Auteur/autrice : admin

Peter Lindbergh sadly left us back in 2019, but his huge legacy lives on – and frankly it’s so stimulating to look at his work. It’s not simply the case that he managed to attract some really very attractive women infront of his lens, but more the beauty and sincerity of his images.

I recently received his book « Shadows on the Wall » which came out in 2017. This book is made up of images (some of over 37,000 it seems) taken during shooting for the 2017 Pirelli Calendar.

This image shows the sheer size of the book !

The women photographed are not models in the traditional sense, and they’re not treated as such – no make-up (or at least, very limited make-up) and the images – these are actresses for the most part, people we’re used to seeing with make-up, and hair prepared, wearing beautiful clothes…

The individual comments from each person photographed show the warmth and appreciation of Peters approach to image creation – with the most common reflection that he is never stressed, talks little, and just lets the person a huge freedom, both of movement and expression.

This shows in the images – some obviously ‘stronger’ than others, but all beautiful, textured with terrific warmth – faithful to his wish that he prefers black and white photography to colour.

Peter makes the point (in an video about this shoot on YouTube) that he doesn’t use PhotoShop or any other image treatment on a computer – what you see is what you get, in the sense that we see in this book exactly what he saw looking through the eyepiece of his camera – faults and all! Frankly I can find little fault with anything I’ve seen here…

At the moment of writing, the publisher TASCHEN is offering this work (of art, really) at 49€ post free.

(I’ll keep the post on geo-politics for another day – this is personal)

Here in the town I live, we have a well equiped centre devoted to circus arts. For some years now I have ‘worked’ here for free as a photographer – interesting to note that there are now 388 albums of photos dedicated to Circa on my site (Circa is the name of the association that runs this place)

Up until recently, it was pretty straightforward – the person dealing with the artists at Circa would alert me to the fact that a company was arriving for a residency (usually 10 – 14 days) and I would contact them and visit to photograph whatever it was they were doing.

As a general rule, the companies were in the ‘creation’ stage, which means anything between first steps, and nearly finished, but very often something was missing – lighting, costumes, music etc. As such, many of the photos I took were fine for a ‘history’ of what they were doing, and where they had got to, but rarely useable for publicity. The albums of photos I created were interesting, but I rarely received orders for images.

Sometimes however, the companies request a ‘shooting’ – this is good as it’s A: paid work, and B: usually preparing for publicity, press releases etc. This is much more interesting as we can do a kind of ‘stop-start’ performance where sometimes I ask them to repeat a sequence as I’ve found a better angle etc. Most times the companies go away with a batch of images, and I see my name in lights !

Sadly, the last four rersidencies have simply not gone according to plan – and this is very frustrating.

Either I spend a long time waiting for nothing to happen – one time I waited 4 hours for the artist to suddenly decide he had a sciatica and couldn’t perform.

And on three occasions I’ve sent the link to the albums to the artists – and heard NOTHING in return.

Here are some shots from two different companies who, to date, have not even bothered to thank me for my efforts

The idea of presenting the images like this is actually two-fold – it gives a much better indication of movement, and in the event that the company hasn’t organised it’s costumes at the time of the residency, the fact that they are not clear in the images means that the images can still be used for pre-publicity.

I don’t want to stop doing this – I actually quite like trying to give life to otherwise static performances – but I can’t help thinking that these people are taking the piss….

One of the two frustrating things with the new Mac mini M4 is the lack of ports.

(The other one is the stupid start button…)

A Chinese company called RayCue have come up with a good addition, in my view.

In addition to extra ports, it’s also possible to include an NVMe storage inside the hub itself.

These are the additional ports available. The one marked USB-C Host is for the liaison with the Mac mini, but this hub allows an easy way to add a second screen on HDMI, and four additional USB ports. There are also SD and microSD cards slots on the front which for me is an added bonus as before I had three card readers laying around on the desk.

Very neat – this said the order process is very wearing – RayCue do not reply to any mails or questions other site and for some time I wondered if this wasn’t just another Internet scam – until I received confirmation that the package had finally arrived in France – phew.

It’s here and it works – can’t ask more than that.

The end of the year has caught up with me/us – possibly the fact that it’s been so mild recently – somehow the Christmas needs snow on the ground to be really authentic.

The local council here in Auch provide us with a small spectacle every year, and unlike last year where we had people waving flame-throwers everywhere in pouring rain, this year we had illuminated kites flying over the centre of the town.

