I can't keep it in my trousers

Despite my very best efforts to shoot my first assignment last week using just my dSLR, I just had to take my phone out of my pocket and take a few shots. Remember, this is a 2 megapixel camera with an appalling little plastic lens. I'd be interested to hear what people think of this shot as compared to the other black and white shot from my big camera (see below).

Shoot My Elephant

I nearly forgot. I set this up today.

Two things

Have a look at this. Believe me I’ve got nothing against Cathal McNaughton's work, but I was reminded of this particular picture and the problem I have with it (read the final sentence of the accompanying caption) during Wednesday’s tutorial when we were told of Cartier-Bresson’s penchant for sniffing out a location and waiting for the moment to happen (I was mildly horrified). For me this is as contrived as setting pictures up to make them look natural. I’ve never done this when I’ve been out and about in the streets because somehow it feels like a completely wrong way of working. Something false. Something not in the spirit of street photography. However, when I get the time (and the weather) over the next few weeks I’m going to give it a try.

Last night I went to the Synagogue in Volos at the invitation of the local Jewish community to attend a small service (with my camera) to commemorate the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz as mentioned below. When I got there the lights were on but the gates were all locked. There was a doorbell and I didn’t press it. A wonderful moment of crisis. At least I know I’ll never be paparazzi. The accompanying picture was taken by accident on the way home.

White elephant?

To paraphrase Henri Cartier-Bresson, your first 10,o00 blogs are your worst.

Er...

Just a quick note about the Digital Railroad site. I'm still utterly confused about it. Having FTPd the 144 pictures I took at sea the other day they appeared in UNPUBLISHED as 'schofield' like I thought they would. All jolly good so far. I then renamed the group 'Fishing off Kato Gatzea (Sco)' and left it at that as I had plenty of other things to be getting on with.

And when I went back, the title (Fishing off Kato Gatzea (Sco)) was also showing in PRIVATE, although the actual pictures in there were the ones I uploaded from the stuff I did with my mobile phone in Athens last week.

I'm neither sure nor all that impressed with Digital Railroad so far. If anyone out there knows how it works I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Notes on an evolving Jewish side project (1)

