>Re:PHOTO Peter Marshall - Thoughts on Photography

Crow Country

The British Journal of Photography has a rather low opinion of it’s readers when it states “Few readers will have heard of let along seen Masahisha Fukases 1986 book, Karasu (Ravens), first printed by Sokyu-sha, a Japanese publisher based in Tokyo.”

Do I feel insulted or give myself a pat on the back as one of the chosen few? No, but I do feel it rather more reflects the ignorance of the writers of the BJP about the wider aspects of photography which are too often demonstrated on its pages than anything about its readership, and for a publication hoping to establish itself as a monthly devoted to the medium is disappointing. Guys you need to up your game. In many respects the latest May issue is an improvement (and I’m pleased to see that it has lost the typographic fancies that made it literally hard for me to read.)

Although I don’t own ‘Karasu‘ I was among the thousands of us in London who flocked to the Serpentine Gallery in 1985-6 (and it was also shown in Oxford) for the show ‘Black Sun‘ which featured Fukase’s work along with that of three other great Japanese masters, Eokoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomatsu and Daido Moriyama and have the Aperture issue of the same name by Mark Holborn which served as a fine catalogue. It has 16 pages devoted to Fukase’s work, and in particular to the crows. Much more recently I remember seeing a whole wall of this work, I think at the V&A, and the former director there, Mark Haworth-Booth is among those listed in the acknoledgements to ‘Black Sun’.

More recently in 2008, Paris Photo had its thematic show on Japanese photography from 1848 to the present day and on this site I wrote “Of course there will be plenty of familiar work, including people such as Shoji Ueda, Ihei Kimura, Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Shomei Tomastu, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Nobuyoshi Araki and Daido Moriyama” and there was.

Japanese photography, despite my particular interest in the work of people such as Eikoh Hosoe (who I was really delighted to meet in Poland in 2005) and Issei Suda, one of whose books I bought many years ago was an area I had only really just started to work seriously on in the ‘World Photography’ section of my ‘About Photography’ site when my contract was terminated. A couple of years earlier I had published a piece ‘Early Photography in Japan’ which had dealt largely with the nineteenth century and was hoping to write more on the twentieth century, although I had written short notes about Fukase and the others.

The BJP calls Karasu “an obscure masterpiece” and expresses surprise it was chosen as the best photobook of the past 25 years in their critic’s poll and you may like see the list of the other works that these “five experts” (themselves somewhat randomly chosen) have selected. Perhaps surprisingly, the one Japanese among them, Yoko Sawada, who was responsible for many of the issues of the influential Japanese photographic magazine déjà-vu in the first half of the 1990s, does not mention the book, picking works by five other Japanese photographers starting with Nobuyoshi Araki to whom 4 of the magazine’s 20 issues (including its last produced by Akihito Yasumi) were entirely devoted.

There are rather few books on the list I would have chosen, although I’m familiar with many of them. Those I own are Nan Goldin’s ‘Ballad of Sexual Dependency‘, Chris Killip’s In Flagrante and What We Bought: The New World by Robert Adams, although I do have other works by several of the photographers named.

I don’t really subscribe to the idea of “the best photobook“. Books to me are working tools, things I use, and if you have a job that needs a screwdriver even the best spanner is likely to be pretty useless. I’ve never felt a need – nor do I expect to – for quite a few of the volumes listed by this very small selection of critics.

What I have read recently is ‘Crow Country‘ by Mark Crocker, described in the Independent as “A thoughtful and brilliantly executed celebration of countryside and the importance of nature in human affairs.” It contains no photographs, but is superb evocation of one man’s obsession with the the corvid family of birds – crows, rooks, jackdaws, ravens and more – and his attempts to find what lies behind their migrations, roosting and massing. It’s a work that perhaps might well be read alongside Fukase’s work.

November in Paris & Lensculture fotofest

I’m already looking forward to November in Paris, which really is the month of the photo, as well as a great time to enjoy walking around one of my favourite cities.

