On Friday I hung 10 photographs in one of the galleries at Fulham Palace as part of a small exhibition which will run until early summer. The colour images are from a series which was inspired by fabric designs on a garment called a Mantón de Manila, or Manila shawl, which is worn by Spanish women. For more information see www.pauldebois.com. The black and white images are abstract flower studies from a series called Light and Line.
Category Archives: photography
A few test shots from a short visit to Kew Gardens last Friday. I’m also trying a blog slideshow plug in, which has more images to scroll through. Hopefully it will view correctly in your browser. If you click on a large photo, it will stop the slides changing and display a full frame image. To restart the show, click on the background or thumbnail of your choice.
It’s strange. In picture terms, people’s perception of reality is often hampered by a literal interpretation. A camera never lies. I suppose this is debatable – the choices a photographer makes when creating an image can distort perspective in a particular scene. But this is usually intended to create interest rather than to misinform. Most of the time. In 2009 I had a print exhibited in the Association of Photographers Open exhibition. A moody shot of St Paul’s Cathedral – unusual, but not controversial. Or so I thought. “It must have taken ages to ‘Photoshop in’ the trees,” is the […]
The instructions from Polaroid issued after the song by OutKast suggested you shouldn’t really shake your valuable instant photographs as they developed. In fact shaking is more likely to cause damage. So however energetic you feel, gently place each picture on a flat surface …..and watch it, watch it! Apparently the idea of shaking your print came from using the old peel-apart material which had a damp surface immediately after developing. Shaking the prints helped them to dry – or so the say. Yesterday I went to Kew Gardens to test my latest photographic acquisition, a Polaroid 320 camera. After […]
Strange how with the passage of time you start to look back with rose tinted spectacles. Three times over the last week I have had conversations about missing the routine of hanging round a film lab after a shoot. For me it was pretty much a daily occurrence, though at the time, I saw it as a real inconvenience. The last E6 film I had processed was on 21st December 2004. I remember the shoot vividly. A freezing cold day at the Top Gear test track at Dunsfold. Forward 24 hours and a phone call from my lab… “There’s a […]
The most frequent question I get asked as a photographer is, “What camera should I buy?” It is a very difficult question, so please have sympathy. There are so many things that can effect the answer. The biggest problem is that I, like most professional photographers, have very specific experience with one or two current camera models. I don’t use Nikon DSLR’s – not through any particular dislike. It’s just that I have a full set of Canon lenses, so switching to Nikon is uneconomic. It’s as simple as that. I occasionally use a Canon compact for holiday snaps, so […]
Over the last two or three years I have been running photo-sessions with colleagues who want to improve their photographic skills. An hour’s guidance can often help people see photography in a completely new way. Usually for personal work, or for those in the transitional stage between film and digital, I find teaching can be rewarding, especially when seeing someone make progress. In most cases, there is a eureka moment – a basic concept suddenly makes sense, with many other things slotting into place. As there is so much information available in books and online that it becomes difficult to […]
I’m a bit of a collectoholic. Usually of things that contain photographs, especially books and vinyl records. But on Saturday I found some old postcards in an antique shop in Shrewsbury. I wouldn’t normally buy these, but one in particular caught my eye. It’s just odd – a hand-tinted photo montage, with a touch of Terry Gilliam thrown in. It is almost sinister. There’s no reference as to what it represents – maybe The Water Babies – or perhaps it’s religious…….or both. Any suggestions? Flicking through the the large box I also found some seaside cards, many retouched to within […]
Just a quick note on a couple of things worth looking at. The first is a clip from a WTTW broadcast on American TV called Chicago Tonight. It details the discovery of a collection of street photographs taken by a nanny named Vivian Maier, who worked in New York from the 1950’s through to the early 1990’s. The collection amounts to an estimated 100,000 negatives, and could be one of the most important photographic discoveries for many years. The work is largely unknown – even her employers through the years didn’t really appreciate what she was doing. But it is […]
Last Wednesday I was invited by BBC Gardeners’ World to an end of term bash at the Garden Media Guild Awards. All very nice, and I was a finalist in the awards too, with a portfolio of eight images published over the last 12 months. Along with the award ceremony, which was held at the Brewery in Chiswell Street, there was a three course meal. This included a desert that baffled James Alexander Sinclair, who happened to be sitting at the same table. I hadn’t heard of a Blackberry Tendance either. I wouldn’t normally go on about a lunch, but […]