The other evening I met a 70-year-old American-Jewish lady called Anita who moved to Greece in 1960 and married a Greek a year later. Anita, whose grandfather was a German-Jewish criminal lawyer who once faced (and beat) Adolf Hitler in a court case in the 1930s before fleeing Germany for the USA via Italy, had to convert to the Greek Orthodox Church in order to get married and is positively bursting with interesting, intriguing and thought-provoking stories. For me, Anita represents very well indeed the kind of ordinary person who isn’t ordinary at all once you scrape away the surface that I’m interested in as a documentary photography subject. Among many other things Anita told me that this coming Sunday there’s going to be a memorial service at the Jewish monument in Volos to commemorate the day that Auschwitz, where many Volos Jews perished, was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. There’s also going to be an exhibition of photographs and other material following the memorial service, which Anita was helping to set up and to which she invited me. I thought shooting some pictures of Anita setting up the exhibition could be an interesting way of looking at work and asked her if I could take some pictures of her as one of my three assignments. Because there was going to be another person helping set up the exhibition and because Anita felt slightly uncomfortable about my being there taking pictures we decided that I wouldn’t, but I was still very interested to come along, which I did yesterday morning. We arrived at 11am where a lady whose name I forget (research on this ballooning, incomplete project to follow, this is just a place to scribble my notes, thoughts, feelings and ideas remember) met us warmly. She’s a local architect whose father survived the Holocaust (see below). She’s also the leading light and driving force behind the small (Romaniote) Jewish community in Volos. After helping carry one of the panels to be used for the exhibition upstairs, we made our formal introductions and it soon became clear that it would’ve been fine to bring my dSLR along. Nokia E61i to the rescue! I spent the next hour taking about 250 photographs of the two ladies setting up the exhibition, with half a mind on the idea that I could use the material for one of the work-based assignments and the other half on the fact that my frenzied shutter-clicking meant I was going to completely overshoot and therefore make the pictures invalid. It was interesting to learn more about the Jews of Volos as well as to discover other facts about Anita, who among other things was instrumental in the awarding of a Righteous Among Nations to a local Greek Orthodox priest who helped save Jews during WWII. It was lovely to watch the two women working together and I believe I took one or two strong pictures among the many. The idea of a bigger project (but not too big) made itself clear as I was invited to a service at the Synagogue in Volos this Friday, where I’ve been invited to meet the father of the architect, who at 86 is something of a local celebrity and whose photograph as a young man serving with the Greek resistance appears in many collections of historical photographs of Volos. I believe I have the start of some material that I can finish off and put together as a small slide show using Anita’s voice to move the story along (if of course she’s willing to help out further). An example of how stories sometimes help themselves get made was shown by the following. As I was on my way to meet Anita I passed the Jewish monument where the service will take place on Sunday. I noticed that somebody had tagged it with a bright pink marker pen since I’d first seen it a couple of days before. I mentioned this to Anita, and, as I hoped, after the exhibition was set up she marched over there with a packet of paper hankies to sort it out. As we arrived two young women were standing and looking at the monument. One of them was particularly interested and was soon helping Anita clean up the mess, even providing a small bottle of water to wet the hankies and make the job easier. I got some nice pictures of this, which echoed the earlier pictures of the setting up of the exhibition. I was particularly struck by the fact that both sets of pictures of the pairs of women working involved them raising their hands above their heads. There’s something very strange and ritualistic and religious in this. Anyway, soon the monument was clean and a young Greek woman on her way home from skiing in the nearby mountains had a new interest in the Jewish history of Volos and Greece in general. Anita then took me to the Synagogue to show me where it was (she’s not attending on Friday as she’s got an offer to spend the evening in a Finnish friend’s sauna), and we parted company until Sunday. If I can get her to provide a narration I believe I’ll have an interesting little project. Although I already know that this isn’t the medium I want to work in I see no harm in doing it anyway. Many of the processes involved can be applied to styles that I’m more interested in developing, so there’s no harm in that, plus it’s one more example of the enormous benefits of doing this course. I’ll be learning something new, will have the choice to examine what I’m doing in more detail than I would if I was working in a more informal style, and, hopefully, the work will generate some much appreciated feedback. When I got the pictures home and transferred them to my laptop I was truly interested in what I saw, as I’d not used the mobile phone in this way before. Technically I can live with (and more often than not deal with) the Nokia E61i’s many shortcomings. The only real criticism I have of it is that the lens isn’t wide enough for the kind of shots I really wanted to take, and there’s also something about not being able to provide a (for want of a better word) formal feel from the phone. These pictures would’ve worked a lot better with a dSLR, but that doesn’t make what I’m doing with the phone a complete washout. They have their own particular quality that a dSLR could never deliver, and it’s going to be fun editing the work to bring out the best qualities of the results the phone is giving for this particular style. My mobile phone provides unpredictable results under certain circumstances, making it a wholly unprofessional machine. However, the feel/atmosphere it generates, especially from the snatched pictures of ordinary life I take with it, outdo the results from every other camera I own. What it's done so far with these Jewish pictures has given a laid-back, informal, almost snapshot feel to the work that I’d like to continue to develop. It’s going to be interesting to do this project. Tune in for more as things progress.

All at sea

Kato Gatzea, Greece

One of the positive things about this course that I’m already starting to appreciate is that it makes me do things I don’t want to do. Rather than seek permission to do my first ‘At Work’ assignments on my mobile phone I thought it would be both fairer and more interesting to use my dSLR as instructed. Having been in Greece for just a week and knowing almost nobody my choice of subjects is limited, and rather than find the ‘right’ subject I thought I’d take whatever came along. In this case it was a chance conversation with the son of a friend who mentioned a friend of his who fishes early each morning off the coast a few kilometres west of where I’m staying.