In 2008 I spent the best part of a week there and apart from Paris Photo, visited more than 40 other photo shows, writing about quite a few of them for >Re:PHOTO, as well as my reflections on the Maison Europeene de la Photographie (MEP) compared to our Photographers’ Gallery and attending the Cérémonies du 11 novembre. I think there are about 32 posts from that visit on the site in November 2008 and December 2008 (it took me a month to finish writing about the best of the exhibitions I saw) and also on My London Diary, a special Paris Supplement with my own pictures from the visit.

Two things reminded me about Paris in the last week. One was a request to supply a picture I took in 1984 which is on the front page of a part of my Paris site.

And the second was the latest news from Lensculture, based in Paris, which as well as announcing the latest issue of this great online magazine, also gives details of the Lensculture fotofest Paris 2010, with international portfolio reviews and a meeting place for photographers to be held at Spéos Paris Photographic Institute in the 11th arrondissement from November 15-17 2010. This is the first large-scale event of the type – pioneered by FotoFest in Houston 20 years ago – to take place in Paris. Birmingham of course got there some time ago with Rhubarb Rhubarb.

Lensculture has also joined up with VII Photo and now has features and recorded interviews with their photographers in an ‘Inside Photojournalism‘ series.

Something completely new to me in this issue of Lensculture is the work of Lithuanian photographer Mindaugas Kavaliauskas whose book on life in Kraziai, an historic village in north-western Lithuania, is reviewed by Zoë Fargher and you can see a set of of his 16 images from it on the site.

Visura 9

Issue 9 of Visura magazine is, as its predecessors, full of delights, and doubtless you will find your own and different highlights from mine. Cheryl Karaliks‘s five deaf boys raising their hands in the air in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso in 1991 certainly lifted my heart and there are many other fine images in her ‘Notes from Africa.’ Alex and Rebecca Webb’s ‘Violet Isle‘ includes many amazing colour images by both, and it was a joy to view the work again.

The work in this issue is extremely varied, and living up to the magazine’s policy which is to feature “personal projects chosen by the contributing artists themselves” with “texts that accompany projects … edited through a collaborative process with the artists” with the goal “to be true to their voice“. Although it is an ‘invitation only’ publication, photographers are invited to include a link to a series of their personal work on the ‘Your View’ page.

I still have some problems with the web design – or perhaps with my connection to the site. I don’t know if I saw all the pictures in some of the essays, as on the final image I reached there was still a button for the next image – but clicking it failed to load more. The initial image for each feature also came equipped with a ‘previous’ button that did nothing on my browser. For some features – including my two favourites mentioned above – I could find no accompanying text other than the image captions, and where the text was on the other features there was a large area of empty space. I was left wondering whether the photographers had wanted their images shown without text, or whether the text had for some reason failed to load. It remains the kind of site where I sometimes am left wondering whether I’d using the right browser or have the right plugins loaded.

For some time I’ve been convinced that the future of photography magazines is on the web, and Visura I think is in most ways a good example of how that future will be. Visura has great content and it looks good on my screen (and after all photographers need to have good screens, accurately calibrated to process their own work – so what could be better to view the work of others?)

Previous issues are still available in the archive section of the site and there are many fine features there to discover if you haven’t been a regular reader.

Photojournalist Arrested At Protest

On dvaphoto you can read the full story of the arrest of photographer Ethan Welty in Colorado following his coverage of an environmental protest at the Valmont Power Plant near Boulder on Tuesday April 27th. He was photographing from outside the plant where 4 environmental activists were arrested for 2nd Degree Criminal trespass.

Police named him as one of the arrested activists, and the press, including AP ran the story without checking the facts, and much of the media are still ignoring Welty’s attempt to point out to them that he was acting as a journalist and did not take part in the protest, staying outside the plant.

