In my previous post, I touched on the idea that gear limitations can have an impact on subject matter and aesthetic choices. Rather than work against the glass, it’s personally more rewarding to adapt to limits and consider other ways to make interesting photos. In this context, limits drive creative growth and learning.
As there was an abundance of wondrous mountains draped in heavy clouds, I made a decision to focus on the scale, shape, colour, and tonality of the landscape rather than the sharpest details. Knowing the optical limits of my telephoto lens changed my perspective.
Distant landscapes are often hazy, and the details are difficult to record. Conditions were also overcast and regularly dull, further encouraging me to adapt and make deliberate aesthetic choices.
My objective in this mountain series was to simply focus on framing form, shape, scale, and tone. Having a rough final image in mind, I made photographs that provided me the raw material for editing post-holiday.
I set the White Balance to Fluorescent in Lightroom to make everything cold and slightly mysterious, emphasising the cloudy conditions. The 16:9 ratio crop choice also amplifies the scale of the mountains and encourages the viewer’s eye to travel their length, taking in tone, layering, and form.
During initial composition for the above photo, I deliberately framed it so the three visible mountain layers travelled to the right edge of the frame and terminated together. This provides visual interest, harmonises with the bulky layering at the leftmost edge of the frame, and serves as both entry and exit point for the viewer’s eye.
In the photo above, you can just make out tiny white buildings at the bottom right of the frame, They sit at the foot of the mountains and look small, thus providing a sense of scale. I also like the dapples of sunlight near them, made muddy and indistinct by the Fluorescent White Balance choice.
When deciding what camera gear to pack for a long holiday on the road, it’s true that I’ve never quite packed right. One can’t be prepared for all occasions and there’s always the thought in my mind that I need to pack light, lest I strain a muscle or two. As it turns out, I could have packed the optically superior 70-300mm Nikkor ED VR lens over the Nikkor 200mm DX VR. I should know by now that when deciding between packing light or packing heavier, but optically better, lenses, I should prioritise the better glass, even if it means a sore shoulder at the end of the day.
It’s not that the Nikkor 200mm is a terrible lens, it’s just old and performs better on older Nikon bodies that don’t demand so much resolving power from lenses. Even though the Nikon D3400 is a lightweight consumer-grade camera, Nikon still managed to squeeze in a top class crop sensor.
So, what to do when I need the extra reach that an optically questionable telephoto lens gives me, but it’s going to produce soft photos with lower contrast? This is where the available gear informs thought, idea, behaviour, and photographic practice. Optically inferior lenses are useful in their way ~ the shape and tonality of distant mountains shrouded in haze and evening mist – the colour of enormous clouds at sunrise. Even old glass is capable of good photos when limits are understood. If sharp detail isn’t possible, colour, tone, and shape may present as important themes, as in this case.
Mountains of blue, Townsville QLD – Nikon D3400 and Nikkor 200mm DX VR lensLong morning clouds near the Gulf of Carpentaria, QLD – Nikon D3400 and Nikkor 200mm DX lens
When the body is tired and sleep is needed – when the grey clouds amass and the wind blows – when the camera feels heavy and the ideas diminish – what to do? I stared into the corners of our sky-high holiday apartment and found inspiration in the artificial light. Thus, a mini-series of photographs presented themselves: quiet walls on quiet days.
Rushing into the evening with a friend, the sun quickly setting and the rain threatening, I didn’t expect much. Perhaps that was part of the problem: bearing the burden of noisy expectation rather than cultivating a mindin synchrony with the quiet moments.
Defying prediction, the heavy clouds produced some amazing sunset colours. Having located the ruins of a house on a dirt road rarely used, we both scurried over and around twisted tin, old pipes, dark trees, sharp wood, and cracked wall sheeting.
The old chimney left standing – Nikon Z5 and Nikkor 40mm F2 lens
I dug around in my camera bag, fumbled with settings, attempted different angles, and yet I felt frustrated and rudderless. It was as though I felt both the heaviness of the fading light and the possibility of being confronted by an angry local. My movements felt too rehearsed and tired, my eye seemed jaded and stale – following the same movements and tracing the same lines it had done ten thousand times before. Perhaps there was nothing new in this scene? Nothing fresh enough?
The Old Hills Hoist – Nikon Z5 and Nikkor 40mm F2 lens
Having extra time to contemplate the scene and determine the best framing isn’t always possible when you take a last-minute opportunity to dash into the eventide glow. Sometimes, you’re not in the mood for making photos. Sometimes, you’re in the mood to watch the sun move quietly and the light turn to blue shadows without the camera at all.
