with him on the idea that we have a choice about going into shops if they have CCTV, as it has become pervasive everywhere especially here in the UK. I do think he has a point about street photographers have a responsibility to the public in how they make images and to engage and even educate them in why we are making images. It is not just because we legally can what we do, but it is also because we believe that it is our moral duty to show what our world looks like that we do it. This means that if asked instead of saying I can legally do and nothing you can do about it, so if challenged it becomes an opportunity to have a conversation as to why we make images in and of public spaces with all of the people included in the frame.

Heather Shuker in an article titled “Street photography: rights, ethics and the future” explores the history of street photography and the ethics in a detailed article. I do however have problems with the two photographers she choses to use as case studies as these are examples of photographers whose work is not the normal approach for street photography, one photographer used long lenses and rigged flashes, the other uses a confrontational approach with flash on camera neither are typical approaches to street photography. Two aspects I think she has right are: “all of us have a moral outlook about what is right and what is wrong that guides our behaviour.” On Pg 10 and “Looking at the fundamentals underlying the ethics of street photography, the photographer is typically an artist whose goal is to capture an image that ultimately becomes an artwork and/or a record of social history. Street photographers work to an ethos of the right to the freedom of expression and enquiry to capture the world around them in images.” On Pg 12. I do like Shuker’s idea of taking from the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) code of ethics (see appendix 1 in her article) for photographers as a code of morale conduct. For more see: nppa.org/code-ethics

A recent book Street Photography: Creative vision behind the lens by Valérie Jardin. Their is only three paragraphs devoted to ethics, which I could summarise as, “in my opinion, certain ‘rules’ of ethics that derive from common sense, no matter who you are and where you live.” Is not a discussion of ethics or the idea that if you inadvertently photograph a subject in an embarrassing way, do not to post the image. A lot of contemporary street photography uses visual puns, making use of juxtaposition, this could lead to embarrassment and humour. She also uses a reference to cultural sensitivity of lovers not supposed to be together, but then how do we as strangers know if lovers are supposed to be together. I think this is a lazy example of exploring the ethics of street photography and is common in books on street photography.

Eric Kim is rather well known in street photography circles for his workshops and online presence in the street photography community in an interview for the BBC Religion and Ethics column, he has this to say: “I often think to myself: if I photograph a homeless person or a drug addict, am I doing it to reveal something positive about them? Or am I doing it because I wish to make an interesting and gritty photograph? I think that is a fine line that all street photographers have to be wary of.”

I find that it is hard to answer this one as by not photographing them, we render them invisible and that is also not ethical, as they need a voice in our society. I think it is important to think about why you are making an image and can you make one that adds to the debate, not create an aesthetically gritty image of life. Often when I was teaching, I would have students come in with street photography images of homeless people and I would ask them what where they trying to achieve with these types of images. If you do not have something to bring to the reason why you are photographing them on the streets then I believe that you should not be photographing them. And that I believe goes for everyone, yet recently I have been noticing that on the streets of London there are more homelessness than there used to be, so I am now thinking that I need to include this into my City of London project that I am currently working on, as it is relevant and whoever occupies the City is my subject matter, by not showing the homeless in the City I am rendering them invisible and that has its own morality problems.

Likewise photographing children, I believe we should and yet we have to be careful how we approach this, as I think we should see children in images and how their lives are currently being lived. Helen Levitt one of my favourite photographers, made images of children playing on the streets of New York in the 1940’s, showing how that world looked. We could not make these images now, as life has changed and we no longer live on lives on the streets like the people she photographed.

Eric Kim goes on to say: “I think the best way to approach someone is openly and honestly. This means if you take a photo of someone (without permission) you don’t pretend you didn’t take the shot. You then approach the person and tell them why you took the photo and what you found interesting about them. You then take a potentially negative experience and make it into a positive one.” This approach leads to conversations and that is what I like about using street photography to document the social landscape of our times.

I could go on about this subject for quite a bit as I think it is important, ethics need to be considered and you need to be clear what you think on the subject especially if you are going out into the world to make images. Think about why you are making the images you are, is it for aesthetic reasons only or do you have something else you are interested in, if you do, does this reason override the aesthetic i.e: I like this because it looks good reason. This is why I am interested in using street photography techniques in my social documentary photography as I do have something I am looking at and this informs all of my photography.

Consequently, I personally think it is important that we do make images on the street otherwise we will not have a record of what our time looks like. As I have already stated we only have a vague idea what life looked like before the advent of the camera, especially the small format camera that could be taken anywhere and used at any time of the day or night. I also think it important to engage others as to why we are doing what we do as street photographers otherwise we could in the future find that it is made illegal and that is not something that I want, because I want the future to see what our lives looked like.

Photography can be a democratic art form, anyone with a camera can make images. It is up to us to make sure we are comfortable with the type of images we want to make.

 

NPPA Code of Ethics.

  1. Be accurate and comprehensive in the representation of subjects.
  2. Resist being manipulated by staged photo opportunities.
  3. Be complete and provide context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyping individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting one’s own biases in the work.
  4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.
  5. While photographing subjects do not intentionally contribute to, alter, or seek to alter or influence events.
  6. Editing should maintain the integrity of the photographic images’ content and context. Do not manipulate images or add or alter sound in any way that can mislead viewers or misrepresent subjects.
  7. Do not pay sources or subjects or reward them materially for information or participation.
  8. Do not accept gifts, favours, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage.
  9. Do not intentionally sabotage the efforts of other journalists.
  10. Do not engage in harassing behaviour of colleagues, subordinates or subjects and maintain the highest standards of behaviour in all professional interactions.

