From a talk given at the Museum of Modern Art, London, by the senior lecturer in art, publishing and music at Oxford Brookes University.

Fashion photography is carried out in order to sell clothes; it is a part of the wider advertising industry and exploits desires and aspirations through reference to lifestyles. As such, it is an unapologetic appropriator of styles and techniques. This poses questions about the meaning of street photography ­ if it includes fashion photography ­ and about its place, too, in the canon of art photography. While you might at first see fashion photography as different because it is commercial, perhaps it is rather a good example of the need to contrive in all photography. Looking at fashion photographs we wonder to what extent other, apparently spontaneous, photographs were contrived. The idea that fashion photography represents a debasement of the medium must be challenged at a time when the visual language of advertising has permeated “high” art. In any case, the “captured moment” in its diversity and manipulation, is the basis for all photography.

Perhaps categories of photography exist not only because of context or subject but because of the need for definitions within a medium that has been widely employed by amateurs, technicians and professionals in many fields. Bourdieu sees that problems of definition in photography place it outside the cultural hierarchy. The “uneducated” consumer ­ his phrase ­ feels able to view and judge photographs without having to acquire the kind of specialist knowledge necessary for mainstream art. His view that photography falls outside the “consecrated arts” does not prevent those inside attempting to appropriate and/or marginalise it. Fashion photography falls between art and commerce. Donovan, Klein and Tillmans have worked in the fashion business. Donovan, although his work was not confined to fashion, worked in the commercial world. Klein and Tillmans have moved between the commercial and art worlds. Klein’s preoccupation in the 1950s with intervention ­ in relation to his subjects and during processing ­ can be seen in his fashion and street photos. He got into the action and later, during processing, bleached and cropped his images for a highly contrasted, grainy effect. That he was influenced by documentary photo and cinéma vérité is clear, but, in the fashion shots, vérité has given way to cinema. He actually acknowledged being influenced by Cecil Beaton.

Even the greatest and most original of photographers must respond to the commercial imperative. Klein’s extremely and obviously contrived fashion photos have a formality that is not seen in Tillmans’ images. Tillmans, like Klein, has done a lot of fashion work and, according to Russell Ferguson, “all of his various types of photos can be shown together producing an over-archingly structural view of urban life. He has been working through the past decade at the same time as certain fashion photographers have aimed at a particular realism that reflects aspects of urban life.” Corinne Day’s photographs of Kate Moss caused a sensation in the 1990s ­ they were too realistic, even though carefully staged and no more “real” than Mike Leigh’s films.
The acceptance of photography as part of the art world took place in the 1960s and, since then, it has come to displace painting. As a result, artists such as Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall can now bring narrative into fine art photography. Their styles are very different: Jeff Wall building a kind of realism and Cindy Sherman working within a fantasy world. We can see both approaches mirrored in contemporary fashion photography. So I seem to be coming down on the side of fashion not being separate from mainstream photography; how can it be otherwise when Tillmans won the Turner Prize last year? Fashion may be regarded as a category of photography, but it has had a symbiotic relationship with art photography, both through its practitioners and as a reflection of movements and styles.
An article by Catherine Atherton

Balancing Point from DANNY BROWN on Vimeo.

From Roger Fenton’s prints of the Crimea to mobile-phone images of Baghdad, every era of war photography has been marked by new technology. But what has always mattered more than technical brilliance, argues Geoff Dyer, is getting close enough to the epicenter of history.

Geoff Dyer’s text is about Robert Capa’s photography. He debates the authenticity of war photography, specially the famous “Falling Soldier” picture.

“The Falling Soldier” shows the moment of a republican soldier’s death in the Spanish civil war. Or so it was claimed and widely believed. Then doubts began to circulate. Perhaps the picture was posed, fake. Capa’s biographer, Richard Whelan, has gnawed away at this issue for decades. The explanation put forward by him in the catalog accompanying an exhibition at the Barbican is that, during an informal truce, a group of soldiers simulated a bit of a battle charge for the benefit of the camera. Fearing a genuine attack was being mounted, enemy troops opened fire. The trigger was pulled, the camera clicked simultaneously – and a man died. Make-believe became tragically real.

Whelan’s explanation is unlikely to be improved on, but it is worth considering something that David Simon, in his book Homicide, learned from ballistics experts: that “no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet”. This is not to say that people don’t fall down when shot. They do, but only as “a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do.”

