THE DOBLOG

 As I said further below, my first camera was an Olympus Pen FT half frame camera which was great for learning on but the half frame negs would only enlarge so far and as I became more concerned with print quality I decided to change to a full frame. Money as a college student was always a problem and the best I could afford was a Canon Tlb which served me well until I decided to go professional.

 I had used all sorts of cameras at college and my first job 5×4 Sinars and MPPs, even a 20×16 wood and brass copy camera that ran on rails! Rolleiflex twin lens, Mamiya C330 twin lens, Pentax 67 rollfilm SLR (beautiful!) and Nikon 35mm. Trouble is when I started my own business I wanted to be able to produce high quality transparencies for publishers so a 35mm on its own wouldn’t do. I found a RB67 Mamiya, which although weighty, did produce great photos and could even be used for weddings. My 35mm was Rollei package going cheap. I also bought a Sinar Wolf with a roll film back to have camera movements for studio work to enable extra depth of field and geometry correction subjects. I’ve never been a big name person where cameras are concerned - as long as it does the job. Finally film technology  improved to the point where I could use a Bronica ETRS  system for everything and my favourite 35mm of all time - my Contax with the T* lenses. Then coinciding with my move to the USA, I discovered digital photography and photoshop. I  kept on using my Contax and still do - 20 years old and still produces fabulous photos but would scan the negs to work on in Photoshop. Just recently I bought my first actual digital camera. Being budget minded I researched carefully and finally chose the Sony Alpha - 10mb and a decent kit lens, the results are very good and I’m pleased but I still panic every time I press the button and commit electrons to a chip - somehow it always seems safer to commit photons to an emulsion!

Specular Highlights.  The term refers mainly to the pinpoints of light reflecting into the camera that make the subject look shiny. Used to great effect in food photography to achieve that glistening appeal or show the properties of the subject’s surface. More usually, photographers try to remove unwanted reflections particularly when photographing shiny metal, glass and jewellery or at least control the reflection. This is achieved by careful use of lighting, bits of card, black paper and reflectors. Concave objects are the hardest to work with - try looking at catalogue photos of spoons.  I was photographing an object made of metal and glass and the client wanted as detailed a surface as possible. I used all my tricks but whever I looked through the waist level camera viewfinder I noticed this very strong highlight. It was peculiar because when I stood up to examine the set I couldn’t see the highlight or the cause of it anywhere. It took me while to figure out that when I bent over the camera, the light relected off my prominent bald spot - two simple remedies, either paint my head black or stand up - I stood up! (Although I did have my head painted black once when I played Dracula on stage - balding Draculas just don’t convey quite the same menace.) 

Jumping to a story from my days in Wales when I was hired by the Welsh Lamb industry to produce advertising photos. The setting was to be a beautiful vally with a photogenic flock of sheep in the foreground - easy, no! The location had to be scouted out and arrangements made for good looking sheep to appear in the right position - helped by three dogs, sheperds, farmers and assistants. To get the shot meant moving quickly and taking a lot of photos to suit the art director’s vision and everything went well up to the point where I heard a bellow of laughter from the sheperds.

I looked around to see the oldest sheepdog carefully backing up to my new camera bag (luckily closed) and proceeding to deposit a steaming pile of poop right on the top of the bag. There was only several hundred acres of Welsh hillside to poop on and she chose my camera bag! Amidst the laughter, one shepherd turned to me and remarked sagely, “She don’t like Englishmen, that dog.”

 Yep, hilarious but I took a photo of this impromptu still life - blue camera bag, rolling green hills and a pile of poop gently steaming in the crisp mountain air - wonderful award winning photo. I sent it off to a photo mag who returned it with a note that it was “totally unsuitable for publication due to graphic nature of content.” Ha! -  this from a mag which used any excuse to show naked models! Even the camera bag manufacturers weren’t interested to know that their bags were actually dog poop proof!

Studying photography at college was a lot different to what I’d expected. The three year course was science based to produce photographers for the industrial, scientific, engineering and manufacturing type environments as opposed to Social Photography (weddings and portraits). Photographers from the college went on to work in research institutes, forensics, military, laboratories and commercial companies.

The first days were spent in practicing loading darkslides with 5×4 inch sheet film - the dark slide is the thin wooden box that holds the film in place in a view type camera. The idea being that you set up the camera shot using the ground glass viewing screen (Which gives you an upside down and back to front image) using the darkclotth over you head and a magnifying loupe to check focus. You then insert the darkslide and pull out the baffle and fire the shutter to expose the film, replace the baffle and remove the darkslide. Then you go and develop the film. Strictly a one off, time consuming operation to take a single photo so you had to get everything right first time.

 Once we’d got the basics, which included a lot of science to do with light, lens design, chemical formulas for developing etc, we were taught how to photograph virtually everything. A great course with superb lecturers.

One lecturer had a unique way to produce architectural exteriors at night using his own special flash flares. These were a mixture of suet fat and flash powder that gave a steady, very bright burn. We set up the camera in front of the college building, opened the shutter for an exposure of about 15 minutes at f64 and then placed and lit the flares. The resulting print was absolutely gorgeous and to think we only made one exposure!

