Faking It

Today

I've been having lots of fun with my photos. Now that I know how to mount and frame them, I hope to find a market for them.

Some of my pictures are just right, the way I took them. I don't edit them and just print them directly.

Others need a little correction - maybe the contrast or brightness needs adjustment or there's a telegraph wire right across the picture.

But with many I just have fun playing. Would that picture of abandoned Maesbury Station look better in greyscale or maybe sepia? The trad jazz band photographed in Cheltenham reduced to stark black and white. Or I take an image and place it with another from a different picture and alter the background. My picture of a fallen tree with glowing red sky, looks like an after the holocaust image and I altered one Star Clipper shot to look like a "Pirates of the Caribbean" filmset, another to look like the "Ancient Mariner" ship.

I was telling a friend about what I was doing the other day. "But that's cheating!" he said. "Photos are about capturing the moment."

In My Day

I think that photographers have always "cheated". In the early days it was just playing with exposure or development, then other techniques came along.

Daddy was no exception to this. Starting at the camera, there was the film speed, exposure, depth of field and lighting to consider. By using these features he would alter the relative sharpness and brightness of the shot.

Once the darkroom, he would be able to decide how to develop the shot. This was where he could correct errors. By leaving the film a longer or shorter time in the developing fluid he could determine the look of the final piece. He could further change this when developing the prints.

He used to buy "Amateur Photographer" regularly and sometimes various techniques were shown. I used to be fascinated by pictures that had reduced the image to pure black and white or to grossly exaggerated shades of grey. These effects were achieved through understanding and manipulating the chemical processes involved.

Then there was trick photography. Daddy did have a few forays into this, although I don't think he was very skilled. Twice David found himself shunted into peculiar locations. This was by virtue of the fact that his St Paul's choirboy outfit made him a suitable subject for the family Christmas card. Once Daddy put him in a bottle, another time, several times, walking out of a television screen. Another time he tried to fake a picture a David in front of St Paul's. Unfortunately, something slipped so there's a gap behind his head.

What was true then and is true now, is that doing these things is very fiddly and time-consuming and it does need a degree of skill to cheat successfully.

Another friend of mine told me regretfully the other day that he'd spent a fortune on very fancy photographic equipment only to find out that he's a lousy photographer!