Achieving Amateur Status - Part Two

Once the decision is taken and the die cast, the bridge crossed, and the Gordian Knot cut, it is time to decide how to become an amateur. Here are some first steps:

a. Get a photo vest. If you are an urban type, get a black one with lots of pockets. If you'll be out in the country choose a grey or khaki one with lots of pockets. If you are going to haunt the motorcycle and drag races get a blue denim one with lots of pockets.*

b. If you cannot afford a vest just get lots of pockets. You can wear them like a Mexican bandit's ammunition belt. Be prepared for Pancho Villa jokes.

c. Get a baseball cap. It does not matter whether you wear it forward, backwards, or sideways but you must wear it at all times. If they attempt to take it off you in church, change religions.

d. You no longer will worry about taking extra camera bodies, lenses, and batteries to an assignment. You'll no longer have to trail three roller cases full of lighting heads and extension cords. And you'll no longer have a poorly-paid assistant to set up, clean up. and throw up for you. Celebrate by paring your outfit down to one pre-1970 SLR with a standard lens and a smudged UV filter. Encase it in a brown leather ever-ready case with extra pockets down the strap for rolls of film and cleaning tissues.

e. Stock up on Ilford FP4 and Kodak Gold film.  Keep it on the back parcel shelf of your car.

f. Join 15 internet forum groups that deal with different camera brands. Play one off against the other by researching the minute details of each new product and making spread-sheet charts of the reasons why each one of them is worse than the other.

g. Go to random weddings and obstruct the professional photographer. You know precisely where they need to be to get the best coverage for the event and you are now in a position to prevent it.

h.  Practise your computer skills by making composited HDR shots of babies with harsh cross lighting and graffiti in the background - preferably against a pebble beach with lowering clouds. Print these with 100% sharpening and push the finished results under the doors of the local portrait studios. Eventually you will get a scream.

i. Haunt the shops. No, really, put on a white bedsheet and come in through the front door making a "Woooooo" sound. The staff get little enough amusement as it is and they will look kindly on you.

j. Tell people how you did it in your day. If your day was just before last weekend they may listen to you. If your day was just before last century they may throw chairs at you. You can sell the chairs for a decent price.

k. Make up one of those inkjet-printed plain paper advertisements offering cut-rate photography "for exposure" with a little fringe of tear-off phone numbers at the bottom. Tape one to the wall in the waiting area of every portrait studio in the town when the receptionist isn't looking.

l. Offer to lead a workshop photo tour expedition seminar event to a town in the bush that has no store, petrol station, pub, or supply of running water.

m. Write articles on photography and submit them to Dolly Magazine, The Watchtower, and Hansard.

* The pink lace vest is a dangerous choice...

Uncle Dick

Turning Amateur - Part One

Every working or professional photographer I have talked to - from the lowly international Magnum superstars to the most famous of the Santa Photos shooters in Boise, Idaho - secretly nurtures one supreme aspiration. They have a dream to become a full-time amateur.

All through their working lives you can see them shooting envious glances out the sides of the viewfinder at the chaps in the photo vests who are fiddling with the brown leather ever-ready cases festooned with lens hood holders. It is sad to say that if it weren't for the pressures of money and responsibility they would chuck their day job and reach for their goal.

I guess it is like a lot of things in life - they are set early onto the treadmill and there are few opportunities to get off. They get trained in photography somehow - university, technical school, or trade - and find a job and start to take pictures for money and then before they know it they are hooked. They want to eat every day and own more than one shirt and sleep in a bed. The sad slow decline into financial comfort and professional success starts and they never really see themselves slipping further and further into affluence. One day they wake up and have it all, and no where to put it, and another carton of it arriving Monday...

Then they long for the wonderful world of the amateur. No deadlines. No live lines. No lines at all.

No need to justify their camera purchases to the accountant or the ATO. No need to own the best and fastest before a competitor owns it. No need to go round and slander the other professionals in hopes of getting a client away from them. No need to sit there in a bare studio looking at a bare appointment book and whistling to keep up the spirits. Heck, when you are an amateur you can go to Dan Murphy's and buy spirits at 10:00 in the morning and no-one cares...

Oh, the siren call of the hot photographic news story...and how sweet it is when the siren goes on by their house and they don't have to get out of bed to follow it.