Despite the weight of my expectations, or perhaps because of it, there’s an apocalyptic feel to the photos. As the world teeters on the brink of another war, it seems that the right scene found me at just the right moment with my camera, in synchrony with the world.
I have the Flu and not feeling too great. In my infectious haze, I thought I might post a few photos here. Perhaps it will distract me from the next round of tablets anyway.
After such a scintillating introduction, here are some photos that fell into the miscellaneous-to-edit folder and were duly forgotten ~
Nikon Z5 and Nikkor 24-70mm F4S lens
I think sometimes that packing the camera bag can lead to days out that are simply an excuse for using the camera gear, rather than relaxing days where new things are discovered and time is well-spent charging the inner batteries. The photo above was made on a cloudy day out and I remember feeling some frustration that I wasn’t finding much of interest for the Nikkor glass to focus upon.
Photography has become one of the principal devices for experiencing something, for giving an appearance of participation.
I remember times where I’d experience an event – a concert, a holiday, a dance – primarily through the camera lens, just waiting for the right moment to click the shutter button – my eager eyes glued snugly to the eyecup. In such cases, the event is mediated via the camera ~ trapped within the borders of the frame, subjected to technical decisions – aperture, shutter speed, ISO. At what cost do we do this? Are we truly experiencing something when we stand apart from it and divorce ourselves from the present moment? Is it not better to allow the eyes to take in a feast of dazzling coloured fireworks after dusk rather than gaze only through the viewfinder, the polychromatic spray flattened across optical glass? Is there a deeper need to possess the moments as evidence that we were there?
In the weeks leading up to our annual road-trip holidays, there’s a slow build of excitement that obliterates any pretence of work productivity during the final few days, for me at least. Questions around camera gear take root in my mind many months before setting off – what and how many cameras to bring? What lenses? Will I really need a tripod? How many bags and what kind?
In some sense, it feels as though this holiday in particular is partly about escaping the world’s current problems by escaping into and losing myself in the world. Photography can be therapeutic self-help in this way – reframing the world to suit our own narratives. As photographers, we look at things differently, composing and considering scenes and subjects before us. It’s a distraction from the pressing issues. We’re out there in the world, breathing in all that it offers, yet we’re one shutter-click away from reframing it to suit a story we want to tell so we can help ourselves.
The Panda’s exhausted – Nikon D7100 and 55-200mm Nikkor lens
Packing camera gear
Having recently purchased a Tenba Skyline V2 Shoulder Bag, I’ve been trying out different combinations of camera stuff for daytrips. I won’t have access to all the gear whilst we’re on the road, but a well-stocked easy-to-carry shoulder bag that sits with me in the passenger seat is going to be handy for quick stops along the way. Right now, I’m trying out this combination:
Nikon Z5 camera with the Nikkor 40mm F2 attached: This is going to be my workhorse camera. The 40mm Nikkor is about as sharp a lens as I need. I know there are sharper lenses, but this Nikkor is inexpensive, small, light, fast, and sharp. Ok, it’s an all plastic build, but it uses Nikon’s tough polycarbonate material, which seems to be quite durable. It may not be a classic but the results are excellent.
Viltrox 28mm 4.5 AF Pancake: It’s a third-party full-frame lens for Nikon’s Z system, nicknamed Chip, and it’s inexpensive. It’s also a strange lens – a true pancake lens (80g in weight), with a fixed aperture of 4.5, a 28mm focal length, a metal mount, part plastic and part metal body, 2 Aspherical and 2 Extra Dispersion lens elements, a USB-C port for firmware upgrades, and a mask that creates 8-pointed starbursts. I’m intrigued by this lens as it’s so odd. Auto-focus in a lens this small and this cheap is unusual. I think it will be much sought after in years to come, but what concerns me is that once the AF motor burns out, there’s no manual focus to fall back on.
Olympus OMD EM5 Mark 2 camera: Having gone back to using the Olympus lately, I’ve rediscovered the joys of a lightweight system with high quality. I use a metal grip to add a bit of heft and for better ergonomics. I’m testing out the Yongnuo 25mm 1.7 lens right now, so it’s attached to the camera. I could also pack the Sigma 30mm 2.8 DN Art lens, which is sharp and reminds me of a teeny-tiny Dalek when the hood is also attached.