You can see Welty’s pictures from the event on Photoshelter, and his web site is also worth a look for his other work. As Matt Lutton says in his post, “This is an issue not just of press freedom for an independent photographer covering an event but of Ethan Weltys ability to fight false accusations and bad reporting which have brought his name into media reports of the event.“

And Who Are You Working For?

Sometimes when police or security people talk to you its just a matter of being friendly, but too often it isn’t. Sometimes it’s easy to think that they are fishing for information, and I’ve often been surprised by questions from police that reveal they know more about me than I might expect – and that some have been reading this blog or my web site or know about my movements.

Although I’ve never seen a police “spotter card” for journalists like the ones that have been found and published for demonstrators, I’m fairly sure that they exist somewhere, perhaps on police station walls and that at least at one time if not now I was featured.

I don’t believe in being rude or uncooperative, but I do think there are some questions we should not answer and some distinctions the police try to make that we should as a profession refuse to admit. So many statements I’ve heard have clearly been the police trying to distinguish between “good” and “bad” journalists – the good being those who work directly for the large circulation and mainly right wing press and the bad being those who contribute to the kind of ‘leftie rags’ in which my work has been known to surface.

So for some time, my response when the police ask “Who are you working for?” has simply been to say “These days we’re pretty well all freelances” even on those too rare occasions when I am actually on commission. It’s slightly more polite than what I’m thinking, which is that it is none of your business and letting the police decide who is a ‘goodie’ or a ‘baddie’ is going far too far towards a police state. If we have the credentials to show we are a journalist – such as an NUJ card – we should be treated as such – end of story.

So I was interested to hear the story of a well-respected and widely published photojournalist where the police seem to have acted as they should when he was harassed by security while attempting to work:

About 9.30 earlier today (29.01.10), I passed through the police line, showing my NUJ press card, without hindrance. A few minutes later, in front of the main entrance to the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, a man came over to me and asked who I was and who I worked for. He was wearing a plain white identity tag around his neck with ‘press officer’ printed on it. He aggressively and repeatably asked me who I worked for. I replied that I had identified myself as a working journalist to the police and I told him to stop harassing me and who was he ‘press officer’ for. I also asked for his name.He told me that I was on private property and that it was ok for me to be a freelance but that I had to be working for someone even as a freelance, and he demanded that I leave. He took me by the arm and I told him to let go or I would ask for his arrest for assault with intent. He let go of me and demanded again that I leave. I again asked him who he worked for and his name. He told me that he was the Conference Centre press officer and that his name was Bob Honey. He again told me to leave and I told him that I was working and to stop hindering me and that who I work for is my business.He then called over a private security guard who told me to follow him. I refused and replied that he, too, should leave me alone and stop harassing me and that I identified myself to the police. The security guard then walked away.

A couple of minutes later five uniformed police came over to me, one of them a high ranking officer with braid on his hat, asked me who I was and I identified myself again by showing my NUJ press card. The only question he asked me was to verify my name. I did and this satisfied him and I continued working.

It’s good to be able to report that the police behaved correctly both when allowing the photographer to access the press area and when brought in by security to deal with the incident. If they had any doubts about the photographer they could have checked up on the security hot line, but the card does carry a photograph.

The letter, sent to the union, continues with a request that the NUJ make a formal complaint to the management at the QEII centre pointing out that freelancers have equal rights as staff journalists and asking them to ensure that they are treated equally. I understand this is in hand.

This is perhaps another story which makes clear why photographers need to join the union. If you are a professional working in London, then the London Photographers Branch will welcome you.

We Stole Your Pics & We Are Suing You For It

When I saw this on PDN Pulse I just could not believe it. You need to read the comments to get the full story and there is a rather better piece on it by Olivier Laurent on the BJP blog in which he makes clear just what a slap in the face this is to all photographers – as he writes “in my opinion, this case highlights one major problem affecting the journalism world in particular: a blatant lack of respect for a photographers work and copyright.”

