Naiads

Creating images of women in the water has been a passion for me over the last few summers. I've had enormous fun styling (trawling vintage shops, doing a little sewing, testing in the pool) and shooting with the very generous help and patience of my model Hopewell.

It's been a steep learning curve. I've worked exclusively outdoors in natural light. I've done my best to control conditions with careful timing and positioning, and I've gradually learned how to realise practically what I can see in my mind's eye.

I've loved many of the resulting images, but they haven't tended to be very successful in competition. Maybe I love them mainly because they've entailed so much work, and they still don't look quite like I think they do. Maybe they seem strange and difficult to understand. But I'm determined to keep working on this theme regardless and to see what results.

'Naiads' is my most recent addition to the series, and the process of making this composite image has been great fun, though quite hard on my cloning finger (I should have used my Wacom tablet....). 

I originally thought of a combination of four images. In each of these, Hopewell had been spinning around in the water, creating effective movement in both the water and the trailing pieces of her gown. I'd shot from above, standing quite precariously on a diving board above the pool.

But I felt that the one at the top left looked too weird and inelegant, so she had to go. 

I kept the best three, and rearranged them.

While I loved the colours (the pink gown was a delight to photograph in the dark water), I knew that my compositing skills aren't yet up to combining all of these, and I converted the file to mono.

It also struck me at this point that the women were dancing in a circle, so I began to work towards this for my final image.

The many shots I'd taken around these particular images were plundered for extra sections of water surface. It would be impossible to show this as a natural scene, so I aimed to allow visible water movement around each of the women and to keep it very subtle in all other areas.

I had the finished image printed in Hahnemule's new metallic photo rag paper. It has an amazing glisten and gleam, creating the effect of a moonlit pool, with the women shining from the black water like pearls. I love it. It remains to be seen whether any judges will agree with me, but in this case, that really doesn't matter. 

Things we lost in the fire

It's good to challenge yourself to try new things. This is a new thing I've been working on for the last month - my first composite image. It's by no means perfect, but I'm pleased with how it's turned out as a kind of trial run.

By good fortune - rather than highly skilled discrimination - it turned out to be a good image to use for a first attempt. The fact that the figure is quite dark and is set on an even darker background made it fairly forgiving. I was excited to see that, when you place the figures side by side, the line of their adjoining arms creates a very nice continuous line, providing a sense of flow from one to the next. The lenses of the gas masks became ready-made frames to surround the images that I placed inside them, making this task much more straightforward than if I'd had to blend them into a scene in a realistic way.

I've learned a lot of new Photoshop skills through working on this image, but developing the initial concept was more fun still. The original image was called "Close to my heart". In the composite, I wanted to develop the idea of the man holding tight to the gas mask, attempting to keep several things close to his heart. The images in the lenses show a girl, face turned from the camera, a couple walking into the distance, and a heart worked in wrought iron. There's a lightly sketched story there.

Did he succeed? "Things we lost in the fire" doesn't sound overly hopeful. 

The butterfly (vintage, carefully attached with a bendy wire and a piece of Sellotape), however, could be interpreted in a range of different ways - escape, a soul, forgiveness, change, death, resurrection....

Judge not....

Last week I took my first faltering steps into the world of judging photographic work.

It was a challenge. I tried my very best to rise to that challenge and do justice to the work of all the entrants, but really it was a fairly sketchy first attempt.

The competition in question was for less experienced photographers at Northern Ireland level. Less experienced doesn't mean less good - there were a substantial number of excellent shots in the collection to be judged.

Working as part of a three-person team, with one very experienced member, was what made me think I'd be brave enough to do it. And the most enjoyable part of the process was the evening judging session, with no audience, where we looked at all the images and made our decisions.  We had a pretty good level of agreement on which ones were in the top half of each category, and then which ones were in the final dozen or so. But it took time to whittle those ones carefully down to the top three, the highly commendeds and so on. There was a lot of worthwhile discussion and persuasion. It was instructive to hear the opinions of my fellow judges; sometimes they noticed things that I didn't, and sometimes my opinion changed, based on their points of view. With only a little compromise to ensure that everyone's opinions were represented, we ended up with impressive line-ups of winners for our three categories.

A few evenings later came the really difficult bit - presenting our decisions to an audience, largely composed of people whose work was included in the competition.

