31.5.11

IT HAS ARRIVED.



Well my friends of the Dark Cloth. It has arrived. Possibly the quickest turn around of any book being published, apart from perhaps the likes of Rankin who has something out every weekend.
Rather pleased with this as a whole with a nice bit of vain satisfaction sprinkled with a feeling of 'mission accomplished.'

So what now. Well the book will be available through a few selected outlets and I will be selling them direct in an attempt to not being slaughtered by sales commission. The book comes with a 10/12" C Type hand print of the cover shot. Both the book and the print is in an edition of only 100 copies and after the first 10 have been distributed (gifts, British library, that sort of thing) the rest will come in a presentation/slip case.

Yours for £150.00 (Edition 11-25)

There will be a 25% price increase after 25 copies (then 50 copies, then 75).

ISBN 978-0-9568907-0-2

A small espresso to celebrate I think...

30.5.11

Away we go..

Gretna Green. Scotland/England border 2010.

After making the concious decision to lay off shooting for a while, once the 'By Coastal' project was finished, I have found it most refreshing not having to think constantly about the What, Why and When of making photographs. For the last couple of months venturing out any form of picture maker has been the last thing on my mind. But, as the season of travel begins I find myself dusting of the old taped and battered 5/4 and looking for the sky..

PHOTODAYS 2011

Rad na svjetlu

Capacity: 10 participants

Name of workshop: Work on light

Workshop type: basic

Conditions for participation:
Participants should have basic knowledge of photography and own camera (film or digital) and it fully able to use. They also need a tripod and a cable release, and of course the notebook.

Description:

1. Phase
Beginning in the late afternoon when the sun is low. Marcus will be able to set up and instruct participants in the composition, the way how light can change the frame, exposure and other technical stuff and allow them to get the best out of their photos.
Doyle will use the camera for large format, so can participants easily see what he does.

2. Phase
After sunset, preparing for night photography and the interpretation of the basis for night photography, as well an explanation of the reasons why he still uses film.

Participation Fee: 200,00 HRK

Apart from applying be sending an e-mail to prijava@photodays-rovinj.com, future participants shall pay a participation fee in the amount of HRK 200,00 to the transaction account numner 2402006-1100560464.

After receiving a confirmation of your timely and successful application for participation in the workshop from the organizer, please deliver a receipt of participation fee payment within 48 hours. You can pay the participation fee by way of a payment order or by internet banking. As authorization number, please enter your Personal Identification Number (OIB).

about the moderator

Marcus Doyle

DoyleMarcus Doyle photographed the last ten years landscapes of the Arctic Circle to the African desert. He loves filming with a camera large format (10 /8), whenever it is possible.

Marcus has spent five years photographing the American landscape, outside California, before returning to Britain to work on his latest project around the Scottish border.

His work was exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Belgium, Paris and London, where it followed by collectors and private buyers.
Marcuse΄s first book, Night Vision, was published in 2004. His latest book, By Coastal, was published in 2011. and it is a four- year project in the area that are recorded along the British coast.

Marcus lives now in London, between his photographic projects, teaches he photography at the University of Canterbury.

More info here.

29.5.11

"Quality. There is hardly anything in the world that some men cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey."
John Ruskin.

It's strange how the meaning of a photograph can change over time. Take the image below for example. DRUGS was made during my stint in California where I proceeded to make hundreds of images during those hot sweaty summer nights which are now all but a moist memory. It was the beginnings of my Urban Sprawl series and found myself in the glorious position of having oodles of freedom and not having to answer to anyone (that's what eight long years of working in darkrooms will get you). I was entertained, all be it briefly, by the neon sign and the hedge that looked like some kind of trippy cloud or magic mushroom. And so with a bit of shift and a good angle I came up with the DRUGS image in approximately three minutes of exposure. And then I had a burger...
So what had started out as a bit of a joke has now become a bit of a harsh reality for some with this image being used to promote drug awareness in parts of the USA.
Marvellous.

American Photography 27 Presents


Marcus Doyle
Agence VU
For the article "A Human Planet," August 16, 2010, Urban Sprawl in the USA and England, 2002-2005. Examines the way man-made structures conflict with nature. Jarring contrasts are so ubiquitous, they are almost invisible. Photographs force people to focus.
Newsweek


This is cool..