This adds an unexpected twist to the moment of simulation, but there is a larger irony too: the more one learns about the circumstances in which Capa made his famous photograph, the less those circumstances matter. Even if it is now established that this is what happened, it is too late. Over the years, the photograph has come adrift from those circumstances, floated clear of what it depicts. One of the standard ideas about photography is that it is strong as evidence, weak in meaning. The Falling Soldier shows this formulation in reverse: it has become more and more questionable as evidence, but its meaning has continued to deepen. Somehow the image is able to accommodate all the different accounts of its making, accounts that have themselves assumed the quality of after-the-fact interpretation. Ultimately, the only proof it offers is of something that has long been accepted – that photographs can be as mysterious as works of art.

Capa said that he would rather have “a strong image that is technically bad than vice versa”. He realized early on that a little camera-shake created a dangerous air of bullets whirring overhead. In certain circumstances, then, technical imperfection could be a source of visual strength. When his pictures of the D-day landings were published in Life magazine, a caption explained that the “immense excitement of the moment made Capa move his camera”. The blurring actually came later, as a result of a printing error at the lab in London. In the excitement of receiving Capa’s films, most of the 72 pictures were completely ruined. Eleven survived, all wounded, maimed, but the darkroom accident imbued them with sea-drenched authenticity and unprecedented immediacy.

Alongside the Capa exhibition is another devoted to Gerda Taro, who died in June 1937, aged 26. Taro and Capa were lovers and collaborators, sometimes working together under the rubric “Capa & Taro Reportage”. After her death, and due to Capa’s increasing fame, Taro gradually faded from photographic history, except as girlfriend of the great war photographer. Through no fault of Capa’s, several pictures now known to be by Taro were attributed to him. Leaving the gender politics aside, such confusion is hardly surprising. As Susan Sontag pointed out in the early 1970s, “the very success of photojournalism lies in the difficulty of distinguishing one superior photographer’s work from another’s, except insofar as he or she has monopolised a particular subject.”

How to Organize
There are many articles on the web that talk about how to organize your photos. Now I want to tell step by step about my way of doing this, a way that never failed me when I was looking for something inside a huge archive of 100GB.
1. The first root directories I have are the name of the cameras used to take the pictures:
Canon
Nikon
Whatever else comes to me in hand
Not ones I’ve been asked what camera did I used – how could I know that if all my files were in the same folder?
2. Second then, there are directories that look like this: year_month_day_place. Most of the time, the place is more important, but I like to keep tracking my progress and compare older photos to new ones. Sometimes I come back to the same place and have different folders of the same place.
3. These directories are split into 3 other directories: original, photoshoped, web
4. The files in the photoshoped directory are photoshoped at full size and can be printed, while the files in web directory, have approximative 900 pixels wide and 190kb – the strongest requirements for one of the forums where I put them. Also, these files are watermarked.
5. A totally different category is a directory called stock. Here I put my pictures that I shoot specially for stock websites.
6. As for the program I use… well, I like picasa because it’s fast, but, other softwares have other advantages. I often need to see the exif data of image: it’s not just a requirement in many contests, but also helps to see the effects of certain camera settings.

NOTE: If a directory contains too many files, It will load the thumbs very slow. I keep about a maximum 2BG pictures in one folder

How to Back-up
As for the back-up, I make two back-ups:
ONE: on dvd-s
TWO: on an external hard drive (currently 500GB)

During the Photo-Tour I encountered nice places and scenes that I wanted to photograph but could not get out of the car because the road and traffic did not allowed me to stop the car. Also, sometimes, pictures taken from a car can be more creative, more interesting than a normal snapshot of the landscape. Here is what I mean:
1. TIP: By shooting from inside the car, frame your picture with the car elements: mirror, or, the lateral window. However, don’t focus on these element: they represent just the frame, not the point of interest. The point of interest is the environment outside the car.

2. TIP: The picture from inside the car is interesting when motion blur is present. Not hard to do that: there are two key factors that you should know when hunting for the right moment to get the most spectacular blur:
FIRST: near objects get more of the motion blur

SECOND: the greater the speed, the stronger the motion blur

3. TIP: Considering the speed of the car, and the fact that inside the car there is less light than outside, you should set your camera on shutter speed priority – fast shutter speed. The kind of motion blur you want is not the one caused by your camera shake (which is an up-down movement), but the one caused by the moving car (which is horizontal).

