A box full of (im) possibilities.

Several years ago I did a byline picture of one of my colleagues, and after she decided that she rather liked it, we agreed to do a trade. 

My ransom for the rights to use the picture on her web-site and PR company profile was fairly simple, a few packs of Polaroid 600 film. At the time, the film had just been withdrawn but it was still reasonably easy to find on internet auction sites.

Now we all know how life gets in the way of these slightly fiddly tasks and despite an occasional friendly hint, it looked as though I was likely to go un-remunerated. But with a special occasion coming up, I decided to give it one final try, and sent off a little gentle reminder that the swap was still not completed.

The response I got could not have been nicer. A short note apologising for delay accompanied by a UPS tracking number. A few days later, a cardboard cube bound with tape bearing the legend "impossible" was sat on the kitchen table, greeting my return from a long and tiring day.

My much loved Polaroid SLR 680 has lain dormant and somewhat neglected since the demise of 600 packs. And despite the inspiration of reading Greg Funnell's post about early Impossible offerings, I had been reticent about the shading process. 

It basically meant that you had to get the film immediately into shade to stop fogging of the developing image. Most people who had experimented with it described a kind of "mason's handshake" technique involving holding the film box over the exit chute of the camera with your left hand whilst supporting the underside and pressing the shutter with your right.

Now though, the new PX680 looks to be a might less cack-handed to use. You simply have to get the developing shot into shade promptly rather than immediately.

I have not had time to try this yet but it's hard to properly express the childish joy and anticipation with which I am looking forward to popping the seal and firing up the my beloved 680.

Diary Picture - 20 Oct 2011

Halloween ghosts strung up outside a favourite old haunt - Cafe Lalo. 

For all my US friends who might have been caught up in the chaos of Sandy over the last few days... I'm thinking of you and hope you are all ok.

Details! Details! - part two

Following on from my hurried post at lunchtime... the story so far; a friend ask me for some DSLR raw files so he can run a test with them on upcoming software. He can't tell me any more than that and would prefer some shots from a variety of cameras, preferably pictures that are challenging in some respect.

Fast forward to this morning when Drew Gardner posted several examples of pictures, some of which I took, processed with Adobe's Lightroom 4 and also the newly launched Capture One 7. It was an "out of the box" test which aimed to garner an impression of the differences between the two software offerings rather than a serious exploration of the full capabilities of each.

He has since sent me a couple of the processed frames so that I might make my own observations on them. Firstly we have these two shots from an ambush in Afghanistan in 2006. The light was fading fast and I was crashing upwards through the iso of my 5D mkI as we fought for our lives in a total encirclement whilst on patrol with the soldiers of 16 Air Assault (3rd Parachute regiment and Royal Irish).

Here is Lightroom's version, with no changes or adjustments.

And here is the version from Capture One - 7

The first thing to note is that they both look way better than the in-camera JPEG that I used at the time (I always shoot RAW +JPEG although often, on deadline, it's the in-camera JPEG that I have to send to publications due to time constraints). Lightroom has produced a more saturated, slightly yellow/cyan shift which whilst not faithful to the original, does look good. At first, the area to the lower right of the picture, where an Afghan National Army soldier was crouching, appears more clearly. But on closer inspection it has markedly less detail than the C1 interpretation although it does a better job of holding the green colour in the undergrowth.

The default noise reduction in LR4 seems just a bit too aggressive and it seemed to be glossing over details in favour of smoothness. But the foreground figure of the running soldier has lost all detail n his left arm in the LR4 version and consequently much of the urgency of the picture is gone.

On Drew's blog there are several examples that I have not yet got from him. So this one-shot comparison is not altogether conclusive. But his piece makes the very valid point that details do seem to be getting lost in LR4 and the balance between sharpness and smoothness seems to be out of kilter.

Whilst it is almost impossible to do a like for like comparison I would point out a few strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches.

LR4 has very good highlight detail retention, markedly better than the samples from CO7 so if you habitually over expose your pictures and need to recover, that is something worth bearing in mind. Colour faithfulness and overall crispness cuts the other way; with CO7 the clear winner in Drew's test by such a huge margin as to be a little disturbing.

However, there is the NIK question. Many photographers I know have come to rely on the NIK plug-ins for many of the fine colour adjustments, sharpening, noise reduction and localised retouching that would otherwise be done in photoshop. These tools are a godsend and reduce further work in photoshop and overall post processing time. Capture One has never been compatible with these plug-ins (which are available for Aperture, Lightroom, Photoshop) and while they are not cheap, the fact that  CO7 cannot use these tool in pre-acquire is likely to be a factor for many who are looking for a one-stop solution.