27.5.11

Retirement..

My father is retiring today after forty odd years as a mechanical engineer. There will be a holiday, some chilaxing I am sure, but after that who knows. Its one of those events that made me realise, there will be no engraved watch for me, or a whip round collection in a brown paper envelope. Photography is one of those professions (especially my kind) were its next to impossible to 'retire', you just keep on going. But hey, that's just fine. After all, I do it for the love of it, or so I would like to think.
Must get my archive in order...

Dear Eddy.

Dearest Eddy,

I do hope all is well in the and of the processor.
Just to let you know, I have settled my account on-line for the amount of £******

As you have been processing my film all these years, and as you are the only person I trust with my film, I was going to dedicate my new book to you. But rather than face divorce a messy divorce I had to dedicate it to my wife. However, I have mentioned you in the acknowledgements and should have copies next month so will bring one in for you.

Many thanks for all your work. I say this as I am not sure when I will next be in having spent the last fifteen years doing what I want. Times have changed a lot and the freedom I once had is all but gone...
A little dramatic perhaps but never the less true.

All the very best,

Marcus T Doyle (the T is for Terrific)

19.5.11

Awesome

Martin Buday.

and inspiring...
Maxime Brygo.

The longer I do this blog the harder it becomes to find good work together with keeping up a positive mental attitude which lately has been more mental than positive.

Anyway, enjoyed looking through Maxime Brygo's site, in particular his Hidden Places series.


In general landscape photography has shifted so much over the years and is becoming more 'just pictures of things' in the middle of the day rather than waiting for that decisive moment which is fine if your documenting something, but not if you want to sell the bugger to someone. So often is the case that a photographer produces good work and because they like it, they assume everyone else will. Well that's not how it works I am afraid and it took me a good five years to work that one out..

Whatever happened to that Cartier Bresson fella..

SOMETHING FROM THE ARCHIVES.

PEARS.
MD 2000

16.5.11


Ana And The Old Torpedo Factory.
Rijeka 2010

11.5.11

Anthropocene: Have humans created a new geological age?

Auckland skyline Cities will leave an unmistakeable mark in the geological record of our planet

Related Stories

Human civilisation developed in a cosy cradle.

Over the last 11,700 years - an epoch that geologists call the Holocene - climate has remained remarkably stable.

This allowed humans to plan ahead, inventing agriculture, cities, communication networks and new forms of energy.

Some geologists now believe that human activity has so irrevocably altered our planet that we have entered a new geological age.

Start Quote

Simply put, our planet no longer functions in the way that it once did”

Jan Zalasiewicz University of Leicester

This proposed new epoch - dubbed the Anthropocene - is discussed at a major conference held at the Geological Society in London on Wednesday. Yet some experts say that defining this "human age" is much more than about understanding our place in history. Instead, our whole future may depend on it.

The term, the Anthropocene, was coined over a decade ago by Nobel Laureate chemist, Paul Crutzen.

Professor Crutzen recalls: "I was at a conference where someone said something about the Holocene. I suddenly thought this was wrong. The world has changed too much. No, we are in the Anthropocene. I just made up the word on the spur of the moment. Everyone was shocked. But it seems to have stuck."

But is Professor Crutzen correct? Has the Earth really flipped into a new geological epoch - and if so, why is this important?

Back to the beginning

Dr Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester is one of the leading proponents of the Anthropocene theory. He told BBC News: "Simply put, our planet no longer functions in the way that it once did. Atmosphere, climate, oceans, ecosystems… they're all now operating outside Holocene norms. This strongly suggests we've crossed an epoch boundary."

Atomic weapons test  DOE Early atomic bomb tests have left a tell-tale signature in soil

Dr Zalasiewicz added: "There are three ideas about when the Anthropocene began. Some people think it kicked off thousands of years ago with the rise of agriculture, but really those first farmers didn't change the planet much.

"Others put the boundary around 1800. That was the year that human population hit one billion and carbon dioxide started to significantly rise due to the burning of fossil fuels in the Industrial Revolution," he explained.

"However, the really big changes didn't get going until the end of the Second World War - and that's another candidate for the boundary."