And the charm of attending a rustic wedding in a paddock in the wheatbelt. Amongst the grasshoppers and dust and hayseeds...and they won't have to change lenses because they're a guest instead of a worker. And they don't have to make small talk with the hayseeds unless they want to.

That wonderful dawn at 3:00 AM in summer. Not a breath of wind. Clouds glorious. The roseate fingers of light making for perfect balance between outside light and a desperate real estate agent. No need to haul three light stands and a Skylite reflector up to a third storey. No need to climb on a ladder to get verticals right. No need to spend the rest of the day spotting out the cat wee from the walls. Architecture photography as it was meant to be enjoyed...by someone else.

Well, now that I have set the glowing picture ( and it isn't all just halation ) read on in one of our next weblog columns for how to achieve this. Remember: Life was meant to be more than just getting the gravy spots off a sensor.

Uncle Dick

A Cheerful New Year From The Editorial Desk

I cannot speak for the rest of the staff - who may be at their several homes lying down with cold cloths over their faces, but I feel fine this morning. New Years Eve swept over the house and nothing seems to have been dislodged.

Writing the weblog column has been a great deal of fun this last year - assisted not a little in the last two months by the fact that it could be banged out with no telephones shrilling in the ear and a better studio for photos. That latter point is still in the process of improvement - I think that all studios evolve as time goes on. The Little Studio has taken a new turn with the business of product illustration. All those old technical books on studio stuff are now fertile ground.

You'll see a post a day in the coming year - the experiment of morning and afternoon posting was interesting but if the stream of new products slows too much you can tun out of novelties. Of course there is never a dull moment in photography and Camera Electronic and Shoot Workshops seem to have such a diverse connection with the amateur and professional world that if the Weblog reporter - The Photographic Spectator as it were - ventures further than the shop racks there is always something going on.

Some years ago Camera Electronic adopted the slogan " We Love Photography" and I looked upon the phrase with a rather jaded eye. I've since come to see that the various people who make up the sales, service, and business team in the place actually DO love the sport. Err, hobby. I mean business. No - wait - it is art. Oh all right, it is science, if you must. Vice? Who said vice...? Well anyway, the team actually does think photography most of the time and this has real advantages for the clients and for themselves.

It means that if one person doesn't know the answer to a question, another may. Indeed we all have our special areas of interest quite apart from assigned positions or set tasks. It is the interests that make the different people most valuable, because they will know stuff far in advance of the current press release or warehouse blurb. In my case it is not so much knowing what is coming but what used to be - and I can tie this in to modern practice sometimes. And sometimes I haven't the faintest clue what I am writing about, but I poke the thing with a stick and stand back.

Well, on with the motley. I would appreciate it if each person reading this column would come into the shop in the next couple of weeks and buy a camera bag, because they are starting to increase in exponential numbers. Buy two - you can never have too many camera bags.

Uncle Dick

The Initial Diagnosis

AIPP
WAEPPA
WAPITI
AIPP
WAPF
AAPP
APS
ACMP

Here's a puzzle for you to work on while riding the train to work - look at the list of organisations above and correctly identify the words represented by the letters.

Be careful - many of these fine organisations use similar names and ideas but arrange them in different ways.

We can give you a general hint - they have something to do with photography, competitiveness, and money.

And one includes a number of large hairy beasts who roam about and cause trouble by knocking down fences and rooting up vegetable gardens. Once a year they may be legally shot and eaten...and make superb gravy.

Knighthoods For All! - Photographers To Be Honoured!

The news is good. the Government of Ruritania has just announced that knighthoods will be awarded in their annual New Year's Honours list to photographers. Their Royal Heinyesses have placed the seal of approval*on the legislation that was moved in the Volksrat.

While we in the press will have to wait another 10 months to learn who will be beknighted, this gives an opportunity for ambitious young things...and crafty old things...to curry favour  with the palace. Whether it would be better to use the milder forms with yoghurt and mint or go for the tandoori spice is not known - time will tell.

Ruritania has many scenic views that invite landscape photography, so those workers who hike up mountains or over glaciers will have a natural advantage. If they carry cameras with them so much the better. For the gritty urban street photographer sorts, Strakenz, the capital has a wide variety of gritty urban streets. Some of the grit has been there since the last Roman invasion.

