Cameras

The BBC has suspended its annual photography competition. The move follows a series of mistakes made in six BBC programs when staff faked phone-in contests. Most of the programs were charity fundraisers. When technical problems prevented callers from getting through, production staff posed as callers.

All competitions across the BBC have now been suspended.

The annual photography competition offered no prizes but generated plenty of interest from photographers around the world. The first round of the corporation?s Photographer of the Year 2007 contest, on the subject ?Blue,? attracted some 4,000 submissions from both professionals and amateurs. Total entries to last year?s competition numbered around 20,000. Unlike the phone-ins, winners of the online photography competitions were chosen by readers in a public vote.

The monthly photography contest has also been shelved.

The loss of such a prestigious competition is clearly a big blow for any photographers looking for an impressive line on their resume. Entry was free, open to anyone and with the public doing the judging, everyone could feel they were in with a chance of winning.

And it was very unlikely that staff at the BBC were faking it by sending in their own photos.

Photography: Robert Buelteman

Every photographer has a different vision of success. For some, life would be perfect if Time Magazine were to send them and their camera bag to Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. For others, sipping wine at a gallery opening while collectors battle to buy their art would be the ultimate sign that they?ve arrived. And for many, just being paid for a picture or winning a commission for a portrait would tell them that they?ve got talent, technique and an audience for their work.

But what happens next? What do you do after you?ve got used to phone calls from editors, when you?ve seen the red stickers on your framed photos or once sales and commissions have become a standard part of your life?

That was a dilemma faced by Robert Buelteman, a 51-year old landscape photographer known for his pictures of California. His black and white images had already been published in two books. His photos form part of the permanent collections of Yale University Art Museum and The Santa Barbara Museum of Art. And a steady supply of commercial assignments meant that he was able to earn a rewarding living from his camera.

Ansel Adams, Fiber Optics and Sculpted Plants

For most enthusiasts that would be the stuff that photography dreams are made of. But the death of a number of relatives and a desire for new challenges led Buelteman to look at a completely new way of creating pictures.

?It isn?t that I was running from dissatisfaction so much as I was seeking new possibilities for myself and for my art,? he explains. ?As a witness to the loss of four family members to cancer in the late 90?s, I had learned that life is short, and didn?t want the precious gift that my life is to be spent doing what had already been done by so many so often.?

Twenty years earlier, Sarah Adams (the granddaughter of Ansel) had shown Buelteman Walter Chappell?s Metaflora portfolio of flower images at her home in Lee Vining. As he searched for a new outlet, Buelteman recalled that meeting and an idea he?d had about combining photography with fiber optics.

The result was a method that draws on his studies in chemistry, physics and optics at Berkeley to create a new kind of Kirlian photography, a technique that involves passing an electric current through an object on an a photographic plate to generate an image of the corona discharged around the object?s edges.

Buelteman?s approach though is particularly difficult. He takes live plants and ?sculpts? them with a scalpel until they?re translucent. Working in the dark, he then prepares an ?exposure matrix? made up a sheet of 8×10 tungsten-balanced transparency film mounted on an easel. This is supported by a sheet of metal in a solution of liquid silicone, which itself is sandwiched between two sheets of Plexiglas. To create the image, Buelteman connects to the metal sheet to a spark plug cable, places the sliver of plant material on the film, and fires 80,000 volts through the metal ? and the plant. The current leaves a glow on the film in the shape of the plant. Finally, Buelteman uses strobe lights and fiber-optic cables to add extra light effects.

3,000 Exposures? 30 Images

It?s a process that can demand a great deal of time and experimentation. A single photograph can take anywhere from an hour to create to a number of months spread over several years. Calla lilies, for example, only bloom for a few weeks, creating a short window each year to get the picture of the plant right. The 30 images contained in Buelteman?s first portfolio ?Through the Green Fuse? took 3,000 exposures and 60 hours a week for two years to produce.