Olympus Zuiko 4-5.6 40-150mm lens: This lightweight and rather small lens gives me an equivalent focal length of 80-300mm on the Micro Four Thirds system. If I want to be as lightweight as possible and give myself flexibility on the road, this lens is essential. Image quality is a bit on the soft side at 150mm, but that’s to be expected in a non-pro Zuiko lens.
Sony RX100: I generally take this with my in a day-bag whenever we go out. It’s so light and small and silent that I can use it indoors when I don’t want to bother with a larger camera and lens combination. This one fits easily in the front pocket of my Tenba bag.
Other stuff: Spare battery for the Z5, a micro-fibre lens cloth, a small wallet for 3 x 52mm filters (B+W Circular Polariser, B+W 10 Stop ND filter, and K&F Black Mist Diffusion filter), and an SD card holder for spares. I like the K&F Concept Diffusion filter at 1/4 strength.
Undecided: I’d really like to squeeze the Nikkor 24-70mm F4S lens in the bag but it’s pretty big and heavy. Finding a home for it in this bag with everything else is going to be difficult, but I think it may be a better option than carrying the Nikkor 40mm and the Viltrox 28mm. It will mean that the Zuiko 40-150mm lens has to live on the Olympus camera. Alternatively, I ditch the Olympus completely and carry the 70-300mm Nikkor ED lens attached to the FTZ adapter so I can use it on the Z5 – but this is a heavy and tall lens.
Behind the red door – Olympus OMD EM5 Mark 2 and Zuiko 40-150mm R lens – as you can see, even at 150mm, there’s acceptable sharpness available after some editing (contrast, clarity, and additional sharpening)
It seems that during prior lyrical waxings on the concepts underpinning mindful/contemplative photography and Miksang, I came to refer to it as Quiet Photography. This, without thinking for a moment that Quiet Photography might indeed be a thing out there in the world – a concept already girded by philosophies and academic essays. As it turns out, it’s a definite thingin some academic circles and is mentionedelsewhere.
Old door and dappled light – Olympus EM5 Mark 2 and Sigma 30mm 2.8 lens
For me, quiet photos don’t announce themselves. They don’t add their voice to the cascade of loud photos that speak of ego, marketing, and contrivance. They step away from noise and action. Quiet photos speak of the small things and the ordinary things. I think the best of these photos imbues the mundane subject with an imaginary life, as though revealing a mystery in a quiet place unnoticed by the noisy hubbub of humanity.
Wood bench partly in shadow – Olympus EM5 Mark 2
As in contemplative photography, the necessary mindset inhabits a moment fully but may be distracted easily. The play of autumn light over the surface of an old door, a wooden bench in shadow and light – ordinary things that convey the passing of time and a feeling of history, with the photographer as quiet witness.
Lately, I’ve been contemplating ethical questions in photography. According to Wikipedia, ethics is the study of moral phenomena and “…investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behaviour is morally right.”
At the risk of being ultracrepidarian, I’ll just say this: I’m not an expert in ethics or philosophy, but I believe that self-reflection is an important part of not just photography, but also generally. It’s crucial to ask questions and seek answers to discover what drives our photographic practice. What beliefs inform our behaviour? What do we consider to be right and wrong and why? Where are the moral lines for us?
Bruce Gilden and Mark Cohen – well-known street photographers who hold the camera in one hand, the flash-gun in the other, and get right into the personal space of their subjects – may be at the behavioural far end of what street photography encompasses. Here’s a great video of Gilden at work: Bruce Gilden.
This in-your-face methodology has variously been called innovative, invasive, bullying, and unethical. There’s no denying it can produce some amazing photos of people doing everyday things on the street, but is it ethical? Ethics is about what behaviour is morally right. But just because something is legal, like making photos of people in public spaces where the law says there is no expectation of privacy, that doesn’t make it ethical.
All smiles at midnight – Nikon D7100
Consent and ethical frameworks
Consider the photo of the two ladies above. You can see they’re happy and smiling. In fact, they saw me with the camera and posed for me, thereby providing consent. There aren’t too many people who’d have an ethical issue with this photo.
What complicates matters is that what we consider to be ethical, or morally right and wrong, is based on our ethical framework – a set of core beliefs, culturally embedded and varying across time and place – that inform the way we behave, the way we think and feel, and what we consider to be right and wrong. If all of my street photos were made with consent, such as the one above, my ethical framework might be Care-Based, where I consider the feelings of others, care for others, and my relationship to others.