Frankly it is unbelievable that what we thought was a respectable and trustworthy organisation should behave in this way. I hope it gets to court and AFP really get taken to the cleaners, since the legal issues appear to be clear cut. But I guess AFP will be paying lawyers huge sums to muddy the waters while apparently happily stealing work from photographers

But it isn’t the only current news about photographers getting a raw deal. Guardian News & Media wrote to freelance photographer contributors on Monday telling them it was reducing rates by 10%, unilaterally breaking a long-standing agreement with the NUJ. You can read more about the cuts in the BJP. On Tuesday the NUJ London Photographers Branch unanimously passed a motion to adopt a model letter for photographers to send to GNM. More on the story on the Journalism web site.

So far the Guardian‘s response to this letter have been to say that they are sorry that the photographers concerned are unwilling to accept the new rates, and agreeing to delete any of their images that may be held in the paper’s archives.

I’ve never contributed work directly to GNM, although in the past I probably occasionally sent work there, I can’t remember it being used. I very seldom send work to newspapers now, except by request. Most get thousands of unsolicited submissions every day. Most of these never even get glanced at, with most organisations using text search robots to try to identify images that might be of interest. Many stories in all our press now get illustrated with largely generic stock imagery supplied under bulk contracts from the large agencies. You can send a better picture but the chances of it getting seen by a human are very low and of being used almost zero.

Another current story is over Bauer Media, publishers of some of the leading musical magazines among a wide range of titles, which is trying to grab “all rights” from its freelance contributors for Kerrang!, Mojo and Q. Once they’ve paid to publish a picture or article in a single issue they want to be able to do anything they like with it for free, and those who have failed to sign up to this agreement have been told they will no longer be commissioned. If they succeed in imposing the agreement on these publications, Bauer plan to extend it to their other titles.

What can photographers do? Join the union and try to fight the cuts – and stand up generally for the rights of photographers and other journalists. Certainly refuse to supply work to GNM at their new rates. But also to try and support new media and alternative media, even if at the moment they don’t generate income directly. As well as trying to sell images as stock through libraries and occasionally to papers and magazines I also publish regularly on Demotix, and Indymedia as well as here and on my own web sites such as My London Diary. There I can tell the stories the way I want to and get work to an audience and just occasionally it does pay off with work.

Digital Myths?

I’m not quite sure why the panel discussion at last Saturday’s ‘The Invisible City‘ got on to a discussion about the relative merits of digital and film. But for whatever reason, it did seem to me that various people were talking nonsense about the subject, and it would appear that rather a lot of students are being indoctrinated with it on their courses.

I think there are still quite a few photographers – particularly in academic circles – who have failed to come to terms with digital as a part of a more general antagonism and lack of knowledge about computing. I worked for some years as an IT co-ordinator and network manager in a college and learnt a great deal about the kind of resistance some have to computers and IT in general.

There are still some particular niches of photography where I would prefer to use film, although it often isn’t practicable to do so. These are mainly areas which require the use of specialist equipment which simply isn’t available – or not at any reasonable cost – as digital. Quite where that cost barrier lies will depend on how wealthy you are, and some may consider the Leica M9 a viable alternative to a M-series film camera, while I can’t bring myself to spend the cash.

However it is very hard to find a good reason to use a film SLR in preference to a digital version – with excellent cameras available for relatively small sums – the cost of a few months film for a serious student.

Though I’m not sure how many are serious students – in the old days to be serious you shot a 100 foot can of bulk Tri-X a month, which I think worked out at 19 x 36 exposure films (and if you were really keen you learnt to load them from a daylight bulk loader but in the dark so as to avoid any fogging on the end of the film. A little under 700 exposures – less than I now take on digital on a busy day.

Which perhaps leads us to

Myth No 1:

Digital makes you work in a different way, being less critical when you are working because you are limited in how many exposures you can make.

It isn’t true, and I know photographers who shoot just they way they used to on film. I think they are missing out on things, because digital does open up new possibilities. It gives you the choice of working in a different way, but you don’t have to if you really don’t want to.