Of course, people are always a popular subject for photography throughout the world and Ruritania is no exception. The girls of the countryside pose willingly in their native dress and once one learns to set up the tripod up-wind of them many charming portraits can be taken. Of course the sturdy peasantry are also fine subjects and many of them have teeth, so smiles are possible.

One note of caution - governmental defence regulations prohibit photography, drawing, or playing peek-a-boo within 500 stroms  of any military subject in the kingdom. This is not too much of a problem as the Strakenz regiment lives at home with his mother and only parades on the last Tuesday of Lent.

The announcement of the Ruritanian photographic knighthoods follows on from the awarding of similar honours to every other crowned head in Europe that is still on its crowned shoulders - plus a special one-off award to the Queensland Minister for Roads. It will give the lie to the assertion that artists cannot be praised in their lifetimes - if Ruritania cannot do it, who can?

* it's a very good seal and can balance a ball on its nose and play a tune on horns.

A Modest Proposal - Guard The Presidents

The recent inauguration of the American president would appear to be the subject of some little controversy - and not just whether or not the President was entitled to stand for office. You may entertain your own opinion on that one, and if you are an American citizen, attempt to express it. Good luck.

No, two questions seem to revolve about whether the singer who assaulted the national anthem and the Marine band who opposed her were using canned music and lip-synching to do it, and whether Bravo Company - the ceremonial troops who provided the USMC contingent in the march-past - were compelled to parade with M1 rifles that had been stripped of their bolts.

Leaving aside the singer, please, the Marine guard question is moot. I have seen images that seem to show just that, and I have seen websites that claim it to be a furphy. If done, it would be one branch of government controlling another ( SS vs USMC ) and either  a valid security decision or a deadly insult.
I am still trying to get further sight of footage of the troops in motion at such a resolution that I can see for myself.

The real point of this is we must consider whether or not to implement the same idea for photographic society and association meetings here in Australia. Every one of the organisations - AAPP, AIPP, WAPPY, etc. has a president, vice president, and such and at an open meeting they are sitting targets for anyone in the audience to take a pot shot. At an eastern states conference I myself squeezed off half a dozen exposures of the speaker at a high ISO and had I done so with a dodgy white balance, the consequences could have been grave...

Perhaps we should require the audience members to parade before each meeting to be frisked by the guards, then have their batteries confiscated, and upon leaving sign a statutory declaration that they do not have any live cards or produce on their persons. This, and a strict watch upon their web sites, work computers, and families should do it. With a little common sense and a docile attitude on the part of the association members, hangings should not be necessary.

If they are, at least there should be good lighting, a catalogue, and wine and cheese at the opening ceremony...

Uncle Dick

Western Australia AIPP Professional Photography Awards

A big congratulations to the winners of this years WAPPA Awards,

Steve Wise - WA AIPP Professional Photographer of the Year

Michelle Kiddie - WA AIPP Lauren Fitzsimmons Student Photographer of the Year

Kate Brockhurst - WA AIPP Emerging Photographer of the Year

Samantha Lishman - WA AIPP Portrait (Family) Photographer of the Year

Steve Wise - WA AIPP Wedding Photographer of the Year

Anna Bombardieri - WA AIPP Landscape Photographer of the Year

Tina Urie - WA AIPP Portrait (Open) Photographer of the Year

Kelly Feil - WA AIPP Illustrative Photographer of the Year

James Simmons - WA AIPP Overall Best Print

Also a big congratulations to all who came runner up in the catergorys and all who entered. The level of work this year was outstanding. Also a big thanks to Epson and all the other sponsors on the day.

Check out some images from the day and video's of the judges comments in the link below.



http://wa.aipp.com.au/aipphome.php?cat=Awards

Johannes and Jo AIPP Seminar

Tickets are selling fast so get in quick to secure your spot...

For bookings and more information head to...

http://www.aipp.com.au/store/index.php?cPath=40_178&osCsid=82d7f9d10179bc9fdca213b332d91751

Saul Turning Heads at the Epson Conference.

I found this photo of Saul at the Epson conference last year. We are Epson pro stockists and have large format printers on display in the store. Come in and take a look. Now back to the photo pay close attention to his sharp dress sense. With an uber fresh white blazer and blinging gold tie. It's only a matter of time before you see this look popping up on catwalks in Paris. You saw it here first.