Feedback from Okuru-Ian Walls

Driving home from Okuru I think I gained an appreciation of how you must have felt having had your eye operation. I was viewing the west coast landscape with a completely new set of eyes.

I made it to just before Ships Cove before I screeched to a halt to photograph some reflections I saw in the reeds. If it wasn’t the voice in my head that said “keep going you Plonker or you will never get home” I would have been still in Hokitika at midnight.

There was character in the landscape as I started north and I found it fascinating to watch it leech out as the sun got higher and higher. Still I was able to picture in my mind compositions and balances of texture and I even managed to imagine some colour.

I reviewed my email to you setting out my aims for the week. They were:
1. Gain a direction
2. Evaluate images to see the emotion I want to portray
3. Have an understanding of landscape photography

The Landscape Thing.

I said at one point that I viewed landscape as somewhere below half way up my scale of photograph interest. But I don’t thing I really had any idea what landscape photography is about. To me landscapes meant those cheesy images in the back of Woman’s Weekly done by the bloke with the red car. They were primarily suited to chocolate boxes for the purpose of making consumers more excited about the inside of the box than the out.

But I completely missed the passion. It came with a few viewings, but by looking at your “Country Lives” images and hear how you are making them, I realised that the photographs are not about autumn colours and sparkly water but about passion. I am also passionate about NZ as I think are most of us. If we weren’t no one would come home from their OE.

So I get it now but can I do it? Looking back at the images I made during the week I made some observations. The Monday morning photographs on the beach to me had a distinctly “Tony Bridge” feel about them (Tony’s Trash Can probably, but none the less…) and I actually felt that viewing them at the time. I think I have realized that my natural genre (is that the word??!!) are small view detail pictures of the world. In an almost “Freeman-ish” way I enjoy the beauty of the detail showing us the beauty of the big picture by implication. Having said that you showed me the grand view …. And I like it.
Images I made later in the week included some small view picture that felt emotive. One in particular made in the waves by Pottsy’s place was lots of foamy waves surrounding a lone rock. I saw it as a grand view picture with important detail – it is a passionate image and it is a “me” image.

I think I get landscape now – a tick for number 3.



How about number 2.

The image I am most pleased to have put forward for viewing was on Tuesday night and it was of an orangey-coloured tree branch with out of focus green bush behind. You politely made a few useful technical comments about leaves coming from outside of the frame. But your unsaid words yelled loudly “Ian why are you showing me this crap when I’m sure there are much more emotive images in your computer”. You were right and I knew it. At best the picture was about shape and colour……boring!!!!


I don’t need help evaluating passionate images. If it’s worth keeping it needs to yell at me. If it doesn’t yell it needs to head west to Russell’s trash can. I think I would rather delete blurry under-exposed passionate images than technically perfect boring junk.




So first is last – what about a direction from here….

When I first arrived Karen talked about the exhibitions she was involved in and a bit about Honours submissions. I was thinking that sort of thing could be a direction to go. But I was missing the point.

I had been thinking about the “body of work” concept since you blog on the subject but I didn’t really get it.

After you showed me your New Brighton stuff on your computer I was thinking, “How would this be better if it had been made into a book”. And the answer was that the only thing that would be better would (hopefully) be Tony’s bank balance ($14k might be nice). The truth is that the work doesn’t need to be published to be worthwhile.

Further than that I concluded that any photograph needs to be part of a “body of work” to be worthwhile. The classic photograph is the family snap and it exists and is important because it is part of a body of work documenting the particular family life. When the shoe box gets pulled out people are interested in the blurry shot of Aunty Jess when she was 9 and the wonderful arty shot of the rainbow in the same roll of film gets completely ignored. It isn’t relevant to the body of work.

So why make a body of work? I thought about that too on the way home. I realized that it isn’t any different to the model aeroplanes I used to take months to make. While making them I knew full well that in due course, not very long sometimes, they would be crashed and all that would remain is the bit of yellow tail I keep in the garage to remind me of the fun I had.

So the purpose of a photograph is to be part of a body of work. And the purpose of the body of work……… is the body of work. It doesn’t need to be exhibited or published to be worthwhile and the photographs certainly don’t need to win CPS competitions.

Back to the question – What is my direction? I have a feeling, now that I have my head around the body of work or project thing, that the aim I’m looking for will just come.

At the moment I’m letting a few documentary ideas bounce around and I think that the rivers thing has firmly taken plant. Best you go and check that Takashi is still in your bookcase!



So overall my three aims for the week are satisfied and I feel sorta liberated.



Thankyou



Another very important thing that I really enjoyed was sharing the growing experience with 3 like-minded people. Seeing their feeling and vision of the same things I had seen was fantastic.


Thank you Karen, Russell and Ann





When's the next one Tony?








Ian