Considering I'm someone who talks all day long for a living, I find talking to a photography audience surprisingly nerve-wracking. They're my peers, and a lot of them know a lot more than I do. By the time this particular evening rolled round, I was beside myself. I was hoping for some kind of cataclysmic weather or political event that wouldn't actually harm anybody, but would definitely involve the cancellation of the competition. Sadly, it was a reasonable sort of a damp day and Northern Ireland ticked along in its usual not overly competent but definitely not cataclysmic way.

So I had to stand up and talk about the images. I had read every book and article I could find about good judging - and of course I had my own high-minded advice to follow from this article. 

And I sort of managed to do it. I was fortunate to be able to present many of the images that I'd been most impressed by. I think I conveyed a good sense of enthusiasm for these. I tried to concentrate on their artistic content, the messages they were presenting and how they might make viewers feel. I tried not to tell personal anecdotes, but I slipped up once or twice.

What I found really difficult, though, was making suggestions or giving advice that might be useful to the photographers. The few times I managed it, it was hedged about with so many perhapses, maybes, mights and possiblys that my intended recommendations were probably completely lost. And sometimes I just couldn't bring myself to say anything negative - so the photographer might well wonder why, if it was so good, it wasn't sitting amongst the top prizewinners?

I also realised afterwards that I'd said very little about anything technical in all the feedback I'd given. Composition, content, mood, emotion, use of colour had featured heavily, but I'd not discussed things like depth of field, exposure, editing techniques and so on. I'm not sure how that happened.

All in all, it was an educational experience. I don't know if I'll ever be asked to judge anything again. If I am, I'll do it better next time. If not, the respect that I already had for all the good and well-meaning judges I come across will increase a hundred-fold. A win either way.

The image at the start? It's my own. It's called Close to my Heart. I included it here because it's one that I thought judges would very possibly not like. But it was placed first in my most recent competition, and I'm thinking how very well-informed, sensitive and wise that judge was..... :)

Judgement day

Passing judgement on artistic work.

It's something I have to do frequently in my work as a music teacher. And, over the last few years, it's something where I've frequently been on the receiving end in my photographic and audio-visual work. 

I hate doing it, myself. It's not a problem marking essays or aural perception exercises or even students' performances, but when it comes to their compositions, their own creative musical constructions, I flinch from awarding a mark.

It's because I know that, when students have completed their task whole-heartedly, it's very personal. There's a part of them in the music I'm hearing. They're left exposed, hopeful, vulnerable. I don't want to put a number on that, or even to place them in order of merit.

I'd love just to applaud and congratulate.

But, as a teacher, part of my job is to encourage them to develop their creative work. And part of that involves giving feedback on their work. Some of that feedback has to identify the ways in which they can aim to improve. 

So that's what I try to do. I start with praise - and there are always, always things to praise. I try to be specific, using technical terminology to show that the work is worthy of being discussed in a serious way. Then I carefully choose something which, in my opinion and experience, the student could realistically take to a higher and more effective level. I try to present that in a way that sounds professional and matter-of-fact, totally believing that the work shows promise and that this area for development is very much achievable. And I conclude with something positive, hoping that I'm leaving the student motivated, first of all to compose again, and also to focus a little on the area that I suggested for development.

I don't always get it right, and I'm sure my students sometimes feel discouraged, and I'm sorry about that. But I recognise very genuinely that it's a privilege for me to have this creative work shared with me, and that that privilege brings serious responsibilities.

Having my own work judged makes me feel jittery and sick. I look at my little photographic print or watch my film, exposed in front of an audience on an easel or a screen, and actually tremble. I'm often all too well aware of its flaws and weaknesses myself. Usually, I'd love at the point of judgement just to snatch it away and run out the door. But, because I genuinely want to improve my skills, I wait, trying not to hyperventilate audibly, to hear what the judge has to say.

Sometimes, that process ends up being exceptionally rewarding. My few moments with my work in the spotlight leave me feeling validated, encouraged, eager to create something else, and possessed of useful new knowledge about how I can take my work further, or stimulated with new ideas that I wouldn't have thought of myself. 

But sometimes, that's not the case. Sometimes I've felt humiliated, or dismissed, or totally misunderstood, or perhaps not even worthy of comment. Because my work, up there on display and subject to judgement, is a part of me. 

The most positive experiences of having my work judged haven't all been the same. Nor have they necessarily been the ones where my work achieved its highest successes. But the judges in question have tended to:

Make it clear that there's nowhere else they'd rather be than enjoying our creative work.

Show a genuine emotional engagement with what they see.