To formally define a new epoch, geologists must show how it can be recognised in the layers of mud that will eventually form rocks. As it turns out, there is enormous practical advantage in fixing 1945 as the beginning of the Anthropocene.

"1945 was the dawn of the nuclear age," explained Dr Zalasiewicz. "Sediments deposited worldwide that year contain a tell-tale radioactive signature from the first atom bomb tests in the States".

So, thousands of years from now, geologists (if any still exist) will be able to place their finger on that very layer of mud.

Extraordinary times?

Nonetheless, the choice of 1945 for start of the Anthropocene is much more than just convenient. It coincides with an event that Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University describes as the "Great Acceleration".

Professor Steffen told the BBC: "A few years ago, I plotted graphs to track the growth of human society from 1800 to the present day. What I saw was quite unexpected - a remarkable speeding up after the Second World War".

In that time, the human population has more than doubled to an astounding 6.9 billion. However, much more significantly, Professor Steffen believes, the global economy has increased ten-fold over the same period.

"Population growth is not the big issue here. The real problem is that we're becoming wealthier and consuming exponentially more resources," he explained.

Rainforest slash and burn agriculture AFP/Getty Humans have made a dramatic impact on many of the planet's ecosystems

This insatiable consumption has placed enormous stresses on our planet. Writing in the prestigious journal Nature, Professor Steffen and colleagues recently identified nine "life support systems" essential for human life on Earth. They warned that two of these - climate and the nitrogen cycle - are in danger of failing, while a third - biodiversity - is already in meltdown.

"One of the most worrying features of the Great Acceleration is biodiversity loss," Professor Steffen said. "Species extinction is currently running 100 to 1000 times faster than background levels, and will increase further this century."

Members of public walking along Canal Street levee, New Orleans Much of the city of New Orleans is already below sea level

"When humans look back… the Anthropocene will probably represent one of the six biggest extinctions in our planet's history." This would put it on a par with the event that wiped out the dinosaurs.

But perhaps more alarming is the possibility that the pronounced global warming seen at the start of the proposed Anthropocene epoch could be irreversible. "Will climate change prove to be a short-term spike that quickly returns to normal, or are we seeing a long term move to a new stable state?" asked Professor Steffen. "That's the million dollar question."

If the Anthropocene does develop into a long-lived period of much warmer climate, then there may be one very small consolation: the fossil record of modern human society is likely to be preserved in amazing detail.

Dr Mike Ellis of the British Geological Survey told BBC News: "As a result of rising sea level, scientists of the future will be able to explore the relics of whole cities buried in mud".

Preserved buildings

In New Orleans, large areas of the city are already below sea level. The disastrous combination of rising sea level and subsidence of the Mississippi Delta on which it is built suggest that it will succumb at some point in the future.

Although the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts less than a metre of sea level rise over the next 90 years, more than five metres of sea level rise is possible over the coming centuries as the Greenland and West Antarctic ice caps melt.

One application for exploring the changing coastlines of the Anthropocene world is Google Flood. It allows users to raise sea level by up to 14 metres and zoom into street level to see the effects.

Plastic bottles washed up on beach at Prestwick, Scotland Humans are likely to leave behind many markers of their presence, including plastic waste

Sea level rise of this magnitude will mean that the lower storeys of buildings will be preserved intact. Such "urban strata will be a unique, widespread and easily recognisable feature of the sedimentary deposits of the human age", Dr Ellis commented.

Geologists of the future may also hunt for other, more unusual, "markers" of the Anthropocene epoch, such as the traces of plastic packaging in sediments.

But geologists like Dr Mark Williams from the University of Leicester hold much more serious concerns: "One of the main reasons we developed the Anthropocene concept was to quantify present-day change and compare it with the geological record," he explained. "Only when we do so, can we critically assess the pace and degree of change that we're currently experiencing."

Dr Williams added that while the Anthropocene has yet to run its course, "all the signs are that the human age will be a stand-out event in the 4.5 billion year history of the Earth".

10.5.11

There comes a time when the mild panic sets in like the feeling you get when you buy something you don't really need and then realise you were supposed to pay that bill...

So my book is almost ready to go to print (yawn) with all but a few finishing touches. Whist fanning through the soft proof this afternoon a deep sinking feeling took hold like the Titanic's dinning set and I came to the conclusion that my four year project was nothing but a pile of absolute crap. I started to question the content, the reproduction, and then the cover. Even the title which I had mused over for half a century felt wrong. I hated the whole thing and was ready to bin it.