Still, I'll say it again, the amazing level of detail and colour accuracy means that all my high-end output will be routed through Capture One 7 for the foreseeable future.

Details! Details!

Digital photography presents as many difficulties as advantages sometimes. Chief amongst them if you have dedicated yourself to a good raw-file work flow is how to process the raw images.

At various times over the last few years I have used many or maybe most of the available options including Bridge, DXO, Capture One (in various incarnations) and more recently, the all-conquering Lightroom.

The advantages of Lightroom are obvious; a powerful feature set allied to nimble processing speed, excellent support for new camera file formats and the knock-out punch of a seemingly unbelievable price-point. Combine that with the Nik software plug-ins for pre-acquire and it made it a mighty tool for photographers to get the best from their files.

However, various versions of Capture One had always delivered the best colour of all of them (I confess never to have seriously used Aperture) and for all serious high-end output projects I have tackled over the past decade or so, it has been my favourite software.

A few days ago and somewhat cryptically, my friend and colleague Drew Gardner asked me if I had any examples of Raw files from a few different cameras that I could give him in readiness for a new C1 launch at an unspecified future date. He explained that he could say no more than that and asked my understanding. His idea was to try  a real world test on a broad range of subjects and light-levels, over different cameras. He wanted to have these ready for release day so that he could get the first results out onto the net.

Naturally I said yes and waited for some kind of announcement from him. But just to make his job as tricky as possible I sent him some low-light shots from a Canon 5D mkI and a 1D mkI, both of which had presented me with problems due to noise at high ISO shooting, as well as a few pictures from a recent sailing event I shot in the summer where the sails, water and spray all provide lots of fiddly details to be rendered.

This morning, as I started setting up for a shoot, he called briefly and said that I should check his latest post on "the Dark Art" and that I would most likely be surprised by the results.

Now, I haven't had enough time to fully digest these and I'll write a detailed post later today but the initial results are not just surprising, they are nigh-on unbelievable.

I suggest you read Drew's comprehensive post (here) and then check back in a few hours time for another take on this issue.

Although, it must be said that both he and I are very taken-aback at the sheer chasm between the two in terms of fidelity and colour accuracy.

It means that the new C1 version 7 will be an absolute must-have for all my high-output assignments. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of it.

Maybe not everything - but definitely not nothing.

Ever since I returned to Britain from the US in 1999 I have submitted pictures to the National Portrait Gallery's annual Photographic Portrait prize in the hope of making it through to the exhibition. 

The yearly ritual of delivering prints (showering in public - Aug 2010) and then, sadly retrieving them after they have not been chosen (collecting the children from detention - Sept 2010) has provided a certain amount of humour for me and is something I have enjoyed describing. 

Currently sponsored by Taylor Wessing, it is one of those prizes that often sharply divides opinion amongst my fellow photographers. Some, like me, see it as the most consistently challenging, interesting and provocative collection of portraits that the UK produces. Others regard it as slightly aloof and perhaps unrepresentative of the everyday majority.

Either way it is well supported with more than two-thousand photographers entering this year and more than five-thousand pictures submitted in total. Even with the seemingly insurmountable odds of getting into the final edit, the momentary sting of disappointment that accompanies the polite rejection message is something that never gets any easier.

Rejection or acceptance does not instantly make anyone a lesser or greater photographer. On the other hand, photography is a language, a form of communication and photographers who profess no interest in having the chance to connect with new and different audiences make me sad and slightly suspicious. 

This year I entered three prints, but one of them, a portrait of PC David Rathband, the policeman shot by Raoul Moat, had special significance for me. Meeting PC Rathband was one of those experiences that had really made me examine my life and how lucky I was. The terrible nightmares he talked of, the physical pain and mental anguish of having his sight taken from him in such a violent manner, the feeling of loneliness and isolation and the dignity with which he tried to bear it. 

His story had a profound effect on  me and it showed in the picture.

So it was especially uplifting to receive the news yesterday that this one photograph, of the three I submitted, had been selected to join the sixty or so pictures that would be included in the exhibition and book this year.

I found myself running a rather unexpected gamut of emotions. What I felt most instantly was relief. Maybe I had been wanting this particular picture to be chosen a little too much. It was replaced with a kind of elated disbelief as I read and re-read the email just to make sure I hadn't imagined it. This I understand is fairly normal behaviour for unexpected good news. 