4. TIP: Some animals tend to approach the car. Prepare something to eat and ask someone inside the car to hand it over the window, then catch with your camera the moment when the animal sticks the head into the car. Funny, isn’t it?


5. TIP: If the car is stopped but there is no need to get off in order to shoot something you like, then maybe you should not think about framing the picture with car elements: just open the window and take a normal shot. Without the motion-blur or middle of the road situations, it does not make much sens to fill the picture with unnecessary elements. However, the next pictures are some exceptions.

6. TIP: Watch out for the reflection and dust! The reflection of your body or other elements in the care window, and the dust on the window, can be avoided if you just open the window. Depending on the Sun’s position, you may not get any reflections thou the glass. Here’s an example of the situation when you can not open the front window of the car, so the is some dust…

Also, there are some situations when the reflection in the car’s lateral mirror can be interesting.

You may be wondering where have I been this month since I disappeared for over 20 days. In the first 2 weeks I have been busy making big changes in my life, but then, I toked a 10 days photo tour in the center and south part of my country, Romania. I was lucky to have every single day with fog in the morning and warm sun after that, no rain at all.
The perfect weather and the perfect season for great photography.
The result were 10 GB of pictures which I am preparing to show you. The main theme – the dominating subject – was “ruins, castles and fortresses”. Second, there were museums and churches.
Also, there are some new tutorials on the way, so keep in touch!
Here’s a map of the route (blue) I’ve been on, and a list of the places I photographed.

Targoviste,
Curtea de Arges,
Cozia,
Calimanesti-Caciulata,
Transfagasan,
Vidraru,
Balea,
Valea Oltului,
Tarnaveni,
Ocna Sibiului,
Sibiu,
Avrig,
Bazna,
Deva,
Hunedoara,
Sarmisegetuza Ulpia traiana,
Sarmisegetuza Regia,
CosteÅŸti – Cetăţuie,
Fagaras,
Rasnov,
Bucuresti

Since the amount of great pictures is high, I opened a photo gallery and a group on flickr. Old photos and new ones can be watched here. Weekly PhotoCritique will continue with the help of photoaxe group: post your picture in the club and all members will comment. After a week or so, photos will be selected and a resume will be posted on www.photoaxe.com.

This video shows photography during and after World War II that was not yet seen.
But is only a small part of an historical documentary about photography. You can find out more about “The Genius of Photography” on the BBC website.

Follow the story of photography in BBC Four’s six-part series ‘The Genius of Photography’. See some of the most famous photographs ever taken and find out more about what made them so very special.

Summer is almost over, but I’m still on the roads, going around Romania, visiting places and taking pictures. So last week I’ve been to the salt mine from Turda (one of many salt mines in Romania, not the biggest and most beautiful, but still worth).

The environment and what you need in the photo bag. Mines and caves are very similar then taking pictures inside them. The light is pour and even if there are some lights placed by humans for visitors, you still need to take with you your own lights. And I really have to remember you to don’t forget the tripod (it seems like I always forget that…)
1. external lights
2. tripod
3. external powerful flash
4. remote controller (long exposures will only work with this on some cameras)

What’s here to shoot? So there mines have formations similar to the ones in the caves (formed in the same conditions by the water), but also new man made formations which you should consider photographing. (tunnels, excavations and mining gears). As for a salt mine, this is something special: people come here for treatment, football playing (this is no joke), so here it is an interesting subject for a photojournalist. As for the mines in which the mining activity still goes on, talk to the workers, they will not hesitate to let you photograph them when at work – it changes their everyday routine.

Now let me tell you a few words on the camera settings that work under this environment: it’s mostly similar to cave photography. But when there are people in action inside the mines, you should keep the shutter speed fast, increase exposure compensation and grow the ISO (light sensitivity). Some parts of the mines are huge galleries where the flash won’t work because of the distance. I could not manage to take a very decent shot under these conditions, at least not without powerful external lights placed all over the place.

One interesting tip: in one of the tunnels of the salt mine, where the walls were strongly reflecting the light, I increased the exposure (at the limit of overexposure), and obtained an effect that I call: alien spaceship. Here are some examples:



Salt mines are well know for the textures on the gallery walls. I took hundred of photos of the walls but here’s one which I find to be the most complex:

During these summer months, I’ve been traveling to various caves in Romania. First, I will show you the pictures I took with Nikon D40x, 18mm lens, and then I will tell you how to obtain something similar yourself.