Looking through my contact sheets and comparing them with my digital exposures, I don’t think I’m less critical. I am rather more prepared to take risks, but overall I think digital has rather improved the quality of my work, both technically and in terms of being able to achieve various things that just were not possible on film. It provides a much more reliable system than film ever did, in almost every respect.

Digital actually provides a much greater opportunity to be critical while you are actually working, although I’m not a great “chimper“, as I find it disrupts my attention to the subject. But being able to review your work immediately afterwards is a great advance, and with some kinds of subject it is possible to evaluate and retake pictures on the spot.

There are even some particular subjects where I take less images using digital, especially portraits. On film you could never be sure whether you had actually captured that fleeting gesture or if your subject had managed to blink in the critical fraction of a second. If I could, I kept shooting until I was fairly sure I had got the picture; with digital you can check and stop shooting when you know you have what you want.

Working with digital I simply end up with more good pictures. For a typical event where film might have given me half a dozen decent frames from which to select, with digital I may end up with 50 from which to choose. Probably these would include the pictures I would have got on film, but they no longer stand out in quite the same way as the dross gets deleted.

Myth No 2:

Film gives you better quality than digital

I almost choked when I heard this. I often need to scan older work and have one of the best systems available for scanning 35mm film to give 80Mb scans, which can really squeeze the last ounce out of film. Quality is a rather subjective concept, but given an image from the D700 taken at a similar ISO, I would expect greater resolution, greater sharpness and less noise from the digital image.

So far as colour quality goes, there is just no comparison – digital colour is so much cleaner and more accurate than film ever managed (so long as you don’t allow camera or computer to mess it up.) You may of course prefer the rather more limited and less real palette of film – and can if you wish use software to emulate it on your digital images. If your idea of quality is a retro look, then you might prefer film.

Black and white film normally does have a greater dynamic range than current digital sensors, although the difference is less pronounced once you have learnt to make use of raw images. And since digital is then able to cope with most subjects (and makes the use of fill flash even easier than on film with modern cameras) this is seldom a vital matter.

The only films that approach the quality of digital sensors of the same format are those extremely slow black and white films that were largely not designed for pictorial use – such as the no longer available Kodak Technical Pan, which I did use quite extensively. It wasn’t an easy film to use and required exposure at rather silly ISOs – from ISO8 to ISO64 depending on developer for pictorial negatives.

Kodachrome with its own peculiar colours was also available as an ISO 25 film, and could possibly compete with results from digital at 3 or 4 stops faster speeds were it still available, although – like Technical Pan – it could not match their dynamic range.

Of course film is available in different formats, and the kind of quality that I currently get at moderate ISOs from the D700 certainly seems to me to compare well with that I got from the Mamiya 6×7 I used to use. With the great advantage that I can continue to get similar quality at much higher ISOs than with film.

Myth No 3

Film is better for storage than digital

Both film and digital present some problems for storage. But unless you happen to own a deep mine digital is probably the better bet. Digital storage can theoretically keep your images perfect forever – but only if you set up systems with suitable redundancy and regeneration of files. Film storage is more clearly time-limited, but low-tech to give decent short and medium term safety.

My perspective on this problem is perhaps slightly coloured by the rows of slowly deteriorating negative files behind me as I type. But perhaps the most interesting and authoritative comment on this was made by Mike Seaborne from his position as a museum curator who obviously surprised some of the audience when he said that the best long-term storage is as pigment inkjet prints on well-made paper, fortunately something we can do for both film and digital images.

Myth No 4:

You need to shoot film if you want to work in black and white

Much of the best black and white work I’ve seen published in recent years has been shot on digital. Although personally I decided to shoot entirely in colour with digital in 2002 when I bought my first DSLR, I know plenty of other photographers who have gone digital with the intention of shooting black and white.