We were lucky with the weather and this drew a large crowd.

After a time dancing around the square, the kites floated down towards the cathedral.

As unexpected as it was beautiful, the cathedral facade then played host to a projected video image…

The municipal decorations made it fairly clear where we were…

All in all a very pleasant way to spend an hour in Auch on a chilly winters night.

This is the term generally used to describe self-published books where authors pay to publish their own book instead of passing by the more traditional book editors.

I recently purchased a new photographic book by well known actress Audrey TATOU. She teamed up with the crew from the French magazine FISHEYE and this is the result which was published on the 29th of November 2024.

Frankly I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to say about this collection of images and texts…which makes me think of the title of this article.

TATOU is known as a keen amateur photographer, and past images, although few and far between, have shown a certain competance – this cannot be denied. However, the texts (many from her days of filming « The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain » in 2000) and the photos are supposed to « …questionne son statut de star avec humour et profondeur » question her status as a star with depth and humour.

I beg to differ – I find nothing particularly interesting, humouristic or profound in pages of ‘contact’ prints of lighting setups or postage stamp portraits (to my mind, completely out of context) taken during filming.

© Audrey Tatou

© Audrey Tatou

I feel sure that there is some deep and meaningful logic to all this, probably only discernable to people who know her well, but I can’t help thinking it’s taking the piss.

Sorry Mme Tatou but for once I really can’t help thinking you could do better than this…or as they say, don’t give up the day job.

3/10 must try harder

It was nice weather on Sunday so we decided to take a trip towards the Pyrénées to a lake near Puydarrieux. This is just over the border from our department in the ’65’ or Hautes Pyrénées and is the favourite spot for common cranes (grus grus) to pass winter before migrating to warmer climes in January/February time.

I’ve visited here a long time ago, and since them all sorts of rules and regulations have come into being and now you cannot go anywhere near the water, presumably to protect the migrating birds.

As you can see, there aren’t many cranes here…this is the closest we could get.

So we waitied, as these birds congregate towards the end of the afternoon as they all seem to like the idea of safety in numbers and all ‘sleep’ in one place. Sadly, the level of the lake has gone down and the majority of the birds seem to prefere a spot that’s well hidden from the public, so the mass of birds expected just wasn’t seen.

However, we did have a very spectacular over-fly by what seemed like hundreds of these birds…(here are just a few)

The cranes flying overhead before arriving at the lake, with the mountains in the distance.

While we were waiting I took the opportunity to make a few images of our surroundings – here’s the ‘Pic du Midi’ scientifique research station

And some late cows…with the sun going down…

A nice afternoon – but a lot of waiting around with not much going on!

We’ve been hearing a lot of ‘retro’ talk recently – most of it rubbish.

It seems people are convinced that « it was better before » so there’s been a resurgence of LP records (vinyl), radios are coming back into fashion (well, old fashion…) and cameras seem to be in the mix too.

NIKON, not to be left by the wayside, announced the Zfc in 2021

This is a half-frame (APS-C) camera styled on the FM series of film cameras which came out in the late 70’s. It has a modern ‘Z’ mount but relies more on the external dials for control (although a fully featured menu system is available too)

In 2023 this was follwed by a full-frame version, the Zf – this is a light, full featured full-frame camera and with the inclusion of a much better ‘flippy’ screen, a very useable tool.

The ‘retro’ feel doesn’t mean a lot to me – I just wanted a smaller camera – but stick ‘retro’ on anything and people seem to go mad.

Black and white is another ‘retro’ thing which drives relatively normal people completely bonkers. There’s a self-proclaimed photographer in the town where I live who maintains, to anyone who listens, that he only uses film and a film camera to make his images. And? Interestingly he uses modern computers and ink-jet printers to produce his prints, so the retro part of his workflow seems to be somewhat limited.

So what ? I can make perfectly respectable B&W images on any of my digital cameras – what’s more, I can see them, work on them, and share them almost instantaneously.

I grew up developing films and working in a darkroom to produce enlargements and frankly whilst I actually enjoyed the process, there are limits both in my time and cerainly my energy and I’m also fairly sure I could not produce any of my recent work in this way.

I’m not saying that is no merit in a well produced darkroom printed image, but I can’t help thinking that the evolutionary aspect is inate to photography (as in any art form) and just considering the process leaves a lot of the ‘art’ aspect to the wayside. Sure, it’s nice to say you’ve been able to do it…but frankly the ease and rapidity of modern processes win hands down.