?This is not a technique that one perfects,? Buelteman told us. ?It reminds me of dancing.  Dancing is its own reward, and once you try to do it right, you?ve lost the rhythm.  This process, impossibly difficult with so many variables that it defies the traditional controls that we have come to expect as photographers, is a roll of the dice.?

The images though, shot without a camera and dependent on the corona created by the electrical charge are unique, and certainly very different to the traditional black and white photos Buelteman had produced in the past. The response though has been phenomenal. Galleries have snapped up his photos and the Santa Fe Institute invited him to be an artist-in-residence, giving Buelteman the freedom to continue developing his technique.

At the same time though, Buelteman has continued shooting and selling his black and white landscapes which he prints himself. Without those sales, he points out, he might ?you know, have to get a job or something.? And creating the pictures helps to keep him grounded and engaged in his art, he says. It?s something he predicts he?ll never give up.

It would be wonderful to say that the moral of Buelteman?s story is that it?s always possible for a photographer to change direction, branch out into new areas and succeed. But of course, that isn?t the case. There was no guarantee that Buelteman?s technique would work, that any of the images he produced would be attractive or that anyone would want to look at them or own them. But that wasn?t the reason he did it. Being a successful photographer might be rewarding and satisfying but the thrill of success itself is never a reason anyone ever picks up a camera. That?s always done for the pleasure of creating pictures that make you proud. Buelteman himself notes the most important characteristic he looks at to measure the success of his technique isn?t the number of exhibitions, print sales or media  interest the images generate but his personal excitement and passion to continue doing it.

?When, as an artist, you have tapped into that special place where you no longer feel separate from the rest of life there is a spontaneity and a beauty and a rhythm in your art that others respond to,? he says. ?While this is a place available to all of us, I find myself able to visit only occasionally.?

And, of course, if it turns out that people like your new images well enough to buy them as much as they like your old ones, then that really is the stuff of dreams.

Rather than be asked which is my favourite season, I am often asked which is my favourite month; a question that used to require some thought. I guess it has taken a while to ?get to know? the characteristics of each month yet, over the years, I have come to expect a pattern of sorts; or at least I thought I had! However, that is another debate and I will leave that to the climate change experts of whom, I must admit, I tend to meet a fair number these days!

I am fairly secure though in knowing which are my least favourite months and, whilst happy to be contradicted, I must admit to having no great fondness for August and September. The lovely season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is yet to come – in late September and of course October.

It would seem to me that in every respect, these summer months (for the time being anyway) are the antithesis of April and May. Not wishing to be the cause of any controversy, but I find the latter half of August and the first two thirds of September utterly uninspiring from a photographic perspective.

Of course, we are talking about the UK here. If I were to find myself in the heart of Namaqualand, in the Northern Cape, then I would no doubt discover an August landscape (given a prior, good, rainy season) resplendent with vast seas of the loveliest wild flowers.

So, back to the UK. With the exception of harvest time, no flat, matt, tired August landscape for me, at least not inland.

Although I am not always able to stick to it, I never care to depart from our shores during the spring months. ?Never leave the UK in April or May?! If travelling to countries of similar latitudes, then yes, perhaps, but irrespective of landscape photography, there is so much rebirth going on at this time it seems sad to miss it. It is all so short lived after all. In particular I have memories of some staggeringly magnificent skies in April and May and a good sky can play a pivotal role in a grand landscape image. Consider photographing from a western facing shore during these two great months and, given some unpredictable weather, be prepared to remain there in happy anticipation of an image to be made. A turbulent sky is always worthwhile pursuing, providing some much needed gravitas to turn the image away from looking merely ?pretty?.

Whilst I love to photograph wild moorland and mountain landscapes, I have equal affection for images that arise from man?s interaction with the land, often finding the precision of an immaculately ploughed field adjacent to a stretch of land tinted with the almost fluorescent light green blush of a spring crop to be very appealing. A little elevation will often afford an overview of a field system where still vibrant harvest stubble contrasts well with a milky green neighbour.

