77
B+WWHAT TIM
DID THIS
MONTH
All images © Tim Clinch
dark, moody and very grainy and
summed up my feelings about
the day. But when I tried to put
them in my portfolio they just
didn’t fit in. In fact they stood
out like a sore thumb. I didn’t
have anything similar so,
although they were very nice
as stand-alone images, they
just didn’t work with any other
pictures and I never used them.I
always love the idea of telling a
story with images. Some of my
favourite pictures are in series.
Think of W Eugene Smith’s
moving and emotional images of
Minamata, of Richard Avedon’s
In the American West or IrvingPenn’s magnificent Worlds in a
Small Room and you’ll get the idea.
What holds them together
is consistency: Smith’s images
all shot on the same film stock
with the same lens, Avedon’s
stark portraits all shot against
white seamless paper, Penn’s
portraits shot in his famous light
tent, using north light and the
same background.
One of the experiments I’ve
recently been trying is batch
processing. I have been working
a lot with Alien Skin’s great
processing app Exposure 6.
I’ve mentioned it before and
recommend you to try it.
I’ve taken a batch of Raw fileswhich make up a story, chosen one
picture, worked on it (without any
obvious retouching, which can be
done later) until I’m happy with
the treatment/colour/grain/effects,
and then simply copied exactly the
same settings and pasted them on
to the rest of the series.
The effect is remarkable. It
instantly transforms a disparate
group of images into a whole.
It’s always worthwhile
revisiting images. As new
software becomes available,
as our skills in using existing
software change and become
more refined, most things are
worth a second look. And it’s
always important to write thingsdown. I have written down a
few of my recipes recently and...
surprise, surprise, managed to
present the BP with the same
dish more than once.
So write down your settings,
or save them in your processing
memory as a pre-set so you won’t
have to fumble around trying to
remember what you did last time.
Last month I talked about the
importance of a body of work. The
need for consistency within that
body of work is paramount. It can’t
jump about all over the place.
So, a little less consistency in the
negatives and more consistency in
the positives is what’s needed. That
and a new recipe for lasagne...The pictures this month sum up what
I’m talking about. Four portraits, all
shot in Bulgaria, but all shot in different
circumstances and lighting conditions.
By processing them all in the same way,
and applying the same treatments, they flow
as a set of images and could be seen as the
beginning of a series. Although they are all
very different, by making them consistent
they are not fighting with each other.Instead of recommending you a specific
photographer this month, I urge you to look
at some books that could be said to form a
photo-story. Check out the visual strength
of the three books mentioned in the main
text. None of us will ever emulate them,
but be inspired and aim high.
Looking for a decent recipe for lasagne...
which, when I find it, I promise to write
down and remember...76-77_FORTNIGHT_174 ER/MB.indd 7776-77_FORTNIGHT_174 ER/MB.indd 77 28/01/2015 10:3828/01/2015 10:38