 

Links in this article

Heather Shuker. Street photography: rights, ethics and the future. Available online at: http://www.heathershuker.co.uk/street-photography/ accessed on 24th Oct 2017

NPPA Code of Ethics. Available online at: https://nppa.org/code-ethics Accessed on 24th Oct 2017

Valérie Jardin. (2017) Street Photography: Creative Vision behind the lens. Focal Press. Available online at: Amazon UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1138238937 Accessed on 22th Oct 2017

Ben Smith. Mimi Mollica Interview. Available online at: https://bensmithphoto.com/asmallvoice/mimi-mollica Accessed on 20th Oct 2017

Jörg M. Colberg (3rd Apr 2013) The Ethics of Street Photography. Available online at: http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/extended/archives/the_ethics_of_street_photography/ Accessed on 20th Oct 2017

BBC Religion and Ethics Q&A with Eric Kim: The ethics of street photography. Available online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/0/21532400 Accessed on 24th Oct 2017

John Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing, BBC TV series. Available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk Accessed on 24th Oct 2017

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton September 18, 2017

My Photographic Heros no 11: Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld

The American photographer Joel Sternfeld, makes colour images and is known for this large format camera colour photography, he has since turned to digital, recently I had a brief email exchange with Joel after his talk at the Photographers Gallery in London, as of January 2017, he was using a Nikon D800, a shift & tilt lens and a tripod. So his working method would not be that different to that he used with his large format photography, it is still slow and considered.

He lectures at Sarah Lawrence College in the USA.

One of his early projects made between 1979 and 1983, which became American Prospects was the result of a series of road trips across America. Another of his projects photographed the high line in New York city.

YouTube videos with and about Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld talk at The Photographer Gallery

http://www.michaelwayneplant.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Joel-Sternfeld-27-1-2017.mp3

What I learnt from Joel Sternfeld

I learnt that is okay to have heroes, but you have to make your own work that is not derivative of your inspirations. You need to find your own working methods that are yours and that come from you. Yes we are all influenced by someone and things around us, but you need to find your aesthetic for the work that you will make for it to truly be your own work.

I also like that because meanings for images are not fixed it is important to let the viewer question what the image is, without you prescribing what the image is about, when captioning your images.

Links to articles on his work.

Do Not Trust This Joel Sternfeld Photograph by Jonathon Keats at Forbes Magazine

6 Lessons Joel Sternfeld Has Taught Me About Street Photography by Eric Kim

Put a frame to the world: Joel Sternfeld on Faded & Blurred.

 

Books by/on Joel Sternfeld

Joel Sternfeld: American Prospects (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Joel Sternfeld: On this Site (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Joel Sternfeld: Walking the High Line (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

 

Joel Sternfeld: Stranger Passing (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Joel Sternfeld: First Pictures (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Joel Sternfeld: Sweet Earth – Experimental Utopias in America (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

Joel Sternfeld: Oxbow Archive (Amazon US link), (Amazon UK link)

 

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton September 16, 2017

Featured on Creative Londoners

Exposing Neoliberalism on www.CreativeLondoners.com

 

I have just had an interview on my City of London social documentary/street photography project published on Creative Londoners, it is a new website writing articles/interviews about you guessed it, ‘Creative Londoners’. Oli Gudgeon started the website to write about this subject. He has already done a few interviews and I was really honoured to be asked, so without saying to much other than go check it out, and please return here to leave a comment when you have read it, as I would love to hear what you think. I got to talk about my approach to Street Photography and Social Documentary Photography.

Exposing Neoliberalism on www.CreativeLondoners.com

Michael

 

AuthorPostedbyMichael Wayne Planton September 14, 2017

Street Photography Symposium

Panelist on Photographing the City at Street London

In August this year, I was honoured to be asked by Nick Turpin of the street photography collective iN-PUBLiC to be included on a panel discussion on photographing the City of London. The panel was part of the Street Photography Symposium held at the wonderful new D&AD building in Shoreditch just off Brick Lane. The weekend was a great event put together by Martin Usborne of Hoxton Mini Press and Jason Reed the founder was back in time for the event. Both Jason Reed and Nick Turpin where the creative directors for the Street Photography Symposium  I have to say they put on an extremely well organised event that gave lots to think about for a street photographer. My section involved a panel discussion with Nick Turpin, Stephen McLaren ( of Street Photography Now {AmazonUK Link} fame) and Charlie Kwai and I even got a panelist mention page on the website check it out  (Michael Wayne Plant panelist page). the discussion could have gone on longer as we had only just scorched the surface when we where given the 5 minute warning for our time slot.

I do hope they invite me back next year, as it was such a great well run event. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Street Photography. The range of speakers and photographers presenting work was diverse. I think credit should go to Nick Turpin for a lot of that, in addition he also made a real effort to include women photographers in the conversation on street photography.

 

The Facebook page is: @streetlondon2017

and the Twitter account is: @StreetLondonPS

Mikhail Bralowski, made a great image of me as I approached him on the Sunday morning.

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