At just after seven o’clock this morning in pitch darkness I clambered aboard a tiny traditional Greek fishing boat for a short trip off the coast to shoot a man called Savas as he hauled in his supposedly fish-filled net on board. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but I didn’t realise just how hard it was going to be. The good thing about this is that it really forced me to think not just about what I was doing at the time, but also in general about what on earth it is I’m doing on this course and what exactly it is I want to achieve.

Already up on the Elephant site, the pictures don’t quite speak for themselves, so I thought it would be useful to the viewer to write this explanatory blog entry. As you can see I shot about twice as many pictures as required, the reasons being because the first half were shot before the sun was up, and are pretty much useless, plus contrary to what I was told, Savas didn’t speak any English so I had no idea what he was going to do. These facts, coupled with the fact I was shooting on a small boat, a great deal of it I wasn’t allowed to get access to as it meant getting in Savas’ way, in constantly changing lighting conditions, and in the realisation that most of the session was going to involve my host pulling in his net looking like a Greek statue, meant I was forced to either abandon the idea of doing it or to rethink. I chose the latter and a great many of the shots were taken in an essay style.

Considering I was using a fairly alien camera with completely manual settings whilst trying not to fall in the sea, I think I did a fairly decent job. The event wasn’t helped by the fact that Savas caught about 10 fish, got thoroughly pissed off, and set me back on shore early as there was no chance of any great shots of him boxing up his catch etc. Looking at the data I also see that the 35mm equivalent lens setting was 30mm, not 35mm as I’d planned. All of these amusing mistakes I’m happy to share with anyone interested in knowing about them. I’m here to learn after all.

Tomorrow I’m off to meet representatives of Volos’ tiny remaining Jewish population to see if there are any interesting ways of shooting somebody ‘At Work’ there.

Oh, and the pictures I uploaded by ftp today are all showing on Elephant in the reverse order.

Creatures of habit

Nothing much to report today. A leisurely stroll around Volos, espresso by the sea, a wander around the shops (where among other things I found this Greek Orthodox priest doing his shopping) and a few interesting leads relating to the first assignment. A local fisherman has agreed to take me out for a couple of hours tomorrow. Like I said, nothing much to report, but remembering we’re really just creatures of habit I want to write at least a few words here on a daily basis. I also sent a DVD of photographs to an acquaintance this afternoon, the Deputy Editor of Blueprint magazine, who wants me to send him some proposals (it’s always nice to be wanted). I have an interesting idea for a piece in Skopje, just up the road from here and where I’ve got to go and work during the next few weeks anyway.

Notes on my first Elephant portfolio

After seven years of wearing two pairs of trousers, a rabbit-skin hat and the rest of the woolly paraphernalia associated with Lithuanian winter fashion, Greece in the middle of January is a pleasure to fart around in. Today dressed in little more than a t-shirt I was driven up a wiggly, perilous road way above the so-called Olive Line for what seemed like forever by my friend Rachel to have lunch with two middle-aged German lesbians. During a meal that took us from pumpkin soup to gingerbread the conversation followed an equally disparate journey, covering such topics as the life of the modern Western European exile to AIDS sanatoria in Cuba. The latter topic I knew a little about, as it was whilst trying to get inside one in 1998 that I was held at gunpoint for the second time in my life. I’ll be returning to Cuba again as this blog progresses, as I’m both eager to see how I can turn raw video footage into series of still images and am also keen to return to Havana to shoot material to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution on January 1, 2009.

None of this however is why I’m sitting here writing this. I simply wanted to explain a little more about my portfolio as it stands on the Elephant website, or rather the initial five Lightboxes I’ve set up on the site.

