Learning from a dancing photographer
I headed to a local Ball last Saturday. It was a reasonably posh affair arranged by the Midland Amateur Dancers club, and in a large octagonal hall that I remember being daunting for beginners (right angles are the norm). I was on my own, and unfortunately didn't know anybody other than my dance teachers. I was probably the youngest attendee - the average age was likely late 50s - which makes it slightly awkward to find a partner. Having said that, it wasn't really the kind of night for asking strangers to dance anyway1. I ended up having just the one cha-cha, with my teacher.
It wasn't a total loss, though. When taken to my seat I immediately noticed two enormous Nikons on the table, and the guy next to me turned out to be official photographer for the World Championships(!). I introduced myself and we got chatting. I asked for advice on photographing dances, as I've been churning out mediocre results for years. His primary tip was to know the subject - he was a competitive dancer for 40 years, so could anticipate routines and their best photographic moments. He was photographing the night's competition, and generously made a point of showing me how to handle the situation. It's actually ok to physically move people into good positions - apparently people's desire to look good in photos outweighs usual social norms (which sounds vain, but isn't really).
It also helps if you have a stupidly powerful flash. Dance venues are often enormous and it can be tricky to balance light across the photo. Unfortunately this size offers few opportunities to soften light by bouncing it, so blasting across the floor is the only option. I don't like direct flash much, and full-frontal light doesn't do dancers any favours imho - I might work on some wireless off-camera setups, maybe work it into an appropriate uni project at some point.
I was then abruptly asked if I'd be stand-in photographer at a competition in May! Yikes. I agreed as it'll be great experience, but I'm nervous already. I practiced a little on the night:
Most of my shots came out underexposed, which was deliberate - I'd rather have a sharp, darker image than a properly-exposed shot in which the dancers are blurred. I brought back much of the detail in Lightroom, and my newly-arrived copy of Photoshop got a workout too. Colours are a nightmare, however.
I hadn't been looking forward to going alone, but it turned out to be a surprisingly interesting and productive evening. I learnt a lot, and I'm very grateful to the Proper Photographer for putting up with my annoying questions.
- possibly a rationalisation, but my teachers are normally good at pointing out suitable candidates, and even they were at a loss [↩]
Earthquake!
Either that was an earthquake, or something very violent and very quiet happened very close by...My first-floor flat rattled for a good few seconds.
IM indicates it was felt in Oxford too. Stratford to Oxford is, what, 50 miles? Must have been a pretty big one, in UK terms anyway.
Update: tracking this on Twitter. It was felt in Lincolnshire, Cambridge, London, Manchester...that's amazingly widespread, isn't it?
Twitter went nuts. BBC News had a breaking news marquee after about 10mins, News 24 took about 20mins. The second 'most read' page on the BBC site is about a 2007 Manchester earthquake - that was quick.
Update 2: "England earthquake God's punishment for Richard Dawkins', says random twitter 
Update 3: Sky News wants to know how scared the children were. They're very earnest about it. I'm going to bed.
Firefly still alive in print
I recently watched Serenity for the umpteenth time, and it's still the equal of anything in the genre. It did a good job of ending the series storylines, but it's obvious there's far more to the universe. Thankfully there's still plenty of interest in keeping the characters going, even if the chances of any more live-action shoots are pretty slim. A new comic will be out soon: Serenity: Better Days is written by Joss Whedon and will1 be released on 12th March. There's also a free, full-length fanfic novel by prolific sci-fi author Steven Brust, which I'm hoping will start a trend.
Incidentally, Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse will start (I think) this autumn:
The idea is those with the money or connections can access this secret highly illegal facility where they can basically fulfill their greatest fantasies. Most people assume that means sex—and on an occasion it does, because that is a lot of people's fantasies—but it's basically scenarios. They can basically reenact scenarios of romance, adventure or anything perfectly, because they become the person that you want them to be—they become that person. They don't act like that person, they are not a robot pretending, they become that person, and then they forget all about it. The problem is the character of Echo, Eliza Dushku's character, stops forgetting. She doesn't completely remember, but she does realize she is a person, and that she might have been a person before she did this, and she doesn't know what that is.
Sounds interesting...I'll watch anything written by Mr Whedon.
- apparently, although Amazon doesn't know about it [↩]
Photojojo’s Time Capsule
Photojojo just publicly launched their Time Capsule system, which emails you twice a month with your Flickr photos from a year ago. I had a sneak preview of this, and it's a delightful little thing: very simple, infrequent enough to retain its charm, and oddly fascinating.
Focus on Imaging at the NEC
The Focus on Imaging photography fair was at the NEC on Sunday, so my friend Ben and I headed along. It was a bit nuts. Over a hundred vendors demonstrated cameras, tripods, lighting equipment, software, frame-making services etc., and everything was for sale. Happily, very very little came anything near my price range.
Photography is an inescapably expensive hobby, but it's ripe for exploitation. Case in point: at one point we were grabbed by an ExpoDisc salesman. The ExpoDisc is a filter that approximates 18% grey, the point being to slip it over the lens and generate a custom white balance for the scene. It filters light with prisms and "some kind of white material"; no price was given. We politely moved on, then later discovered they cost £50. £50! The same effect is achievable with five seconds' extra effort and a piece of card - this would also let you white balance for specific lights, rather than the entire scene.
There were plenty of such products on display. A large crowd gathered around a demonstration of software apparently designed to automatically airbrush the hell out of already beautiful women - I'm far from a no-editing purist, but flawless skin and glowing highlights look ridiculous imho. Nevertheless the software was undeniably powerful and probably easy to use, which counts for a lot if you (for some reason) desire the end result; indeed, there were a few Photoshop plugin packages that seemed to consist entirely of scripted actions.
