On the rare occasion that I chat with other photographers, sometimes the topic of influences comes up. It’s an interesting question, which I’ve recently realised goes deeper than it appears. In interviews, in forums, on blogs, etc etc, people seem to be all too willing to trot out their influences. Such as, in a hushed tone, “Ansell”, or H.C-B, or . I do wonder though, if people distinguish between influences, and heroes. Heroes, or role models, or whatever the appropriate description is, being people we look up to and dream of emulating. This can take many forms.  I was once on a workshop with a well known “personality” photographer, and it was quite remarkable that a good proportion of the participants not only had exactly the same (new out of the box) cameras as the Great Leader, but aspired to drive the same car, drink the same wine, etc. The photography seemed irrelevant. And then there are the more straightforward aspirants, such as the pilgrims who gather by their hundreds in Yosemite to reproduce faithfully - or at least as faithfully as they can, without getting more than 10m from the car park - Ansell’s famous works. They would, doubtless, claim that Adams is an influence.

Currently, in British landscape photography circles, which I guess I’m vaguely associated with by passport if nothing else, the namedropping very frequently includes David Ward. And indeed why not - his work is sublime, and in my opinion is one of a very, very small band who takes landscape photography to the level of art rather than craft. I’ve named him as an influence myself, but looking at my archives dispassionately, I find it very hard to spot any influence. A few clumsy attempts at simulation, yes. But influence? In my dreams.

So how did this flash of enlightenment come about?

Well over 10 years ago, when I was in an intensive phase of exploring landscape photography, I devoured books by various photographers, including John Shaw, Andy Rouse, Andris Apse, Craig Potton, Joe Cornish, Lee Frost, Peter Watson, and a host of others. But perhaps most of all Charlie Waite. Charlie Waite was at the time at name pretty much on everybody’s lips, but these says, his star seems to have faded a bit, with tastes turning more to the more dramatic, windswept styles of Joe Cornish and his host of disciples, and the more overtly artistic / philosophical approach of David Ward.  And my Charlie Books gathered dust.

But a few weeks ago I remembered that he had recently published a new book, Arc & Line, and on a whim I ordered it.

Opening it up I found a revelation: this was the style I’d been unconsciously emulating, with a mixture of urban, travel and landscape scenes, also ignoring the “rule” that says you can’t photograph landscape in full daylight.  Now, I’m no Charlie Waite, but reviewing his work now after a hiatus of 8 years ago, it seems quite clear to me that he has been a strong influence on my approach. I can see now where some of my better formed ideas come from. There are many other photographers that I might have wanted to “be” more, but finally, I could do a lot worse than recognizing Charlie Waite as a clear influence on my photography.

Dear Lasersoft Imaging,

Quoting from your website, “on August 17th [2011], scanner software SilverFast 8 has been released”. Today is June 21st, 2012, and recently, Beta 10 of Silverfast HDR was released, with little obvious change, except, apparently, in fiddling around with the infrared channel which has been causing you some issues.

Silverfast HDR 8 has no features that are not present in Silverfast 6 HDR. It does, however, miss a few. Zooming doesn’t work. You can see an image at a size which fits the window (about 4% in my scans), or, if you discover the hidden workaround, 100%. That’s it. At least you can pan the 100% view. From playing around, it seems that headline features such as GANE simply don’t work, although the controls are there. There is no way to batch process, a key feature of all previous versions.  There is no equivalent to version 6’s flawed, but useful, Virtual Light Table.

You do have a completely new GUI, which is long overdue. It is an improvement, at least, but hardly earth-shaking. And, crucially, it works on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion), unlike version 6. Your company’s total refusal to follow any sort of UI standard is baffling though, as well as financially counter-productive. But Lion, and Silverfast 8, were released a long time ago. In fact, OS X 10.8 is imminent, even if we allow that it is little more than a marketing wrapper for a service pack for 10.7.  And Silverfast HDR 8 is still in Beta.

I’m not holding out any hope for a Silverfast AI 8 for my Minolta Scan Multi Pro. It seems that this is just too hard for your engineers, even though it didn’t seem to be a big deal for Ed Hamrick. Anyway, I have now dedicated a semi-retired MacBook Pro to running Silverfast 6.6 AI, but I would like to reprocess the HDR output on my main machine.

I suspect that you are paying the price for years upon years of neglect of a very old, undocumented and labyrinthine code base, and quite possibly the engineers who knew how it worked are gone. For many years you watched the money roll in, and bolted on fairly useless new feature after fairly useless new feature to get the upgrade income. Of course the foundation was - and is - a very good scanning engine, but that’s no longer enough.

I bought into your Archive concept - in both senses of the word -  but it seems that your idea of “archival” is very strange. Your customers now have archive files which can only be processed on current computers with a half-baked Beta. This is a poor reward for the trust your customers have shown.

