W3 what is the image of the photographer

Het perfecte plaatje (the perfect image, tv show)

The perfect picture; https://www.talpa.tv/formats/talent/the-perfect-picture

The idea: Seven or eight famous Dutch people (actors, cooks, caberatiers, singers) fight each other to show that they themselves can also stand behind the camera. Every week they get a different challenge. Examples are: food photography, a day with the fire brigade, underwater photography, nude, portrait, macro, fashion and action photography.

What you do not see is the production team behind the scenes that does pre-production. A photographer was hired to make the lightning of the studio recordings and probably also the camera settings. The models are arranged and traveling and making appointments, planning, equipment and the like, need not have to be arranged by the candidates. The editing of the images is done for them.

This gives an incorrect picture of what the profession involves. I am a photography teacher at a school. We have "open days" every year and the last two years there are all aspiring students who say that they find the program so cool and "want to work that way themselves".

Changing technologie

Changing technology gives me more options to experiment with and other ways to come to an image. This takes a lot of time and that is unfortunately something that I do not always have. Too much planning and too much time is the biggest challenge.

Although in the beginning I had trouble with the phenomenon of digital photography. Especially because the quality was just not good enough and because of its volatility. Because you immediately have an image, you are quick to photograph less carefully, which means you have to work more.

Reveival of analogue

Return of analogue photography is a phenomenon that comes after the music on LP. We see movies appearing in the cinema on film. The production of enlargers for the darkroom has doubled and new films are being developed.

But the photos that are made andlove often have the look and feel of the photos as they look now, 50 years after data. Bleached, with scratches and not at all as originally intended. It even goes so far that you can get movies in which those errors are already standard. You do not even have to do anything in the post-processing.

https://analoguewonderland.co.uk

I’m a teacher at a school and half of my students shoot either analogue at the moment or using filters to create the effect. For them analogue means using a ready-made camera and polaroid without being able to change the shutter or aperture and everything is sharp. Since my students are around 18 years old nostalgia has nothing to do with it. I think that they are used to over-the-top edited, to perfect, images from Photoshop and, in reaction to that, are looking for imperfections. They associate analogue with dust, scratches, light leaks and such although they have no idea that their perception isn’t correct. The images they know from those days are from LP’s, bands, and the ’60 and the later popular polaroid. They associate it with freedom, parties, and fun. They feel a lot of pressure to have to perform and it might be that they are looking for a way to express how they feel: far from perfect. It might also be that what makes the analogue process so attractive is the fact that it is not done behind a computer and it takes time. Therefore we come back to last weeks discussion about mindfulness, solitude, and silence. 

What I see a lot in the Netherlands is that photographers call the filters they use their style. Not what they take images from, what I have to feel if I see the images, the composition, framing, usage of light and all the other things that, to me, together define the style of the photographer. I have no problems with phones or filters but the end has to justify the means. A filter is not a style to me. 

Last year I attended a presentation about the creation of your own style by Lynsey Adler. She has made me realize that you can also look at it differently. She says that you should be able to describe your style in 3 to 5 words.

1. What do you photograph?

2. How do you photograph that?

3. What do you want to achieve that others see.

What I like about this method is that it offers freedom. It does not say anything about the technique, the light, the color, the processing.