It wasn't all like that, though - there was plenty of Cool Stuff too. High-quality printers were churning out A1 prints in just a few minutes, with paper manufacturers close by. The Nikon stand1 demonstrated 52-point autofocus systems, while Canon's platform housed a bank of Serious Cameras with Serious Lenses, all bolted to the floor and usable by the general public. I slipped my memory card into an EOS 1-Ds Mark III with a 500mm lens, which cost £4500 and £3800 respectively:
The full JPEG is 20 megapixels. Quite nice. The camera weighs as much as a mature badger, however, so I don't think I'll get one.
I felt weirdly intimidated, walking around. We were surrounded by Proper Photographers, all of whom looked extremely knowledgeable, capable and tall (seriously, I was average height at school, what happened?) and at times I felt like a play-acting child. I was too intimidated to try out the Canon until Ben wisely talked me into it. Hopefully I'll get better at that.
We drooled over macro lenses and the non-bonkers cameras for a while, but somehow managed not to buy anything, despite being tempted by reasonably priced (ish) monitor calibration tools and instant-camera-cred lens hoods. I found it very interesting to see all this equipment in person - it removed some of the product-shot mystique, at least.
- Ben took a wrong turn at an early technological crossroads and as a result is a Nikon lad. I attempted to educate him in the Ways of Righteousness, but was sadly unsuccessful. I'll keep trying [↩]
Penn Jillette on Dancing with the Stars
I've never watched Dancing With The Stars, the US version of Strictly, but I might have to start: the new series line-up includes rationalist-hero Penn Jillette. Wow. Via SCB.
Initial thoughts on the ‘aesthetic hypothesis’
I'm a relativist when it comes to the arts. I'll argue artistic merits based on my personal preferences, and I think it's reasonable to logically analyse people's likes and dislikes, but at base it's all subjective. I've had heated disagreements with friends on this topic, but in my opinion all counterpoints eventually boil down to arguments from authority. These supposed authorities are regular targets of my ire, mainly those who set themselves up as 'official' critics, as I think they demean people for no good reason. However, my arty degree means I've been reading plenty of critical analyses over the last few months, and it's interesting to get into the details of how these people approach their subject. I think there's a lot of snobbery and building upon dodgy foundations, but occasionally somebody tries to justify the entire endeavour.
I've recently read a few essays by art critic Clive Bell, and found his writing refreshingly clear and direct. He meets the issue of subjectivity and the nature of 'art' head-on with his 'aesthetic hypothesis' - essentially an attempt to quantify artistic appreciation. Here's the rough idea as I understand it: he posits an 'aesthetic' emotion. This emotion is felt by capable people1 when looking at 'good' art, and is distinct from intellectual appreciation. Clive Bell doesn't claim this emotion is the same in everybody, but thinks it's invoked by a particular concept: significant form; this is essentially the arrangement of shapes on a surface. He uses this as a basis for differentiating between standards of art, as well as art and non-art.
I haven't read around this topic yet, but I'm not immediately convinced.
- I don't think it's scientifically plausible. What use is an aesthetic emotion? Obviously there are evolutionary by-products - we didn't need to play the piano on the savannah - but emotions have well-understood, evolutionarily-necessary purposes. An aesthetic emotion would seem to have a different nature than love, fear etc.. Sure, the brain has plenty of matter devoted to processing shapes and lines - face-recognition is a massive brain module - but this is universal, and it's dubious that only some people would have this 'leak over' into some kind of aesthetic response.
- I think modern psychology would have plenty of explanations for Mr Bell's emotions in front of a work of art. Analysing your own emotions is ridiculously difficult as we're all subject to massive psychological pressures. The power of suggestion, for example. Ever tried to make yourself feel something you don't? Weird things happen. I'm obviously not denying that people find particular arrangements of shapes pleasing, but to elevate this above an individual's neural network of associations seems dubious. I'm not sure how 'significant form' relates to non-visual arts, either.
- It's a conveniently untestable hypothesis, and reminds me of the religious tactic of 'I just feel God's presence', as if this is meant to be convincing.
- It's a bit magical. You can link it to science, or you can link it to some Artistic Otherworld where objective standards exist. Bit spiritual for me.
- Even if you grant the premise, the supposed artistic merits are a non sequitur. That some people feel an emotion when looking at certain things means nothing at all. Why should it? It's a naturalistic fallacy, as if 'the emotions' override the intellect, or indeed anything else. The person who feels nothing while looking at Cézanne is no less qualified to judge 'quality'2 than the aesthetically capable critic.
All of which could have been addressed and/or straw men - as I said, I'm just starting with this topic. I wanted to get my thoughts in order, though. I very much appreciate that this guy writes so clearly - I might disagree, but at least there's a Clive Bell-shaped hole in the wall.
Purple People Eater
I had a happy lighting accident this evening:
T-Rex is standing on a mirror, in front of a white background. I fired a flash with red "gel" (actually a silk handkerchief from my old magic gear) into the mirror at 40ish degrees to my left. I expected the red filter to give a bloody, macabre feel, and the resulting pink/purple gradient took me by surprise. I love the effect, but I'm puzzled - surely it should go from bright red --> dark red --> black? I'm wondering whether it's a white balance thing, although I can't see how that makes sense...
I hope to read this post in a few months and think "that's so obvious".
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: what, how can u live in the 21 c and say that, probably a sexist thing
on Climbing Snowdon. - vicky: da iawn laura, cant believe what im hearing, all this fuss, anyway love the site, and i agree, normal people who swear and curse clomb mountains cos we live in the...
on Climbing Snowdon. - Andrew: Did a few quick test shots to check the light levels, then balanced the camera on the arm of a bench, set it for a 20s exposure and hoped for the best
on ISS. - lynsey: Wow, how did you take that photograph?
on ISS.