What possible difference does it make what camera or what recording media is used? I’ve always maintained that the camera was the least important element – ideally it should not make any difference at all. The most important aspect, to me at least, is how the photographer ‘sees’ what he is trying to capture. Obviously a modern camera helps the process a great deal, this I would never deny, and using nice ‘machinery’ always adds a certain pleasure.

Talking of retro, an ex-pat Brit with more money than sense has just purchased a small Leica – seemingly in the hope that this will make him a world class photographer. Personally (and based on what he’s published so far…) I can’t see that this will make him any better or worse than all the other material he’s purchased since his retirement. He has an eye, and can turn out very reasonable stuff when he tries, but I can’t help thinking that it’s more the ability to show-off his gear that is foremost in the equation – 6200€ just to show off? Blimey, give me the dosh mate!

I have to say that the camera (a LEICA Q3) he has just purchased is a jewel, and yes, it must feel very nice to use such precision material, but please oh please don’t get caught up in this ridiculous idea that you’ll somehow get ‘touched’ by a creative ability unseen before your investment. (Although personally I would never have purchased this kind of camera with the 43mm lens (designed by PANASONIC) – the 28mm is FAR more interesting….)

Typically with this sort of person, I’ve been banished for daring to criticise him – he’s allowed to criticise me and be rude etc. because he’s gay and gays can do anything they like.

Oh sorry, I thought you knew.

And this doesn’t concern a new camera (for once) but it does involve something to do with photography…

APPLE have recently started marketing updated products with their new processor – the M4. There have been MacBook Pros, iPads etc. but what interests me is the Mac Mini.

This is (almost life size) the new Mac Mini 2024 – 12,7cm wide and 5cm high – tiny!

As with previous editions, APPLE have actually REDUCED the price (by roughly 200€ here in France) and doubled the base RAM to 16Gb from 8Gb.

The cunning buggers have hidden the on/off switch underneath the chassis instead of it being on the rear face – this is ok, but putting ports (particularly the audio jack) on the front is a pain – I don’t like cable draping everywhere.

To avoid having the audio cable plugged in all the time, I’ve invested 19€ in a Bluetooth dongle which can attach to my sound system – this way I can stream music wirelessly.

There are now 2 USB-C ports on the front face, and three USB-C Thunderbird on the rear, but no more USB-A ports. No problems – most of what I connect is USB-C anyway…

Size comparison with the previous M2 model from 2022

The processor is supposed to be roughly twice the power of the previous (M2) one – whether or not this will help much in day to day stuff, I can’t say, but it will certainly help when it comes to rendering large 45mp images in LIGHTROOM.

Can’t wait…until the 8th November 🙂

Very happy to see Cie L’Oublié(e) and Raphaëlle Boitel come back to Auch for the festival this year.

Raphaëlle is a choreographer, and her latest opus is in fact two shorter works, played one after the other.

La Bête Noir – talks about a woman’s inner struggles – lots of writhing around, but the light and her movements create a very interesting spectacle.

In the second act she climbs a ladder – or what seems to be a ladder – but the ‘rungs’ are in fact large steps that move from right to left creating a really interesting patterns of movement both for the steps, but also for Raphaëlle to perform on.

Petite Reine was the second piece, performed by Fleurianne Cornet (and her bicycle) – and ( I quote) « tackles the issue of being held captive by love » – oh ok…

High on imagery, the lighting was excellent (but there’s never really enough for a photographer…) and created a great atmosphere.

While I very much enjoyed the two, the first one won in my opinion.

The latest circus festival started last night, the 18th of October and will run for the next 10 days.

I’ve got about 16 or 17 pro spectacles to see/photograph, and at the same time, I’ll be covering the Federation of French Circus Schools annual get together which will involve upwards of 50 ten minute shows performed by circus schools from around France.

Here are a couple of shots from last night – the company was « Les Filles du Renard Pâle » and the presented us with « Révolte ou Tentatives de l’Echec »

Aside from an almost total lack of decent light (laughs) this was interesting – it’s always fun to see it actually rain on set…

Tonight I only have one performance to see – and that’s probably going to be pretty dark too…more on this later. I can’t help feeling sure that my fan ‘Someone’ from NIKON RUMORS could do a whole lot better than I, but this is my blog so you’ll have to put up with my rubbish…