Street photographers like Bruce Gilden may be considered unethical by a majority, but the truth is that their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours are driven by belief systems that may not be in accordance with the mainstream. One might argue they work to a type of Utilitarian ethical framework that values a good outcome above questionable methods – art as the good outcome in this case. But if people that Gilden photographs are startled, offended, or unhappy with his method, is it a good outcome from their perspective? Should one set of ethics override another?
Perhaps it’s the goal of making good art that drives the photographer’s impulse to shove a camera into personal space. Or the goal to be well-known, with money in the pocket and exhibition space for the work. Would you think differently if you thought of Gilden’s work as great art? Or if you didn’t like his photos, would you find his practice unethical instead?
Kneeling with nothing – Nikon D7100
I thought for some time before posting the photo above. I photographed a vulnerable person and for many people, making photos of vulnerable people on the street is a big no-no and crosses an ethical line. What drove my behaviour here? Obviously, I feel uncomfortable posting the photo but do I feel discomfort because I fear possible bad reactions to it? I’m certainly not one to dive into conflicts.
The idea of a person with nothing, surrounded by people in a busy city, appeals to my sense of exploring the effects of capitalism and urbanisation – a fragile human being in a concrete and glass city, looking to survive the grinding day. The potential cruelties of modern life appeal thematically and drive an aesthetic. I’m driven to this as I’m driven to photos of decaying buildings and ruin.
It’s easy to be seduced by photo opportunities on the street in a big city where few people care about others with cameras. It’s easier still to exercise power as a photographer and frame a vulnerable person who gave no consent, telling a momentary story about them that can’t represent them in totality. Perhaps in making this photo, I also touched the edges of what I’m comfortable with. That, in itself, is a valuable lesson and self-reflection.
Charles de Gaulle at work on the streets – Nikon D7100
It’s important to understand that ethical frameworks vary across culture, time, geography, and individuals. The behaviour that one person feels comfortable with will not be in accordance with the ethical framework that drives someone else. We may argue that some ethics are universal, and perhaps they are, but prior civilisations have believed it a good thing to sacrifice virgins to appease deities, or have seen fit to expose weakling babies to create a stronger society.
Ethical frameworks are, in this context, subjective. The law seeks to be universal and pragmatic, but ethics remain separate and personal. And when my ethics disagree with yours, conflict may ensue, even though neither of us is wholly right or wrong. According to Descartes, we can never truly know if other minds exist since we can only truly know our own minds. We’re trapped within our own minds, and for all we know, other people are zombies, illusions, or mindless automatons. Slipping into Solipsism for a moment, we can never know another person’s ethical framework because we can never know if other minds exist beyond our own and we are therefore doomed to cross ethical boundaries at every moment and every step. In this context, it may be more relevant to depend on laws rather than subjective ethics.
Diving into Solipsism is, perhaps, at the deep end of the pool, but it serves to illustrate a simple point: ethics are indeed personal and subjective and we often can’t know the ethical framework of another person. We may minimise this confusion by seeking consent, and this is a perfectly reasonable solution, but we also change what street photography is by doing so: it then becomes a set of poses and forced half-smiles for the stranger’s camera, thereby losing the interesting spontaneity that defines the genre.
Covid-safe and unhappy – Nikon D7100 and 55-300mm Nikkor lens
It’s clear the person in the photo above isn’t very happy. Was he unhappy with me pointing the lens in his direction or was he unhappy with something unrelated? I found his look interesting and decided to make the photo before moving on. I admit it’s not an especially good photo but I share it in hopes of provoking thought about the ethics of street photography.
If a person isn’t comfortable with me making their photo but I’m ethically comfortable doing so, should one ethical framework override the other? Should there be an expectation that within a time, place, and culture, where photographing people in a public place may be legal but sometimes morally questionable, the ethics that favours asking consent or not making the photo at all should always take precedence?
Ethical choices and geological wonders
In a previous post, I posted photos of Uluru – a magnificent natural wonder that started to form over 500 million years ago. There are parts of Uluru where clear signs forbid photography based on the cultural beliefs of the local indigenous Arrernte people. I didn’t make any photographs in the aforementiomned signed areas, choosing instead to pay respect to those local beliefs.
My belief system allows me to view the world around me as not owned by any single person or group. It allows me to view nation-states, governments, and fortunes as illusions in the sense they are consensually understood and agreed-upon narratives. These beliefs inform my ethical framework, but I understand that such frameworks are purely subjective and personal. For me, Uluru is an amazing example of geological processes that existed millions of years before any human being set foot on the shores of the ancient inland sea. Yet, despite my belief, I chose not to make photos anyway, partly because I also respect the value of indigenous culture.