Speak in a lively, enthusiastic, eager way.

Start with the positives. There are always positives. And that means in the work itself, not its peripherals or its presentation.

Take the work seriously, putting it in its broader context, noting the techniques used. 

Treat it as art.

Avoid second-guessing what it is or where it was made, if they don't know for sure.

Choose something that can be improved.

Avoid focusing on why that thing is bad; instead give positive, constructive, practical advice on how it can become better.

Avoid finding the same flaw in lots of work - if that's happening, it's probably just a bee in their bonnet.

Avoid too many personal anecdotes - it's our work up there, and it's us waiting on tenterhooks.

Avoid low blows that make the audience laugh at the expense of someone's work.

Finish on a positive note, so that the engagement with each piece ends on an upwards trajectory.

*****

Having put those thoughts on (virtual) paper, I'm heading out into my own working week with them clearly in mind. I'll be judging creative work every day. I hope I can follow my own advice.

Giant country

We've had a few weeks now of clouds custom-designed for photography. My perception of a nice day has shifted slightly - my heart beats a bit faster when I see "partly cloudy" on my weather app. If that happens at the weekend - bliss. 

These images, as many of you will recognise, are from the foothills of the Mournes, up above Kilkeel, where I'd been seeking accidental sculptures in the harbour. 

I spent a while just sitting on the wall and watching the clouds scudding by. It's a peaceful thing to do. I took a couple of dozen shots before my stomach required me to drive on to Dundrum and eat mussels at the Mourne Seafood Restaurant.

I've processed these ones using a new workflow that I stumbled upon accidentally - I think it works well for the colours of an Irish landscape. For each of these, I've used Lightroom, first converting to black and white, then editing them in mono, adjusting the black and white colour balance, managing the levels, adding plenty of graduated and radial filters, especially amongst the clouds. When I'm happy with the strong, contrasty black and white image, I copy it and convert it back into colour. Then I desaturate the colours that are now too strong, leaving a nice, slightly muted, vintage-style palette which still benefits from the strength of the black and white edit. 

The Saltpans and the camera club

I'm a keen and prolific photographer (as regular readers will have noticed...), but I've only been working on it seriously for the last couple of years.

I've read numerous books and magazines on the subject and watched even more online tutorials. I've taught myself to use Lightroom effectively. I've found a great printer, and by trial and error I've been producing prints I'm proud of, with the only the odd disaster. I also learn a lot from the many fantastic photographers I follow on Instagram (you can see my own account here).

But the thing that's made most difference in terms of encouragement, learning new skills, and motivating me to print and display my work has been joining a local camera club this year.

My natural inclination on a Friday night is to crash on the sofa with a novel and a takeaway from the Good Fortune and then go to bed early. But making an effort instead to beat the sloth, leave the comfort of my fake-fur blanket and drive across the hill to Bangor and the clubhouse has been rewarding every time. 

I've seen the work of inspirational photographers, from our own club and from the wider photographic community. Sometimes it's been work that I'd aspire to do myself. Sometimes the style and subject matter have been very different, but I've still learned a huge amount from hearing them talk about their approaches and techniques. 

I've seen experienced photographers judging the work of the club members and have learned a huge amount from both positive comments and constructive criticism. That includes my own work. It's a terrifying thing to see your little print alone and anonymous on an easel and wait for a verdict. Sometimes I can anticipate what will be said; sometimes it's a surprise, but it's always something to ponder and take account of.

I like the thought that my grandfather (you can see some of his work here) was a camera club competition judge back in the 60s and 70s. Many of the things that he would have talked about in that role are the things that judges address today.

I've made new friends, supportive and encouraging and funny. It's nice to have photo-geek companions who, unlike other friends, don't think you're weird when you fall in love with a lens, and who have strong opinions on what colour a mount should be. Watching and sharing in their achievements and triumphs is cool too. It's all a lot more fun than just doing it all alone.

The probably random-seeming images I've used in this post - The Saltpans, Lily in a Headwrap, and John Dory with Buttons - were chosen because they all did well in our recent exhibition and competition, and that's been another very enjoyable thing. While "winning" isn't the point of photography, it's always a thrill to have some recognition of a print that has worked well. It's another element of the encouragement that comes from being part of a group like this.

Thank you, club members, for your very warm welcome this year - it has been fantastic. And for other readers who may be working away at their photography alone, I highly recommend joining a similar group. It will keep you on your toes, broaden your horizons and ultimately make you a happier photographer.