I've been quiet

Partly due to ill health and partly due to being overworked, as usual, I haven't put much forward lately. However, as this is now coming up to a new year, I thought I'd put some suggestions to the BBC Trust board. Well, they have been advertising on TV shows for how the public want their licence fee spent, so I put forward two suggestions. One of them, is having a regular magazine for photographers. If you want to put forward your own ideas, or indeed if you want to add your voice to mine, you can e-mail the trust on trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk

Dear Sir/Madam,

I was a bit lost on this; there doesn't seem to be a straightforward tunnel
for feeding in programme ideas.

Anyway, the trust wants to know how the licence fee payers want their money spent, so here's a couple of ideas for you. This is how I'd like some of my licence fee to be spent...

Firstly, "Doing without China."

Personally, I'm fed up of the goods I get from China going wrong and not lasting. Also, with the recent execution of the UK citizen for drug trafficking, I would like to cut down on Chinese goods. So here we go...

*) There was a reporter doing a stint on living life without plastic, but how easy is it to live life without Chinese goods?

*) It could open an investigation in to what went wrong in the UK, including a look in to Maplin Electronics, once one of the public's most prized electrical component retailers and now just a company that resells electronic tat.

*) We have country of origin on our food, but why not on our other goods? Why do we have to wait until we've got the product in hand to find the, "made in" sticker? Some goods I've bought from garage shops don't even have a country of origin on the packaging or the goods; isn't that against the law?

*) What about our purchasing morals? After the recession and our decade love affair of treating our gadgets as throw away commodities, are we back on the quality hunt again and if so, what has our taste for the cheap and cheerful done to our home industries?


The second program idea is for photography. A magazine programme aimed at photographers, but also allowing the public in to this very public, yet private world; where there is much going on in the world of photographic art.

Despite the recession digital cameras remained high in the sales figures. We've got cameras in everything, including mobile phones. How many people know how to use them, though? Would the Royal Photographic Society get involved?

Add to that there has been the long running hoo-ha over the police stopping citizens and how many amateur photographers actually do know the law?

A monthly competition where show watchers win the chance to go somewhere and shoot things; just look at the outings that Photography Monthly readers have got up to, and my own encounter with them in Port Lympne Wildlife Park, where we even went in to one of the monkey enclosures and got some stunning pictures ... http://www.msknight.com/shoot/index2.html#3

There is massive opportunity here for a magazine program; maybe not weekly but possibly bi-weekly or at the outside, monthly. I'm not talking about the competition documentary rubbish that serves to merely entertain, I'm talking about something practical that passes on knowledge, discusses issues of the day and gets things in to the open. We are facing a massive crunch between the
right to take photographs and individuals privacy. Who knows but documenting everyday life might end up in serious jeopardy; which would be a shame because much of what we know about life in our recent history has been because of photographs taken at that time.

Cameras are shifting off the shelves . If you take just the serious grade cameras we're still talking serious figures for the UK alone, "Consumers snapped up nearly 125,000 DSLRs in December 2008 and January 2009." http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/digital_camera_sales_beat_recession_news_277645.html%22 - and if you extrapolate that to the bridge and compact cameras, that's a lot of Joe Public with serious equipment in their hands.

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Where a light meter helps

I've seen a fair few posts about people saying that you don't need no stinkin' light meter. Well, for them, that may be true but at the end of the story is that it is down to your own decision.

A light meter has its uses in various areas, and not only ratios. It is most useful at the extremes.

To start with, and actually more importantly, incident versus reflection. That link takes you to my small 2007 investigation in to light metering. Part 3 of that series showed a complex light situation and how the hand held meter worked where the on board meter got confused.

Extreme of Histogram

The camera can only give you a reflective reading and the histogram is only good to a degree. If the correct exposure for an image happens to mean that the histogram ends up bunched at either the top or the bottom, then so be it. Someone popping and chimping could very well be screwing up the exposure if they are forcing the histogram to where it shouldn't be.

Extreme of time

Most cameras seem to top out at 30 seconds exposure. Even my cheap-ish light meter goes to a full minute.

Extreme of situation

There are cases where you can't afford to pop and chimp. You've got to get it right out of the box even with a digital camera. Portraits of people that don't like to be kept hanging around while you keep adjusting your equipment. If you're doing things regularly, then you'll know your equipment and experience will get you most of the way there.

The most important thing about light meters, however, is to make your own choice. If you can borrow one and spend some time learning about it, then you can work out whether it is good for your work flow.

The most important thing about having the figures, however, means that you're not fighting with the cameras metering system. If you've just got too much or not enough light coming in, then you can flip the camera to manual and override it.

Me? I've got one and it has helped me out of odd situations although I don't use it on a regular basis. If I had my money again, though, I would have probably doubled the cash on it, for the extra extremes.

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Petition Approved

Well here it is. Any UK citizen or ex-pat can support this petition. Um ... yippee?

For those of you who are not Windows aficionados and are fed up of cameras or other equipment not coming with support, software or drivers for your operating system, you might want to consider the petition.