Then finally, and most strangely, as my friends started to post messages on Facebook and text, expressing their disappointment at not being selected, I felt guilt.

The fulfilment (at the eleventh attempt!) of a modest but sincere ambition to see my picture exhibited amongst that selection of inspiring works made me feel momentarily as though I had been ushered into a nightclub when my friends had been left behind the red rope.

A day later I finally feel as I am probably supposed to in such circumstances, fortunate and happy. But this could never have happened without the people involved in the process and I would like to acknowledge the tremendous contribution they have made.

Firstly and most importantly, PC David Rathband, who was so open and honest in the way he sat for the portrait. His tragic death earlier this year was such terribly sad news.

Secondly, Sophie Batterbury, Picture Editor of the Independent on Sunday who commissioned me to shoot the photo and whose guidance in my work has been so important over the years.

Also thanks to Martin Berry at Tapestry who was endlessly patient and did a beautiful job of printing the pictures.

Obviously I could never have done anything worthwhile without the support of Jane and my friends but I haven't won a bloody Oscar so a sense of proportion might be best!

It's just a picture in an exhibition, a picture I feel strongly about in an exhibition I have always admired.

As they would say in New York, "That's not nothing!"

Diary Picture - 20 March 2011

The Calls - Leeds, saturday night/sunday morning.

Diary Picture - 23 April 2011

Edinburgh - In the house of chaos, waiting for night-fall so we could head off for a shoot. 
Wishing that I had a Fuji of my own.

Diary Picture - 07 July 2012

Storm gathers out of a blue sky, crossing back to Portsmouth on the Isle of Wight ferry.

Diary Picture - 28 July 2012

BT Vision Hyde Park - first saturday of the Olympic games. Stand up and cheer!... or lie down.... either way.

Diary Picture - 05 September 2007

A Pashtun man and child walking through the main street of the bazaar in Sangin, one year after it had been the scene of the fiercest fighting in Helmand.

Gore Vidal

I was sad to hear on the radio news this morning of Gore Vidal's death at his Hollywood home on Tuesday.

Back in 1998 I had the slightly intimidating privilege of photographing Gore Vidal for the Daily Telegraph (London) in a Miami Hotel. At the time he was going through a phase of not giving regular interviews so the paper had considered the opportunity something of a coup.

I was warned that he could be quite sharp with photographers, that he had a well deserved reputation of not suffering fools lightly, and that consequently I was to keep my mouth shut as much as I could manage.

The oppressive heat of July in Miami just picked me up and sucked the energy right out of me, even on the short trip from the cab to the hotel lobby. Then the aircon nearly froze me like a popsicle (ice-lolly) as I walked through the swishing doors of the hotel and spa.

Arriving pretty much bang-on the allotted time, I was ushered immediately up to the tiny room where the interview had been held.

Earlier that day, feeling slightly lacking in fresh portrait glass, I had dashed round to Adorama before setting off for the airport and impulsively splashed-out on a Canon 135mm lens specifically for the job.

Now finding myself in the rather 'bijou' room with the light flooding through white wooden shutters, it was plain that the 135 was massively too long! I could just about get far enough away for minimum focus length if I jammed my head awkwardly sideways against the far wall and imitated a gecko.

So it was that I photographed a man who "never suffered fools lightly" while contorting myself into the most unbelievably foolish and precarious pose.

But, as is so often the case, those with the fiercest reputations are generally the easiest and most charming people in person. He seemed slightly amused at the ridiculous figure I cut.

We exchanged pleasantries about America and Britain over the short time of the shoot and at the end he looked me square in the eye and spoke.

"If you wish to succeed in America, all you need to do is tell everyone you meet that you are a Person of Integrity," he proclaimed in deep, mellifluous tones, stressing the last part in that slightly theatrical manner that was perhaps his trademark.

"It matters not a bit whether you actually are," he added, "Just so long as you keep telling everyone."

Tearsheet - Independent on Sunday Centrepiece 1st July 2012.

Always a good feeling to get a big display picture in the centre-spread of the paper. Doubly sweet when it's from an idea you generated with your own contacts...

Wider edit of pictures and full write up to be posted here in the next few days.

Diary Picture - 13 November 2010

Disconnected - telephone cables taken down at the point where the security wall divides the Palestinian-administered territory in the West Bank from Israel. At the end of the dead-end road that formerly ran between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Diary Picture - 2 April 2011

Suddenly it was spring.

Diary Picture - 8 October 2008

Barber shop in Kabul. Fancy seat or regular? Choices, choices!