Apart from all the usual advantages of digital, one important one for working in black and white is the ability to actually see your images on the back of the camera in black and white, although the conversion in camera is relatively crude.

Over the years I used quite a few different black and white films, including of course FP4 and Tri-X, but also many less popular films, most no longer available. In later years I worked mainly with chromogenic films – XP1 and 2 and TCN400 largely because it was easier to process them with my colour film. Each of these films had its own particular ‘look’, largely a matter of different sensitivity to different light wavelengths. But with software such as Lightroom, not only do you have the possibility of emulating these different responses, but also you can vary the sensitivity in a much wider and complex way should you wish. As in most respects, digital offers greater flexibility.

What might at some point attract me is however the ability to get decent quality results in light levels where film would have needed excessive “pushing” with the accompanying grain and loss of subtlety. Even a relatively crude digital camera like the Leica M8 can produce pretty good black and white at ISO 1250, while the D700 is rather better at ISO6400.

Myth No 5

Inkjet prints can’t match the quality of darkroom prints

I haven’t made a print in my darkroom for several years. But there is a certain undercurrent of truth in ‘Myth No 5’, and there are many bad inkjet prints made. But there are also many bad darkroom prints.

But you cannot buy a darkroom paper that is not capable of producing a halfway decent print, when only too many people are happy to print pictures on inkjet with materials that were not produced and are certainly not fit for that purpose.

Good inkjet prints need good paper and good inks. I first started making them using Cone Piezography black and white inks on Hahnemühle papers ten years ago – and the latest Piezography K7 inks (which I haven’t used) are the best available solution for matte prints. The prints I made were so good I abandoned for good any ideas of going back to make platinum prints.

Replacing ‘glossy’ prints took longer, but the Epson ABW system using Epson Ultrachrome K3 pigment inks on papers such as Ilford Gold Fibre Silk or PermaJet Classic Fine Art gives results that for 9 prints out of 10 are better than my old darkroom prints. The only ones that are really hard to beat were made on a paper that is no longer available, the old cadmium-rich Record Rapid, which had a greater depth than modern papers. Some of these new fibre base glossy papers have a very similar ‘baryta’ coating to silver halide papers.

Printing digitally actually needs the same basic skill as darkroom printing – deciding how a picture should look. But on the computer it is rather easier to achieve, and ‘dodging’ and ‘burning’ can be carried out with more control and precision. Most images too need a certain amount of corrective retouching to correct defects such as dust and scratches on negatives or dust on the sensor. Increasingly my film images also need retouching to repair the ravages of time, and digital printing becomes the only option.

Of course inkjet printers and materials will be improved, but already they can hold their own against the darkroom, both for colour (which is where most of the printer manufacturers’ efforts are directed) and also – especially with the aid of third-party inks and papers – for black and white.

Further Thoughts

Were I still teaching photography, I would be concentrating on the use of digital photography. Not only because I think it in almost every respect improves on film and is the future of our medium, but because I think it is a very much better teaching tool, because of the more or less immediate feedback it can give.

Years ago, when still teaching darkroom printing, I found it worth teaching students the basics of working with digital images with Photoshop before getting them to make prints in the darkroom. Before you can print well, you have to learn what good prints look like, and get some idea of what can be done with the various controls that we have – exposure, contrast, burning, dodging – and it is easier, faster and considerably cheaper to get learners to appreciate these in the darkroom once they have experienced them on a computer. Now of course there is no need for the darkroom, although they can still learn on screen before wasting ink and paper on the print.

Alternative Processes

Silver based photography is fast becoming another alternative process – like making collodion negatives (in some ways the apex of photography) and cyanotypes or gum bichromate prints. Of course there will be students who want to learn and practice these things (and I’ve tried most of them), but they are neither necessary or generally useful for photographers, although they do help in the appreciation of the history and traditions of photography.