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Don't shout at your hard drives

I was alerted to this video after going on a Sun Solaris 10 admin course. This bloke knows what he is doing and ... by the way ... if they think you've shouted at your disks, it might void your warantee. So ... next time your machine blue screens, try to keep your temper. It isn't good for the hardware!

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Why Beauty Matters

For those in the UK I've been watching this episode of Why Beauty Matters. The presenter makes the comment that Duchamp was trying to change things, and pondering what he was trying to change them to. To me, that is the wrong question; the wrong angle to come in on the understanding. I don't believe Duchamp was trying to, "change," what existed; I believe he was trying to widen a very narrow pallet of taste.

Duchamp made the point in the interview that he believed that the word art had been discredited. Personally, I believe that art has been alienated; stuck in time when it should be expanding to keep pace with society. That then begs the question of whether it is art that defines society or a society that defines its art. Personally, I think it is the latter ... but that is just me.

Duchamp's urinal provoked thought. It didn't blow my senses like looking at a stunning picture or a superbly crafted sculpture, but it set my mind off course and forced a re-evaluation; it had an effect. I have more senses that are to be challenged in art than simply my eyes.

Roger Scrutton is, to me, perhaps wanting to hark back to a society of a different period. Art reflects society, and society has changed. Did building architects really replace beauty with utility ... or did they design something which was beautiful to them at the time? Would anyone have parted with the money for a building unless they actually liked what they saw on the drawing board? Scrutton's calling the architects vandals is the final nail in the coffin for me. I am left with the belief that Scrutton has approached this whole subject with a closed mind and seeks to bring, through the camera angles and arguments he puts forward, the viewer to the same conclusion as him.

Scrutton endorses the view that we view beauty by putting aside our personal needs and just looking on things for what they are. I agree with him wholeheartedly on this point. But little has changed, en masse, throughout the ages in terms of the time spent connecting with beauty, I believe. The majority of people have always had to scratch their living, concerned with where the next morsel was coming from. So I don't easily perceive, as Scrutton suggests, any change in the, "dawning of beauty," on us.

However, the problem is that beauty will always be in the eye of the beholder. As is the case with music of the different ages, beauty is also in the ear of the beholder. What generation ever manages to make a connection with the music, meaning and understanding of a generation younger than themselves?

I believe it is a stage of realism; in fact a stronger connection with nature. The balance of natures own beauty and horror; and to try and deny the rawness of nature itself is to try and place ourselves in a rose tinted view of art. Using art in Scruttons suggested way is akin to using drugs; maintaining an existence in an unreal world. Scruttons world of beauty would anaesthetise the pain of reality.

Alexander Stoddart made an absurd suggestion that if someone were to pass a skip that contained Apollo Belvedere Torso, that they would be so arrested by it that they jump in to dig it out ... I mean ... dream on. Not everyone has Stoddart's ideas of beauty. And that, I believe, is the point.

There was one point not covered in all of Scruttons ponderings on architecture ... the future. We see artists renditions of not only buildings but entire societies, portrayed in hundreds of years from now; and we perceive those as beautiful. I believe that Scrutton might describe those renditions as not of beauty, but as creations of lust. This only leaves me to level the same accusation at the works of the past; at their time, were they born of beauty, or of lust. And of our concrete architectural mistakes; did not the architects of years ago make their mistakes also, or was every creation perfect? Somehow, I doubt that we see the mistakes of times past, just as the future would never see our present day mistakes if it were not for modern record keeping.

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Studio Photography Essential Skills

In my opinion, this book is as essential as Light, Science, Magic. The difference is that it covers practical lighting situations more than the theory, and is backed up by exercises and explanations.

Communication, design, portraiture, product, still life, controls, exposure, light ... he goes through the lot in a language that is easy to understand and well supported by diagrams. Perhaps the most enlightening thing that John says is, "In the context of communication and design there is no right or wrong, only good and bad relative to the styles and tastes of the day. Unlike most other genres of photography the inspiration for a studio photograph has to be preconceived. Studio photographers cannot observe, compose and interpret by pointing the camera at the world around them. In a darkened studio there is no world around them. The studio photographer has to create or obtain everything appearing in front of the camera."

Sadly, the advertised support web site is no longer up; simply redirecting to the publisher, but that doesn't take anything away from the value of this book. There are also various activities designed to help you learn what John is teaching, by putting the book down and going to do something; perhaps the wisest thing of all, learning by doing.

The book isn't all technique, however. It shows the art to which the techniques relate and encourage the reader to visualise; to imagine; to see beyond the pages of the book itself. It is almost as if John is reaching an arm out of the pages and setting light to the readers taper that runs to an imagination explosion.

High key, low key, specularity, composites, metering, compensation ... if you're looking at a pile of lighting equipment and scratching your head, then this will kick start your mind in to wanting to get stuck in to creating, and give you the direction in which to do it.

The revision questions, by the way, don't have an answer table; you have to read the book to find the answers.

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