Doing cave photography is an exercise in frustration. The biggest problem is that you are working in near total darkness. Trying to photograph large formations, especially when they are beyond the limits of your headlamp, can be nearly impossible. (It’s best to have your own lamp with you, however, in my case, the cave was illuminated for tourists since many years).

Composition is based on everything you already know about landscape photography as much as it is on your headlamp. Focusing can be similarly difficult. Lighting placement may seem easy at first until you get your processed images back and discover the glaringly over or underexposed portions of the photograph. By this time, you’re probably miles away from the cave with no intention of returning to it anytime soon. This can be very frustrating.

As for composition, you can make landscapes, covering the entire cave, you can focus on details – certain interesting formations, or, you can have a person standing there, adding the human factor to the natural environment of the cave. But, to be more specific, a good photograph does not have a person “standing” in the picture, but actually “doing” something: climbing or other action inside the cave.

The camera settings I used are:

1. shutter speed mode: around 1/30sec (longer exposure time will likely cause motion blur and overexposed areas near the lighting source)
2. ISO 1600 (Slower speeds limit your capability with the light sources you carry, faster speeds give you more of a problem with contrast and graininess)
3. exposure +3,+4, +5 (depending on how illuminated the scene was) – if your camera supports bracketing, do so – it’s very hard to get the right exposure from the first shot
4. flash on: rear mode (this is what creates a different light color in the pictures – the blue one, for near objects)
5. manual white balance (I played a bit with this one in the ice cave)

Now let’s talk about lighting - illuminating the scene. Using the flash is not necessary if you want to create a mystery scene in which all is black but the lamp illuminated formation. But, I do believe that lighting is the most effective tool of a great cave picture (and, after all, you are providing all the lighting for the image), so I’m going to point out some tips from ephotozine:

Cave photographers mostly use flashguns as their primary light, followed by bulbs as their second main source. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Bulbs of all shapes and sizes are still used a lot by cave photographers. There are several reasons why they have not been totally replaced by the use of flashguns – they have a higher light output than many strobes. When photographing a large room, nothing beats the output of a flashbulb. They also give off a wider arc of light than a strobe.

Slaves are remote electronic switches that you attach to each of the different flash units distributed around your cave photo area. The flash on your camera sends out the message to all the slaves to fire when your camera shutter opens. In this way, they are all synchronized and give you the perfect exposure. This also helps to eliminate the need for tripod.

A dramatic effect can be created by strongly backlighting a subject (along with a properly lit foreground) such that the backlight creates a slightly burned edge to offset it from the darker background. Try putting a light on either side of a subject with the lights aimed at one another.

In close-up shots, the use of a softened light (soft box or even just a piece of tissue over the flash tube) is frequently better than a hard light. Sometimes the cave passage itself, if it is reflective, can serve as a bit of soft box on its own.

As a last word, I remember you to do not touch or walk on formations or clean areas that are off trail – protect the nature or else you will only picture the past and not the eternity.

Kenneth William Caleno wrote to me about a neat way to use auto focus for wildlife or fast sports action. This setting lets you prefocus on a specific location, and once something comes into that specific focus distance the camera will take the image. To do this automatically you will need a remote release, preferably one on which you can keep the shutter button depressed. Set the release priority on the D200 for focus.
These are the settings for Nikon users:

Custom (pencil) menu:

Auto focus set to AF-S
AF area mode set to single
AE-L/AF-L set to AF On

Compose your shot and set the focus by aiming the centre focus icon at a exact target (Say, for example, a pre-focus point on a tree branch, where you are waiting for a bird to land) at the precise distance you want, and pressing the “AE-L/AF-L” button near the viewfinder. This will focus the lens- Now press and hold the shutter button. As soon as something comes into focus the shutter will fire, It’s a very fast action, far quicker than a human reflex!

Prefocus on the determined distance where you expect your subject to be, using the AF-ON button. You do not want the shutter button controlling focus as you are pre-focusing. You only want the shutter button to fire the shutter. Once you are focused, release the AF-ON button.

Now back away from the object. Fully depress the shutter button and the camera will not fire. However when something comes into focus, the camera will start taking pictures.

This is very useful for unattended photography for nocturnal animals, birds at feeders etc. Also quite useful for motor sports as you can prefocus on a spot where say a race car will be and then the moment is arrives the camera starts taking pictures. It is much quicker this way than tracking the object and focusing at the same time, the camera reacts much quicker than the human finger.