In alphabetical order…

Athens

Eight pictures taken in fairly quick succession (not including the woman in the kiosk) on my mobile phone as part of the beginnings of a more thorough exploration of both the techniques of using a mobile phone to shoot documentary photography and the philosophy behind capturing images of people without their knowledge of the fact. What I enjoyed and thought was interesting about taking these pictures was that not only did I know nothing about the street I took them in, I also knew nothing about Athens or Greece. Susan Sontag I seem to remember has delved into this area (the relationship(s) between the person taking the photograph and the person being photographed), and it’s one of the subjects that I want to look into in much more detail. The other striking thing about taking these pictures was that it almost felt like an event. A sporting event. A dance even. Read more about my mobile phone techniques anon.

Nokia E61i Sketchbook

Eleven photographs taken England, Lithuania and Poland, all of them representing different ways I’ve been approaching the way of taking photographs of people using my mobile phone. All of these pictures have been included in a game I play on Flickr with a bunch of diverse low resolution photography lovers from all over the world.

B&W

Featuring just two pictures, including a very uncharacteristic photograph of a KFOR soldier caught through a bus window in Kosovo, a part of the world I’m now living close to, and one that fascinates me immensely. My interest in Kosovo and the ideas I have of return to take pictures there comes as close as I can ever see myself getting to the traditional style of war-related documentary photography. The other picture here, of a drunk Lithuanian lady sat on a bench with a beer in her hand, is the only picture I’ve ever had any problems with showing to other people. I still feel strange about invading this lady’s privacy, and would like to look into this further.

Visaginas portraits

The pictures that raised the most interest during my first online tutorial, this short series of almost intimate albeit extremely informal portraits were taken way back in the summer of 2004 when I was first discovering the things I could do with a camera. Taken on a point and shoot Nikon Coolpix 2100, the Russian residents of the Lithuanian city of Visaginas, where I lived from March 2006 until December 2007, are currently undergoing immense changes in their lives as the nuclear power plant that supports the entire community is closed as part of Lithuania’s entry into the EU in 2004. The power plant closes completely in 2009, the same year that Lithuania celebrates the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the Lithuanian state. Not even slightly integrated into Lithuanian society, the residents of Visaginas offer a fascinating chance to document the changes to their lives. Likewise, more of Visaginas later.

Fire!

Six dark and blurred images of a wooden house on fire in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas, these photographs mark an interesting point in my development as a photographer. I arrived on the scene just as the fire was taking hold and was carrying both my fancy dSLR and my mobile phone. I instinctively reached for the latter. Some of these pictures almost resemble Impressionist paintings, but are really news pictures. I’m simply intrigued by this and would like to develop the ideas behind it.

Oh!

And I forgot to mention more about the course! Just a couple of lines to say that the first tutorial, in which we discussed our current portfolios and talked to each other about them, went extremely well. More about it later once I've done a few more.

Nine days later...

Volos, Greece

As you can see from the time stamp it’s already two Saturdays later and after plenty of mucking about (see below) I’ve accomplished the first leg of my latest odyssey. You find me sat on a double bed in a friend’s apartment on the Greek mainland, namely in the port town of Volos, oranges growing under the balcony and the sound of twittering birds and farting motor scooters coming in through the open French windows.

I arrived in Athens from Gatwick on the evening of Sunday 13th after a four-week stay in the UK. Prior to that I’d been resident in Lithuania for almost seven years. My plan now is to seek the comfort of warmer climes and build a house on the side of a mountain overlooking the sea in Montenegro. I’ll be returning to Lithuania, both physically and figuratively, anon.

Over a week without making an entry here is a little too much to catch up on in full. The following is a brief summary of events I can remember.

On Friday 11th I had a tuna sandwich and a bag of Hula Hoops on Victoria Station before meeting Mark and Rhian in the Dog House pub in Kennington at 8pm. Almost six hours and several beers later we wobbled out the door into the cold London night. Not only was I happy that I met two fellow students going through the same trials and tribulations as myself, I was also pleased to discover that both of them are capable of drinking too much when called upon to do so. There’s something about meeting people in the flesh that no amount of technology will ever come close to. A thoroughly enjoyable evening.

