Photography of the Age: A book review

The hardcover book is about as big, and as heavy, as a typical phonebook.

This isn’t a book. It’s a manual.

A blow-by-blow, day-to-day account of a day in the life of an Age photographer, lumped with some history, some gear talk, and a glossery.

Photography of the Age, by Kathleen Whelan, is the kind of book you need to lift with your knees. You could bludgenon an intruder with it. But what you should do with it is read it over and over until you wear the pages thin.

I was lucky to be given a signed copy, by a friend for Christmas. Thanks, @markjesser!

Photographers — you’ve got to get this book. Simple as that.

It encapsulates everything about working in a news photographer at The Age in Melbourne in chapters such as:

- The context of an image
- Legal and ethical constraints
- Use of new technologies
- The layout of the paper
- The press photographer’s job

Then it profiles a whole bunch of past and present Age photographers, showing their work, unearthing their processes, camera settings, approach to jobs, gear, and so on.

The photography is fantastic. The content is comprehensive.

But it’s very much a photographers’ book. I showed mine to several non-newspaper-reading people that didn’t really appreciate photography. They just shrugged and said “it’s okay”. So, I doubt the book will inspire people to pick up photography.

But — If you are a photographer, I guarantee it will inspire you to make better pictures.

This really is a look inside an organisation that affords its photographers two of the rarest things in the industry: Some time and resources. The pixels contained in this page a compelling proof that time + resources + highly-trained, creative photographers = iconic, amazing results.

But — and this is possibly my biggest gripe with the book — it’s written in a pretty melancholy tone.

The blurb on the back opens with: “Are newspapers dead?” and finishes with “Kathleen Whelan has recorded for posterity the Golden Age of Newspaper Photography … an age we may never see the likes of again”.

Fills your heart with joy, doesn’t it? And you haven’t even had a chance to open the book yet.

But photographers, don’t be put off by this. Keep reading and you’ll find a treasure trove of resources, learning and facinating stories.

It’s a great book. Get it. Read it. Learn from it. Then, like the photographers of The Age, go work your butt off and produce your own body of awesome images.

A photographer’s profile in the book.

A spread of images.

The easiest way to buy it is to Google the title and author’s name.

Ben

Cows and cameras …

Cows have taught me a lot about photography.
In fact, out of all the thumbless creatures on this planet, they’re perhaps the subjects that reveals most about the photographer.

In other words, if you want to know what a photographer is like with people, send them to photograph anything that goes “moo”.

Cows are better judges of character than most humans. As you approach, they calmly stop chewing their feed and look at you, observe you, consider you, then respond to you.

It’s as simple as this: If you’re likeable, they’ll stay. If you’re aggressive, agitated, rushed, nervous, loud, irratable, or, worst of all, insincere, they’ll stand up and move away.

They don’t pass judgement. They don’t scorn or look down their noses. They just decide, then and there, whether or not you are the kind of person they want to be around.

Early on as a newspaper photographer, I wasn’t the kind of person cows liked. Rushed between photo jobs, erratic and stressed about hitting deadline, cows took one look at me and literally grabbed their calves and bolted to the other end of the paddock.

For a while, I dreaded illustrating farm stories. I was terrified I couldn’t deliver the shots.

And the cows could smell my fear.

So I asked for help from a farmer.

“Mate, I grew up on the beach. The only cows I saw as a kid were on the sides of milk cartons. What should I do?”

After he stopped laughing at me (which took a while), he told me just to be honest.

“I am,” I replied. “I’m telling you, aren’t I?”

“Don’t tell me. Tell the cows,” he said.

So I shrugged and talked to his cows. “Hey ladies. I’m Ben and I’m scared you’re going to run away. Could I take your photo please?” I took a deep breath and waited.

The cows stopped chewing and looked at me. Stared at me. But for once, none of them moved.

I lifted the camera and clicked the shutter.

“See –” said the farmer, a bit smugly.

I talked to that herd of cows for about half-an-hour after that, snapping pictures of the farmer and his animals. I don’t remember what I told them, but I’ve never forgotten what I learned that day.

And I still talk to cows to this day.

Ben

When I can’t sleep, I either worry, or write …

I love that moment right before you fall asleep.
You know, those minutes just before sleep when your conscious is about to give in under your subconscious’s warm blanket of thoughts and feelings of a day well spent.
In that translucent haze, you often run through what you did in that day, and, even if you didn’t get done everything you hoped, everything gets washed over with a feeling of contentment, security and gratefulness.
I can roughly summarise it into three thoughts.
You did these things well.
I enjoyed these parts of my day.
I’m so glad these people/things are in my life.
This pretty much sums up the last things that goes through my mind before sleep takes me every night.

