not an f/4 mindset

not an f/4 mindset, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I remember once hearing some advice from a professional photographer that the key to a successful wedding shoot was to shoot everything at f/4.

I was struck last weekend by how tempting it is to stay in that f/4 mindset. Everything is the immediate, the now. Even the financial crisis that many countries are now experiencing is, I think, essentially down to an f/4 mindset. Choosing to focus only on that which is directly in front of us. Choosing to focus on what will bring us a quick win or an immediate profit.

How different would our society look today if we thought at f/22 instead of f/4? What would our jobs look like? What would our relationships look like? What would our priorities look like for this week?

It was this view which provoked that thought - which incidentally I shot at f/13.

the reason the sun shone

the reason the sun shone, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I like to think that it's sole reason was to light this small flower up.

water water everywhere

water water everywhere, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I have something to share with you. 12 years ago my father went missing. He had been suffering with depression for many many years and was last seen running into a stormy winter sea. My world caved in. Last week my four-year-old son jumped into the swimming pool without any help. My heart burst with pride.

I have a love-hate relationship with water. Sometimes I don’t know what to feel about this amazing, ubiquitous, calm yet tempestuous, life-giving/life-taking, substance that forms so much of what we are. Sometimes I marvel at its wildness and beauty. Sometimes I shudder at its malevolence. I’m constantly drawn to capture something of its essence.

A few people have asked me recently for my thoughts on what it means to make photos. Many people will tell you that photography is all about light. And it is. But I believe there is something more. I believe that photography is all about emotion.

So if you’re looking for inspiration, find something you feel emotional about. Find something that makes you pause in awe, weep with gratitude, shiver with anticipation, tremble with anger. Find something that creates such emotion in you that you can’t swallow because of the lump in your throat. Then is the time to raise the camera to your eye and make that photograph.

bokeh beer

bokeh beer, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I’ve just been away on conference exploring how the organisation I work for can work more collaboratively with other organisations around the world. We met at a basic but beautiful place in France and spent many hours sharing thoughts and ideas about our various areas of work. It was great. But we only got so far.

Then we went for a walk together. We talked on the walk – but not much about work. Then we stopped for a beer on the way home. Then it all started to make sense. Then it all started to seem possible. The fact that our offices are thousands of miles apart suddenly didn’t seem to matter anymore. I’d shifted from working with colleagues to working with friends.

I don’t really drink beer. But I did this weekend.

hint of a hand

hint of a hand, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

Here’s my thought for today: take your precious camera, and give it to a four year old.

With my heart in my mouth I often “supervise” my four-year-old son using my Canon 40D. He loves it and seems to know his way round the camera better than I do. You would not believe how he has progressed just in the course of a few sessions. Now he intentionally looks through the viewfinder and shoots away.

And here’s the thing. The world is a totally different place when you’re three foot high and can crawl under the table at a restaurant and generally get a perspective on the world that we have long forgotten. This is his latest photo and I think it’s fantastic. The only processing I’ve done is to convert it to black and white. No tweaking with levels, no selective vignetting, no fiddling with the channels.

My son makes photos. I am very proud.

he looks so small

he looks so small, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I was going to post this in black and white, but there was something so deliciously green about the light on Sunday that I couldn’t tear myself away from colour. We had torrential rain showers with bright sunshine and the most enormous black clouds, and the light was just beyond fantastic. Apologies for the vaguely impressionistic look of this shot - I only had my 50mm prime lens and I think it struggled a bit with the overwhelming light. But maybe it doesn’t matter.

So here it is: my boy, his bike, his brand new bell, and some rather large trees.

englishness & ginger beer

englishness & ginger beer, originally uploaded by jamesburden.

What does it mean to be English? Or American? Or Ukranian? How do we define our culture? There are plenty of people around who define our culture for us. The essence of Englishness is often illustrated by reserve – the stiff upper lip. This doesn’t sit too well with that other great English stereotype – the hooligan. My upper lip is not stiff and I have not to date illustrated any tendency towards hooliganism. And yet I am English.

For me Englishness is about ginger beer. More precisely, it is about ginger beer on a sunny day with clouds scudding across the sky and an expanse of non-geometrically composed fields laid out before you.

Open minded that I am – I put it to you that Fentimans make the best ginger beer.

i'm thinking (self-portrait)

i'm thinking (self-portrait), originally uploaded by jamesburden.

I've been thinking a lot about style lately. Particularly photographic style - you know the kind of thing - what makes an Ansel Adams photograph recognisably an Ansel Adams photograph. We probably all have favourite photographers (or even photographers we don't like) whose style we can instantly recognise. And it's led me to wonder what my style is.

I love interpreting landscape through my lens. I love the challenge of capturing the magical moments of birds, I can't resist trying to capture a fraction of the beauty of a sunset. I'm inexplicably drawn to horses and flowers, and increasingly, I am drawn to black and white - partly because the influence of some truly astonishing talent here on flickr who focus almost exclusively in that medium. So what's my style? The honest answer is that I don't know. Maybe I'll never get one! My most popular or "interesting" images here on flickr certainly don't have one stylistic theme or one definable characteristic…

I'm a huge fan of Seth Godin’s blog which is creative, provocative and inspiring in equal measures. Seth is very influential in marketing circles - although the relevance of his blogs go way beyond that. In response to comments about who might be "the next Seth Godin" he replied:

"I'm still trying to be pretty good at being 'this' Seth Godin, so I wish people who want to be the next one a lot of luck. There's never been a next Elvis Costello or a next Jill Sobule. There wasn't even a next Chuck Berry or a next Charlie Chaplin ... I think the most productive thing to do during times of change is to be your best self, not the best version of someone else."

Well said Seth.