Shoot 36

For those of us who want to remember the old times, or for those who never experienced them, professional photographers are invited to take part in Shoot 36, which invites them to shoot a 36 exposure film using a single body and one fixed focal length lens, pick the best 6 images, scan them full frame and upload them to the site.

You can see the full rules on the site if you want to take part in what I think is an interesting bit of fun. So far the one set of six images that stands out for me is from Sang Tan – some nice pictures even if not entirely sticking to the rules!

As it says on the site:

It’s a challenge.
It’s a bit of fun for the professional photographer.
It’s about enjoying past techniques.
It’s about hand processing film.
It’s about the anticipation of discovery.
It’s a test of our skills as photographers.
It’s about the smell of the chemicals.
It’s about loading a spool.
It’s about a fridge full of film!.
It’s about taking pictures not because we are paid to but because we want to.

One day I might even try it myself – I’ve got plenty of outdated film to use!

Good News for North London

According to a report in the Socialist Worker this afternoon and later confirmed by The Guardian, Health Secretary Andy Burnham has reversed the planned closure of accident and emergency and maternity services at the Whittington Hospital and stopped the “consultation” over this and other hospital closures in North London. It was the Camden New Journal who first broke the story both of the cuts and of this change of mind, and it also has the most detailed story. It’s good to see a local paper that is doing its job, at a time when so many have really stopped being local papers and are simply some kind of franchise with a few more or less local gobbets.

Its good news for all who live in or visit the area, who would otherwise have faced lengthy journeys trough often traffic blocked streets should they have an accident – or be expecting a baby – and shows that a well-organised and well-supported campaign can result in a change of policy.

In the Camden New Journal, the minister is reported as going rather further in his statement, saying “as far as Ive seen there is no clinical evidence or clinical support for any kind of downgrading or closure. On that basis, its simply inconceivable that Labour would support the closing or downgrading of the Whittington A&E or its maternity service.” So the Labour party has now joined the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in a pledge to keep the hospital open.

You can read more about the march at the end of February by several thousand people to the hospital on My London Diary, where of course there are many more pictures. It’s perhaps a pity that the CNJ didn’t have some better photographs to go with its story.

Croydon Blur – Does VR Help?

I usually like my own pictures to be sharp. It doesn’t worry me that something like 2/3rds of Henri Cartier-Bresson‘s greatest pictures are said to be – by modern standards – lacking in this respect, and I love some of Robert Frank’s Welsh images that are grainy and almost blurred out of existence, when he photographed coal-blacked miners in dark interiors. But mostly I’m working in at least half-decent light and there really is little reason for blur, given too a camera that can work at ISOs well beyond film.

Most of what I took at the BNP demo in Croydon is sharp, but exactly when things got a little more exciting I got a series of slightly blurred images. And I’m not entirely sure why.

I’m shooting at 1/250 f8, and with the lens at 30mm and focussed at 2 metres. I think I was focussed on the hood of the guy being held, and that is almost sharp, though perhaps that was a bit closer. Things were happening pretty quickly at the time but I was taking my time and shooting carefully, zooming out from 35 to 30 and then 19mm. They are reasonably dramatic, but I’d have liked just a little more bite, and a few of the other frames are softer still.

One problem is obviously camera movement, and I’m obviously following the movement of the foreground figures with the camera, and thus blurring the background.

Had I known this was about to happen, I might have increased the ISO to get a higher shutter speed – I was working at ISO400 and could easily have given myself another stop or two. But I don’t think this was really the problem, as later, shooting a further incident with the same settings everything was pin sharp.

I do wonder slightly if the vibration reduction system – which was switched on – had any effect on the image. Obviously I don’t expect it help get me sharp images of moving subjects, but in picking up my movement of the camera could it actually try to counteract that and in the process make people who are moving in a different direction less sharp?

Let’s be clear. That was a question and not an answer. I may be talking utter nonsense, but I was surprised by these images. Would I be better off leaving VR off for most of the pictures I take? Who after all needs VR for a 16-35 lens?