Every night. Except last night.

And I say last night, because it’s about 12.10am in the morning as I write this, about 20 minutes after I was jolted out of my groggy daily review by one wayward question.

What if I don’t get done?

I’ve got a few things I’d like to get done before I shuffle off this planet — what if I don’t finish them? Worse — what if I don’t start some of them?

Write a book. Or books.
Travel overseas.
Learn to skateboard.
Be a mentor. Be a dad.
Speak Italian.
Get my dog to come when I call him. Right away. Even when there’s kids at the park, too.
Be married for like 50 or 60 years.
Learn to play guitar songs by ear.
Make a photograph so poignant people cry when they see it.
Balance work/life.

How on earth am I supposed to sleep soundly with a to-do list THIS LONG?

Maybe I should focus on all the good things I’ve got going on for a minute.

Married to Laura. BEST THING EVER. (Even trumps Star Wars.)
Great cat and great dog.
Get along with and are in constant contact with family — parents, grandparents, siblings — very lucky, here.
Landed the dream job teaching photography to awesome students, in classroom and online all around Australia. And shooting personal projects or client work when I can.
Star Wars.
More superhero movies now than ever before in history.

Yep. I’m a lucky, lucky bastard, I think as I put my head back down on the pillow.

But I still can’t sleep. I’m restless.

So I think about some other things I’ve done.

Scored a cadetship to be a newspaper reporter.
Switched careers and became a newspaper photographer despite the fears and discouragement of many.
Won a couple of awards for Best News photographs.
Wrote and photographed a five page feature story in the weekend section once.
Sent leukaemia packing (and stay out, pal).
Went back to the Children’s Hospital and donated my photography skills shooting Mothers’ Day portraits.
Shot the front page of The Daily Telegraph.

I’ve done okay, I reason with myself. But I’m more panicked than ever. I’m not coping with the idea of running out of time with “unfinished business”.

But, for now, I’m feeling tired. Hopefully that’ll be enough to help me sleep.

Ben

How to shoot a sports portrait in minutes

Shot for http://ift.tt/M24X8m

Two types of speed were the most important factors in making this picture.
The film speed (the ISO, in case you haven’t shot much film) and the speed in which I could physically pound the shutter button to get this job done.
It was their last training session before their grand final, so Coach told me not to muck around.
Which was fine by me, the light was dropping so fast that I didn’t want to muck around either.

When I’m under pressure I always like to nail down things down one at a time.

1) Work out what’s going on. Combine the instructions on the job sheet with what the talent is telling you. (You wouldn’t believe how often the two differ.)
2) Make a compromise and make friends. There is ALWAYS a point where what YOU want to do and what THEY want to do meet to produce a kick-ass picture. Burning people for the sake of your vision might get you a nice picture … but pretty soon your reputation will precede you and nobody is gonna want you let you take their picture.
3) Tell them you’ll call them when you’re ready. Sort your picture, get it practiced, and know that it’s going to work BEFORE you get the talent in. I wanted to use my 70-200mm lens to compress that background and tasty sunset, so I knew I wanted a shutter speed about 1/200th, so I wouldn’t get a blurry result from camera shake.
An aperture of f4 is my usual starting point as it it is a bit forgiving on a Canon 1D Mark IV’s eccentric autofocus, so, with those values locked in Manual, I just walked the ISO up until the ambient light looked good.
4) Dial those settings into your back-up/other camera. (I did so to my other Mark IV with the wide lens on it.)

All that done, you’re ready, and you haven’t wasted anyone’s time.
I asked Coach to please send over talent, and grabbed a bystander to hold my flash just out of frame on camera-right. I think the flash was actually on E-TTL high-speed sync for once — and it popped the right amount of light on the players.
Perfect.
I ripped through plenty of frames in landscape and portrait orientations, and varied the shutter speed on a couple to quite slow and quite fast to either brighten or darken the background ambient light so the sub-editors would have a few options.
I then ran in close and ripped through a bunch of frames on my wide-angle lens, just in case, but, this was my favourite of the bunch.
I dunno if I helped them win the grand final, but by being calm and fast, I doubt I hurt their chances.

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