 We did move on to roll film cameras and (gasp) even 35mm cameras but for ultimate quality and precision a view camera always wins. Do I miss those days - nope, I love my digital camera and computer!

Does anyone ever say to themselves, “I want to be a professional Photographer”? I know I never did and got into the business by accident really. My Dad was interested in photography and had an old roll film camera with a fold out lens panel - beautiful engineering. He used to develop the negs and produce contact prints on printing out paper. I used it a few time but wanted more versatility so he bought me my first camera when our family was stationed in Singapore at RAF Tengah. A wonderful Olympus Pen FT, half frame SLR - meant that I could get twice as many pix on a roll of 35mm film!

  Using it taught me a lot about photography and I loved taking photos and showing them off but never thought about it as a career.

.( I must admit that I saw the film “Blow Up” starring David Hemmings in 1969, which made me think “Now there was a good way to make a living”! The scene where he rolls around in his studio with Lyn Redgrave and another gorgeous model in the middle of rolls of background paper may have had a subliminal effect on my teenage hormones too! Definitely a film worth seeing if you never have.)

I was even doing pure sciences at school and went on to study Botany at University. The chemistry and math involved were way beyond me and given the choice of repeating the year or starting afresh, I decided to seek some career help.

  The local Career Advice centre had an aptitude test which would identify your basic areas of interest  as a start to pointing you in a direction to head down.

It basically gave you a choice of Literary, Scientific or Artistic areas to start with but unfortunately I scored 33% on each. The career adviser looked my results over and the ensuing conversation went something like this:

“So Peter, you scored evenly on all areas, doesn’t give me much to go on - you could really choose any career path. What do fancy doing?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I came to see you.”

“Okay, what’s your favourite hobby?”

“I don’t have any particular one, I like reading and music and chess….. and beer…… and women…..and - oh yes, I like taking photos too.”

“Ah ha! Well why don’t you become a professional photographer, I can give you the names of some college courses……..”

And so it began, I’ve been lucky enough to have been in the Photography business ever since!

By popular request - The Tale of The Princess and the Triffid.
(Note: For those of you who don’t know, a TRIFFID is a walking alien monster plant as featured in John Wyndham’s book “Day of the Triffids”, which was also made into a movie).

As a regular photographer for the Welsh Craft Council, I used to take publicity photos at their various functions. One such event was Princess Diana’s visit to the Craft Council’s annual get together in Swansea city hall. I was the only photographer allowed inside and my brief was to photograph Craft Council members doing the usual handshake thing with the Princess. I was assigned a Royal Detective to accompany me to make sure I behaved myself and the event went well up to the point where the Princess and officials moved on to the location of the final speech.

As the party went ahead down the corridor, the Detective pointed to a side archway and said if we cut through it, we’d be in a perfect position to catch the speech and a group photo at the top of the stairs before Princess Di left.

Great idea.

He squeezed through the archway and I followed - did I mention that there was a large potted palm tree in the archway? With spreading branches and that it was a very narrow archway? Oh and that I had two cameras with flashguns around my neck and a large camera bag? You guessed it, trying to hurry after the Detective, I became hopelessly entangled in this palm tree and the more I struggled to get by, the more the palm tree began to sway and rock. I was virtually dragging the tree with me as I suddenly came face to face with Princess Di who ducked to avoid the swinging fronds and burst out laughing along with the Detective and the others in the party.

It must have looked hilarious - photographer attacks Princess with potted palm tree! She took a deep breath and in between fits of giggles announced, “My God, it’s a Triffid!”. Then swept on by before I could even splutter out a plea for one last photo. Oh well, you win some etc.

By the time I emerged outside, the TV and waiting press had heard all about  “The Triffid Photographer” and I made the news too!

Back in the old days photography had a certain mystique -  you had to know all about film, filters, darkroom paraphernalia, printing, chemicals, light meters, color temperature and so on as well as all the physical aspects such as posing, lighting and composition. Photographers were respected for their breadth of knowledge and the profession had a certain cachet.  Today a lot of the mystique has disappeared as virtually all the arcane calculations to do with light, exposure, shutter speeds and ASA can be done by the small computer in every camera. There’s no need to understand any photographic principles, not even a need to focus, just simply point and shoot and get a wonderful photo.
Does this matter? After all, we’re free to concentrate on the essence of photography - the image itself. How we arrive at that image is, I think, immaterial. I enjoy the extra help that saves me time but I can always overide the automatic camera settings and my cameras still can’t actually compose the subject! Photographers will always be respected for those abilities that only come from experience. Oh yes and what happens when the batteries give out and you don’t have a spare? I can use a manual camera and hold my finger in the air and say, “Hmm, 125^th. at f8 should do it I think.”! 

Its the DOBLOG - stories (preferably amusing) and comments about this wonderful world of Photography. I’m kicking off with a few of my own tales, please feel free to add your own. Thanks. Peter.

www.artfuldobson.com