Norfolk

I was in Norfolk today. I was photographing a woman with a brain injury. She came out of a coma convinced the world she was seeing was just a dream and longed to wake up and go back to her real life. It took her a couple of years to realize that in fact she was not in a dream but living life, her real life.

I try not to drive anywhere. Its realy easy since i don't have a car. So I see Britain via the rails. During the winter months I wait for the train on cold damp platforms. And i really enjoy it. I only wish I was not loaded down with gear, usually lights and stands and too many cameras. It would be nice to experience this with just one camera and a couple of lenses. Most jobs are portraits these days and i can't rely on the sun to help me out. Its been raining for 2 weeks and i have been lugging lights for 2 weeks.

My mind is occupied by thoughts of contracts, copyright disputes, the future of this damn business (journalism as a whole) and when its gonna stop raining so i can go cycling. and stop carrying so many godamn lights.

Does Jeff Wall suck????....Nope.

More stuff on my mind

I shot this image late last year of Michael Longley, Poet and winner of the TS Eliot Prize in 2002. I mention it because It was one of those rare events last year when I shot film and B&W at that. We had a nice conversation and he enjoyed that I was shooting with a mamiya C330 twins lens reflex camera. I shot about 6 rolls, awkwardly changing the film after every 12 frames .

I know that my photography has suffered from the switch to digital. I have been shooting medium format since 1995 and I remember enjoying the challenge of the square format. It was slow , cumbersome and I had to learn to compose again. And I think that is what I enjoyed about it so much, the learning to see again.

The switch back to digital also meant the switch back to 35mm format. I enjoyed learning new skills with my Mac and Photoshop but what was much harder was learning to see again with 35mm. I love SLRs and Rangefinders but most of my work now consists not of reportage but contrived situations like portraits and commercial work. The 6x6 format seemed made for that type of work and i learned to bend it to my reportage work as well, revelling in its limitations.

The digital age has made photography a lot easier but i would doubt that it has made it better. Not knowing exactly if your image has worked out has forced photographers to hedge their bets by shooting as much as possible. Today, and I include myself in this, photograhers stop shooting when we think we have "the picture" maybe a better photograph was waiting around the corner if we had kept shooting.

anyway the point of this is that my work has suffered because of digital. The fault lies with me. And it is something i will have to overcome if I am gonna grow as a photographer.