On Saturday 12th I woke up early at around 7am after letting myself into a friend’s house and passing out in one of his spare rooms a few hours earlier. Drunk two cups of strong coffee and had a shower then back to East Sussex via three hours of engineering works, snapping away on my mobile phone as I went. This course is going to make me look so closely at what I do with my camphone that I’ll probably never do it again. Make it the most of it now. As it was my last evening in the UK for a while myself, my sister, our mum and dad and my sister’s partner piled into a car and drove to the Juggs Arms in Kingston for dinner at my dad’s expense. Built in 1461, the pub created employment for my mum for about 15 years from (I think) 1969, the year her youngest child (me) started school. Mum got caught up in a long conversation with the current landlord, and was invited back for a tour of the place as it is today, plus a photograph of her standing behind the bar.

Photography everywhere. Ordinary people. Two things I keep thinking about.

On Sunday 13th after sorting my dad out with broadband and installing Skype on his new computer he drove me to Gatwick and I left on an easyJet flight bound for Athens. My first time ever in Greece. Took a picture of a sleeping passenger on the plane that was later posted for play on DBRLOL. More of DBRLOL later. Met at airport by my friend Rachel. Stay in Rachel’s friend Danae’s cramped flat after a fabulous meal in a tatty, friendly taverna. I remember that Greece and Lithuania are the only two countries in the world who manufacture Carlsberg in half-litre bottles. Smoking ban yet to reach Greece.

On Monday 14th at 9.15am I got an sms from Maria. We arrange to meet for coffee at 12.30pm in a hotel around the corner from where I’m staying. Spent two hours on the same street (less than a kilometre long), walking up and down and experimenting with my so-called Four Furtive Ways To Take A Photograph Using A Mobile Phone (see picture of man on payphone above). Thinking about the idea of street photography as just that. Shooting on one street. Developing ways of shooting turns the whole experience into something like a dance and/or ritual. Very strange. I love the multitude of eccentricities found within the small confines of an ordinary city street. Post eight of the pictures to Flickr and Elephant. Unable to get the latter to merge with my portfolio. Meet Maria. Enjoy her company and her ideas. That’s three people I know already on the course. Took the 4.53pm train to Volos and spent the first night in the room I’m still sleeping in. I’m supposed to be moving into a house but there’s a slight problem.

The rest of the week up until today has been taken up with doing my day job, exploring Volos, and getting stuck into the course. I’m now putting together some ideas for the first assignment (three people at work) and am ploughing through Susan Sontag, who until just a couple of weeks ago I thought was a photographer. Sharp-eyed readers will notice I’m not putting fancy links into this blog. That, and a great many other things, may well change as my return to education after a gap of 27 years warms up. I’m still feeling like this blog is something I’m being made to do rather than being something that’s for me. I need to work on that.

Nothing to report

Working at my day job and getting ready to leave the UK again today. The basics of the blog are now in place, and everybody on the course plus Paul have been invited to look at it. My life swings between these foul and dreary times and high adventure.

Again, watch this space.

Day one

Bishopstone, England

Greetings from the charming English seaside village of Bishopstone where almost nothing ever happens and where I've been spending Christmas and the New Year with my sister and my mum. After almost seven years living in Lithuania I'm flying to Greece on Sunday afternoon where I plan to leave as soon as possible for Albania.

This blog aims to not only illustrate this new adventure in both words and pictures, but, more importantly, will be one of the most valuable tools used to help me get a masters degree in photojournalism and documentary photography at the London College of Communication. The title of this blog comes from (excluding the fact that every sensible name I wanted for it had already been taken) my belief that mobile phones can be used in the production of serious documentary photography.

I'm currently reading Kevin Jackson's excellent biography of Humphrey Jennings, or rather I will be just as soon as I switch this thing off and go to bed.

Watch this space.