Personally, I don’t feel any need to join the rush to upgrade to OS X 10.8 - but perhaps I should consider 10.7, as 10.6 is beginning to lock me out of interesting developments. In fact, I have test 10.7.4, and of all the applications I use, including tricky things like monitor calibration and printer drivers, only Silverfast is holding me back.

I challenge to provide a roadmap to a commercial release of Silverfast HDR 8. And to also publish a list of features you intend to include on release, and a list of those which are not currently working in Beta 10 (although you have released Beta 8.0.1r12, the latest update notice on your Silverfast HDR 8 main page is for 8.0.1r4). No gloss, no half-truths, just the facts. This is part of what an open Beta entails, but you seem not to get that.

Yours, in hope of a positive response

David Mantripp

Some impressionistic views of Milano Centrale train station using the OM-mount Zuiko 85mm f/2.0 on the Olympus E-P3. According to Mark Thackara, marketing manager at Olymous UK, it’s a classic. Wasted on me then…

For over a year I’ve been promising to add a “recent work” section to my photo galleries, and I’ve finally done it. Of course, this is totally out of kilter with the hip new thing of showing some endless, constantly updating stream where the viewer is left to do the editing, but, as Frank put it, I did it my way.

So, without further ado, do please visit my photography page, and follow the carefully formulated, hand-crafted instructions. Or go straight there.

Here’s an appetizer:

Some poppies overlooking Manarola, Liguria. Olympus E-P3 and kit 14-42 lens.

I bought a camera bag today.

The trickle-like pace at which I post stuff on this blog has recently reduced to a drip feed without the drops. It’s not that I haven’t got anything to write about. I’ve got plenty of ideas in my head, but the effort to actually set anything down in words seems to get harder and harder, and the constant questioning of the actual point of it all regularly resurfaces.

I’m not sure where blogging gets us all really, either as readers or writers. Some blogs have a clear objective, like the fascinating and eminently readable One Hundred Mountains.  But most seem to be mainly about self-promotion, openly or under a thin disguise. Being good at self promotion is pretty much a pre-requisite for being a successful professional photographer, or a well-known amateur. But being an interesting and compelling writer probably isn’t, at least not on the evidence I’ve seen.

I’ve given up on photography bloggers who are basically in it to market their book / ebook / workshop and generally build up their business. Good luck to them, but I’m not terribly interested in endless repetitive marketing wrapped up in tidbits of recycled wisdom. Yes, I know, I should use a tripod. Thanks. Got that. I’ll shortly be updating my blogroll to publicise bloggers who actually inspire me with their words, images, or both. Although I’m open to offers to provide paid marketing links…

WARNING: you are now approaching The Point. Please do not undo your seatbelt until this rant has exhausted itself to a complete standstill

So, a certain prominent blogger recently wrote what presumably was a tongue in cheek, opinionated piece on camera bags. It can be summed up quite easily: anybody who has a Domke bag (or apparently a Leica branded sack… whatever) is a way cool dude, anybody who uses a camera backpack is a mindless, unfit moron who couldn’t tie his own shoelaces.

Well that makes me a cool, mindless moron (etc) because I’ve got both. A Domke F803, which is fab for leisurely wandering, say, the coastal paths and villages of Liguria with an Olympus PEN and a few lenses, but pretty ******* stupid for hiking across a glacier in Svalbard with a DSLR, several heavy lenses and a large tripod (to fight bears off with, you understand). For that I’ve got a pretty good huge, ballistic nylon, super-size-me bag LowePro backpack. As have several million others. I’ve also got a smaller but remarkably flexible Kata backpack for less rugged outings (sadly Kata is apparently in the “super crappy camera bag” category. Oh well.). Of course, if I were a studio photographer, carrying my gear in my big fat SUV to my next air-conditioned gig shooting flawless models in Downtown, USA, I might well use the Domke. Equally if I were to wander the streets of Laredo, coolly dropping in to photograph a perfect cappuccino with the camera I just bought, then, yes, the F803 would do nicely. But if I also had some perspective, I might realise that other people have different needs and compromises to make, and maybe, just maybe, their choice of a LowePro backpack doesn’t make them a total dongle. Or indeed an engineer.

Anyway, the author does of course state in his article that this is all just his own opinion, he doesn’t expect anybody to share it, bla bla bla. Which brings me to the real point. If it really is of no interest or relevance, why bother writing about it? This kind of article might make me question why I dedicate time to reading that particular blog, and whether the author is actually worth my time.  And indeed, what the sum total of this shouting from our metaphorical little islands is amounting to.  One might hope it is in part a building of relationships, and exchange of ideas, a conversation even, but when certain (other) A-List bloggers decided that reading and managing comments is just too tiresome, one must really wonder how relevant they are.

Rob Boyer has a far more convincing blog in praise of Domke bags, by the way.

I bought a camera bag today. It’s small and black, and lets me carry my PEN around on workdays without looking like a total tourist. It’s made by Crumpler and didn’t cost very much.

A small, brand new Crumpler bag, some flowers and a bit of my thumb

Marmalade! I like marmalade!