You need to grow as a photographer. It’s vital. If you don’t you stagnate, and stagnation leads to erm… smelly work. A bit like a stagnant pond. You know what I mean.
I’m a people photographer. More specifically, documentary people photographer. I have ambitions of becoming a significant documentary people photographer – I may as well admit it. To achieve that I’ll need to grow my photographic muscles at a tremendous rate. I have so much to learn.
There are two areas in particular that I need to concentrate on. The behaviour of humans and the behavior of a light. The right combination of those two creates spellbinding photographs.
Understanding light is a two-parter. Firstly, you need to understand how it behaves in the real world. Then you need to understand how it interacts with your recording medium, be it film or a digital sensor. Importantly, your eyes are better than either digital and film at resolving highlight and shadow detail at the same time, so how the scene records on your camera is fundamentally different from what you see.
While I was in the Netherlands over the summer, I spent an afternoon observing light at the open air museum at Erve Kots, which consists of old farm buildings and tools. They also run a fabulous pancake restaurant, but that’s neither here nor there – unless you like pancakes.
The way the summer sunshine shone into the sheds and farm houses was enthralling.
I must have been a sight: transfixed as sunbeams seeped in through holes and cracks creating ever-changing patches of light. (It doesn’t take much to entertain me. Shiny objects, flickering lights).
I went back the next day to take some photographs. One scene in particular had caught my eye. A display of clog making. The ambient lighting was quite dim, and parts of the scene were bathed in light pouring in through gaps in the walls and roof. It took a ton of patience (something I don’t even possess in small measures) to wait for the sunbeams to highlight the key areas of the shot.
When they eventually did, I knew I had something special.
Depending on how good your screen is and how well calibrated it is, you will either see the delicate detail in the shadows or not. I hope you do. (c) Roger Overall 2010
I like this image. In fact, I love it. And not a human being in sight. There is story in the image, along with light, texture and depth – which, depending on your screen you may or may not be able to see.
There is something else about that appeals to me.
It’s Dutchness.
And I’m not referring to the clogs.
I’m talking about the quality of the light. Looking at the frame on the back of my camera I was actually moved by how the light echoed that you find in the paintings of the Dutch masters. So I went in search of more. And found it.
I’m not a master (like I say, I’d like to be one day, but there’s a way to go yet), but I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see how the images that appeared on the back of my camera seemed to reach back centuries to Vermeer, Rembrandt, Hals, Steen and others, and in particular Gillig, Claesz, Davidszoon de Heem and Claeszoon Heda. It was as if they were standing next to me – as if I belonged with them, even if it was only in my imagination.
Time is a terrible thing. It separates us from those we would most dearly like to talk to. We’ll never be able to ask Vermeer about light. Fortunately, he can teach us through his work, as can his compatriots.
And we can learn through observing.
The series of photographs I produced at Erve Kots owes much to the artistic history of my Dutch half. It was good to connect with it.
(c) Roger Overall 2010
I don't think that's a mouse hole. At least if it is, I'd rather not meet the mouse. (c) Roger Overall 2010
(c) Roger Overall 2010
The four images you see here were entered into the fourth judging heat for the 2011 IPPA National Photographic Awards, earning three golds and a diamond – the highest grade the association can give.