And then it hit me. This wasn't a pretty book or a collection of feel good images. It was a documentary of 4500 miles of coastline, a homage to my Grandfather, and a project triggered by childhood memories. It was like nothing I had done before and therefore could not be compared to anything I had done before. It was in fact unique. After fifteen years of shooting landscapes my work had matured and another chapter finished. And that my friends feels good.

The sun might still be shining, but there's bugger all going on...

7.5.11

DONE WITH DECAY.


Paper Factory. Rijeka 2010

A good friend and fellow photographer once said to me; "A photograph should be about something and not just of something." We were talking about the current trend and fascination with photography decay in the form of knackered old buildings and haunted loony bins which are now called hospitals. We came to the conclusion that most people photograph decaying places with no real reason, and while I see no problem with that (especially when I pretty much do it myself) it can create a body of work that is quite soulless, haunted or not. Once the photographer could make photographs of decay and be hailed a prodigy in the eyes of the public. But alas now everyone is at it and it all ends up looking the same. Of course there are exceptions but does anyone really care.

No more decay for me. It's stinky, its dangerous, and its everywhere..

6.5.11

The world has been entranced by photographs since their invention well over a century ago. When video came along, however, that was even better. Somewhere along the way, we have learned to love both still and moving images. Now, well into the 21st century, a team of artists is combining them in a fantastically unusual way.


Photographer Jamie Beck and her partner Kevin Burg, who has a background in video and motion graphics, take beautiful photographs and turn them into something that rests comfortably between photography and video.

Their creations are called cinemagraphs: still photos with small elements of movement. They retain all of the exquisite composure of still photographs but add a surprising bit of motion that is absolutely mesmerizing.

The effect can be just the tiniest bit creepy when you aren’t expecting it: the eyes of a model moving suddenly or a reflection whizzing by in a storefront window are disconcerting at first. However, these cinemagraphs are exceptionally beautiful once you move past the initial startle reflex.

According to Beck and Burg, their work is just a little more than photographs and a bit less than video. Many of the movements are so subtle that you don’t notice them at first. The bigger movements tend to look almost like video, but it is these subtle movements that make these photos so intriguing.

Creating this movement effect is a rather painstaking process, taking from several hours to an entire day to complete for each photograph. The finished photographs are GIFs, which many of us remember as those annoying animations from the early days of the Internet. Beck and Burg’s artistry, however, have taken GIFs from a distraction to an art form.

Photographer Jamie Beck says of her work: “There’s something magical about a still photograph – a captured moment in time – that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.”

(all images used with permission of Jamie Beck. Thanks, Jamie!)

5.5.11

JOURNAL 1950-1951

THE PHOTOGRAPHY CLICHE..

There's a really excellent piece on The Photography ClichƩ over on Martin Parr's Blog. Interesting and insightful I think its something worth reading, student, master or otherwise.
Can't say I agree with all of what Mr Parr is saying as I think we all take from someone or something that has gone before and can adapt our own way of thinking from it, it's a bit like mixing two colours to make a new one if you like.

Anyway, its all a little deep for today. If we all shared Mr Parrs view we would never go out with a camera for fear of being unoriginal. But thats just my view, oh and Martin Parr is himself a Photography ClichƩ.

4.5.11

Edward Burtynsky Photographic Work from NoƩmie Coudray on Vimeo.

Shane Lynam


Oodles of nice work here by Shane Lynam.

Destroyed: Moby's first photography book [video interview] - British Journal of Photography

Destroyed: Moby's first photography book [video interview] - British Journal of Photography

I hate it when people apologise for not blogging for a while because lets face it, no one really cares. So with that covered I wanted to draw a little attention to something I call commitment. Imagine travelling in a time before high speed rail, fast cars and regular buses to each county in Scotland. Upon arrival you record various scenic views and then do a little research on the towns and find out what the main industry is as well as recording the population at the time. Then before leaving you send a stamped addressed envelope to your home address to prove you were there.

I was recently given a large box full of these very recordings done by my late Gramps which is a nice little sugar coating for the book project soon to be released....