insights into photography
I was talking to Norman today, he is a great friend and was an invaluable contributor to life at The Photographers Workshop when we had darkrooms and studios for rent. In recent years his star has risen in Edinburgh where he lives and works as a fine art photographer. He said, as you do, “my exhibition is next to Anish Kapoor’s” it is possible that he didn’t quite use those words because he is Scottish but any sentence that includes “my exhibition and Anish Kapoor” is bound to make me sit up. So I asked how his show had been going and he said really well and that The Scotsman Newspaper had given it a 5 star review so here is that review for those of you that enjoyed Norman’s laughter and good sense, nice to know him when he was a struggling nobody! This link is a downloadable pdf
090811 The Scotsman Review p10-11
and because I doubted the authenticity, not really, of the article Norman sent me this. Here is a link to our previous post about this exhibition
Is this photography? What is photography today, are there limits determined by camera, style, intent..
“There are a growing number of websites and photo galleries dedicated to critiquing the appearance, dress and behaviour of fellow travellers. ……Tubecrush.net invites commuters to send in pictures of strangers they find attractive or eye-catching. Subjects must be men travelling on the London underground.” From the BBC, full story here
Here is a link to Tubecrush but as I couldn’t get it to work and the site crashed maybe it should be called Tubecra…
Many of our students take our Composition – Seeing Pictures course after completing either of our DSLR courses (the 4 session or 1 Day version). It seems a natural extension from learning about how your camera works to learning about how to see and take better pictures.
As Dorothea Lange said “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”
The course is not just about the design rules that dictate some forms of photographic composition because rules and laws are there to be broken. We do look at the ways that photographs can be read to be better understood. In pursuit of this each class is arranged around the work of a prominent, some might say, masters of photography. People whose work is so lauded that not to use them as a basis for understanding photographic composition would be a failure. We can learn so much by looking at and understanding the photographs of the best practitioners of our art and craft, learning by looking helps us to see.
“Many thanks again for another fantastic course it has filled many a gap in my knowledge and helped me no end”
“I also did the seeing pictures course in October and will certainly be recommending both to anyone who’ll listen!”
The next course starts 6th October, 4 sessions, 2 hours each the cost £80
Oxford School of Photography 