In April, the once intriguing brilliance of oilseed rape has now become too overwhelming in my view. The need for bio fuels has resulted in much of the southern part of our tiny country being drenched in yellow emulsion and, whilst there is no doubt that these vast acres of canary yellow are indeed striking, especially when set against a field of linseed they have become just ?too much? perhaps.

But with the light touch of spring, our noble broad-leaved trees, that for the long winter months stand, seemingly resigned to the fact that they may never be in leaf again, very suddenly come back to life. On a warm, early April day, the leaves of the beech, the lime, the Lombardy poplar and the lovely silver birch, in particular, seem to sizzle and sparkle in the first sunshine of the day and for those who like to work in infrared (digital or film) there is perhaps this window of about two weeks when infrared radiation from the leaves will be at its height.

I was brought up in the New Forest and, for many years, returned with my camera in the hope of producing an image that would evoke those childhood memories of a springtime walk all the way to Lyndhurst. In early light, it was often the extreme subject brightness range that stole away the magic from my favourite forest glade, replacing precious and sacred shadow detail with black nothingness and, at the other end, turning some of the moist spring leaves into mirrors. It is the succulence of the first leaves to appear that are so wonderful.

Unless I see it well done, I am no fan of HDR and although this technique may be popular to overcome the vagaries of extreme contrast, the ratios are often misjudged resulting in shadows that are not subdued enough and appear to be lit from within (unusual for a shadow!) and highlights that no longer appear to be highlights. No matter how skilled the operator, image manipulation software is no match for getting it right in camera if one possibly can under often trying circumstances. In my New Forest scenario, if a passing and compliant, low- moisture density cloud, were to station itself in front of the sun for a fleeting moment then my glade would have become fairy-like with the sever contrast lessened for a brief moment.

Perhaps as with all landscape photography think of the perimeter of the viewfinder. Ponder for a moment on what I call the ?brutal and aggressive crop? We are so often preoccupied with the centre of the image and perhaps are guilty of neglecting the sides. After all no painter would pay scant attention to the edges of their painting and nor should we. Think about what these fierce vertical and horizontal edges will be slicing through and consider cropping sensitively.

There are those who may suggest that the camera intervenes and removes the individual from appreciating the wonders around us. I refute this utterly as it is surely the camera that acts as a conduit to draw us into the very heart of the human response to the world around us and offers us a wonderful device with which to become closer to things.

The more that one can invest of oneself into the entire image making process, the more rewarding an enriching the experience will be. Perhaps there could be a parallel awakening with our landscape photography to be in step with the spring. A new beginning possibly with a fresh new approach?

Look at blossom, one of the most glorious of springs offerings. There are some orchards in the west country and Kent of course which which would be well worth exploring and the owner would be delighted to help in return for an image perhaps?

In spring, there can never be a better time to become uplifted by life returning to the land and to be there with our camera, in readiness for it all, is hard to beat.

Biography

Charlie Waite was born in 1949 and worked in British Theatre and Television for the first ten years of his professional life. Throughout this period he became fascinated by theatrical lighting and design. Gradually the landscape and the way it can be revealed to us through light and shade stole him away from the acting profession.

Over the last twenty five years, he has lectured throughout the UK Europe and the US. He has held numerous one man exhibitions in London, including two shows in London?s National Theatre and three at the OXO gallery and held further solo shows in Tokyo, New York, Carmel and in Australia, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.  He has published 27 books on the UK, France, Italy, Spain and Germany; all exclusively of his photography.

Charlie Waite is now firmly established as one of the most celebrated international landscape photographers. Aside from his own photography, he also enjoys introducing photography to others. Through his company, Light and Land the leading photographic tour company in Europe, Charlie Waite and his specialist photographic leaders, all at the very top in their field, run worldwide workshops and tours dedicated to bettering photography.

http://www.charliewaite.com

http://www.lightandland.co.uk

All images in this article © Charlie Waite