Edward Burtynski

I’ve been on assignment in Washington DC the last few weeks, and happily my time coincided with Fotoweek DC. Earlier this evening I attended a talk by Edward Burtynsky at the Corcoran Gallery talking about his new show “Oil”. It is one of the most powerful collection of photographs I have seen, and his talk gave an interesting account of how his ideas have progressed over the years and some of the challenges he has overcome to document the places he shows us.

Burtynsky is one of the world’s most renowned fine art photographers, having made his name documenting the impact humans have had on the landscape. The genius of his photographs lies in his ability to make the tragic look beautiful. As he says, “anyone can photograph these things and make them look ugly. By making them look beautiful, people actually pay attention.”

He started out covering railways in the 1980s, and since then has pointed his view camera at quarries, the mining industry, and the explosion of manufacturing in China.

Over the last 10 years he has turned his eye to oil, and through it the impact we have had on the land. The show begins with a series of photographs of the hell-on-earth landscapes of the Canadian tar sands, to show us where oil comes from. Next, a series of aerials shows us the lifestyle oil has allowed – the endless suburbs of Las Vegas and the enormous motorways of LA. Finally, he shows us what happens when we are finished with it all. From the deserted oil fields of Baku, now one of the most polluted places on earth, to the ship breaking yards of Chittagong where bare-footed workers scrap oil tankers by hand, we get a glimmer of the future – of what the world will look like when we have run out of oil.

In spite of the beauty of the photographs, it is not a pretty sight.

You can see the curator of the show, Paul Roth, give a brief introduction here.

Don't forget the content

With all the technical information about photography available on the internet I worry that sometimes people forget that one of the most important things about any photograph is having an interesting subject.

I was over at Thom Hogan's site this morning. Thom writes about all things Nikon, and although I'm not a Nikon user, he often has an interesting take on where the camera industry is going.

I don't usually care too much for his photography - he focuses on fine art landscapes. But he has a completely arresting image on the front page at the moment of a snarling lion that he grabbed while in Tanzania.

It's soft, under exposed, and blurred, but it captures such a wonderful moment you can't help but look at it agin and again.

As he says:

"Sometimes the subject transcends the technique, something that keeps getting forgotten (or at least ignored) in this "need more megapixels" world. This is a 10mp image taken with a consumer zoom with questionable technique (when a lion is doing this and you're as close as I was, I doubt your technique would be any better). Yet I'm pretty sure that you had a visceral and real reaction to it when you first saw it. Whatever camera you use, don't forget the content..."

I'm all too aware that many people looking to get into photography are so concerned about sharpness and pixel peeping that they forget photography is about communicating something. Thom's image does that perfectly.

He changes the image on the front page every couple of weeks, and I can't see how to link to the image specifically, so check there soon before it is gone.

Cycling

The Tour of Britain might not have the glamour of the Tour de France, but when the finish stage came to London last weekend I wanted to get some pictures. Cycling is a great sport to photograph as the riders all wear bright colours, the bikes look like something from a science fiction film and they often pass though spectacular locations.

It's always good to get a different perspective on things, and I managed to get up onto a bridge over the course at the start:

Then I tried a few panning shots from the side of the track. A shutter speed of about 1/100th seemed to get the right amount of motion blur:

Finally, I love shooting against the sun, so I found a corner where the cyclists had a clear view behind them. I used a wide angle lens and pre-focused at 1m (yes, the riders were that close!). I used on camera flash in high speed sync mode to provide some fill. I kept the aperture wide to allow the flash to recycle quickly, as I was shooting on motor drive:

Enjoy!

Triathlon

I recently shot a friend of mine who is a member of the GB triathlon squad. We headed out to Richmond Park on a cold August morning, and despite nearly freezing the death at first, the sun came through for an hour or so at about 7am.






There are a couple of techniques that you ned to nail for these kinds of shots.

The first is mixing ambient light and flash with a moving subject. Because your camera will only sync with the flash at 1/250th, you need to be careful not to get motion blur from the low (for action photography) shutter speed.

The second is panning. When you actually want to have motion blur, rto capture the sense of speed, you need to be sure to get just the right amount. Ideally you want the background blurred and the subject remaining reasonably sharp. When shooting close up with a wide angle lens, this can be particularly challenging. The solution is lots of practice and re-shooting again and again until you get it right.

Chamonix

It's been a while since my last post, but that's only because there's been so much going on. I'll try and bring you up to speed over the next few posts.

I recently returned from Chamonix, the home of mountaineering, at the foot of Mt Blanc. We spent a few days hiking and shooting We were exceptionally lucky with the weather, getting rain on the way out and the way back, but glorious sunshine fior most of the time in between. Sometimes things just happen that way.

These kinds of outdoor adventure shoots are always weather dependent and there isn't a lot you can do about it, so it's a huge relief when things fall in your favour.

Here are a few images:

Death of the photo print - part deux

I've written before about the death of the photographic print, so I was interested to read someone else highlighting the desire to be able to show fine art work on flatscreen displays. Head over to A Photo Editor for large format photographer Olivier Laude's take on it all.

In my original post I imagined it might be common in 10 years time (and I wrote that a year ago) but maybe it is even closer then I think...

Finally, a decent pocket camera?

One of the things we gave up with the move to digital over the last decade, was the small but quality pocket camera. Today's digicams typically suffer from very poor high ISO performance, slow zoom lenses and glacial speed whens shooting RAW, if they shoot RAW at all.

Back in the film days we had the Olympus Mju, the Contax TVS and various other high-end compacts. And because they took exactly the same film as their SLR cousins, you lost nothing in image quality.

These days, if you want to take high quality images then that usually means packing an SLR. Now, when shooting professionally then sure, pack the SLRs and all the other gubbins. But when I'm out just taking pictures for myself or grabbing some shots of friends, I don't always want to lug around a big heavy SLR.

But if you only carry a digicam you compromise so much on image quality that you end up just taking snapshots and not tryng to make real photographs at all. Generally anything shot at ISO 400 or above is a disaster, and the handling often leaves a lot to be desired.

It seems that the launch of the micro-4/3rds format by Panasonic and Olympus last year might finally put that dilemma to rest. These cameras pack a sensor almost as large as an APS-C SLR, but by dispensing with an optical viewfinder, manage to squeeze it into a considerably smaller package.

Panasonic have already had considerable success with their micro-4/3rds G1 and video-capable GH1, and now Olympus have lept into the ring with the EP-1. Featuring a compact 17mm f/2.8 (equivalent to 35mm on full frame) pancake lens and an optional accessory optical viewfinder, this might just be what I have been looking for.

Mike Johnson over at The Online Photographer has always been an advcate of what he calls the DMD camera - DMD stands for "Decisive Moment Digital" - and on his blog he now has the first hands on preview of the new Olympus.

If it lives up to my expactations of decent image quality and handling then I may well pick one up.