Ethics in photography is like a huge bowl of spaghetti on a first date – you’re probably going to spill it on yourself and look awkward while slurping up the pasta. It’s a messy and often uncomfortable area that’s filled with subjectivity and declarations of universal moral truths by stubborn individuals. Perhaps the best we can do is our best in understanding other people, occasionally override our own ethics to get along better with others, and hope that we find people that share some of our own ethics.
In my previous post, I outlined a confrontation that had happened when revisting a ruined house nearby. In a world where the Silicon Valley business model is obsessed with surveillance capitialism, tracking online behaviour, harvesting personal data, and selling that data, it’s no surprise that a growing number of people become very touchy indeed when a lens is pointed in their direction or the direction of something they own.
Old shed on a dusty corner at sunset – Nikon Z5
Ethics is a branch of Moral Philosophy that concerns itself with morality and how people should behave and why. Despite the fact that we were on a public road at the time of the incident, doing nothing legally wrong, and making photos, was our behaviour ethical? Why were we confronted and what ethical framework, if any, should inform photographic practice?
It’s very easy to dismiss confrontations with a deft wave of the legal hand: making photos from public spaces of things visible from those spaces is not legally wrong. Yet, doing so can provoke a strong reaction in many people. It may not be illegal, but is it ethical? Is it right or wrong to make photos of a property owned by someone else? And how should we react, as photographers, when we’re confronted?
Keep Out – Nikon Z5
I think self-reflection is a useful tool for personal growth and change. It allows us to consider our system of beliefs, our thoughts and feelings, and our behaviours in the larger context of culture and society. What beliefs inform our behaviours? And when those beliefs are challenged by someone else who thinks, believes, and behaves differently, what should we do? I’ll be coming back to these questions…
I was a little way up the dusty side-road with my Nikon Z5 and Nikon D40 when a big white 4-wheel drive roared past me and stopped next to our car, dust kicking up from the wheels. I knew it was a bad sign. I’d been here before. A few moments later, the car belted away down the dirt and turned onto the bitumen. Everything was quiet again and I gazed in the direction of the setting sun, hoping we’d be left alone long enough to make some more photos in the best light of the day.
Covered in old vines – Nikon Z5
I went back to work with the Z5, dialling back the exposure to preserve the highlights and waiting eagerly for the golden light to bathe the dusty corner we’d chosen for some evening photos. The quiet didn’t last very long…
Another big vehicle pulled up next to the ruined building we’d been training our lenses upon. I packed up my gear and started to walk back up the road to my buddy, suspecting he’d have to deal with a mouthful of abuse from the locals. I wasn’t wrong.
“What the FUCK do you think you’re doing???!”
I get it. There we are on a normally quiet road and we’re loitering outside his property. I made it there just in time for the tirade. My mate was very calm in the face of it, de-escalaing the situation and rightly pointing out we weren’t trespassing on his property and had no intention of entering or wrecking anything. Some minutes of back and forth and the property owner was still gruff but calm enough to take some mouthfuls of beer from the bottle he was swinging about.
Collapsing shed – Nikon D40 and Nikkor 35mm 1.8 lens
I contributed the odd word or two, reinforcing the argument that we were innocently making photos in great light and staying outside the fence-line.
“Yeah…I s’pose that’s OK if you’re into photography…”
Clearly his own mate was just there for moral support, as he’d said not a word the whole time. The golden light was fast fading and we were still locked in heated discussion about kids stealing copper from the old house and cutting the barbed wire fencing. The anger’s understandable, of course.
“Next time, ask me for permission! I’m just up the road, there.”
The problem with so many of these ruined places is that you just don’t know where the landowners are. Properties beyond urban areas can be big and it’s not always obvious who owns what. So, we stick to the public areas – the pathways and the roads, usually. Legally, you can make a photo of just about anything if you’re in a public space and you can see the subject from that public space. Permission isn’t required unless you’re planning to enter the property. I’ve never needed to say any of this to an angry onlooker or property owner, mostly because it doesn’t result in calm conversations.
A sea of cactus – Nikon D40
Finally, we made our peace and drove off. We’d missed the best light of the day. It would have been amazing too – pink clouds and soft golden highlights bathing all the dusty old corners and abandoned places.
The Rusty Ruin Journal 