AM's niece

After creating "21 Things..." a few days back, and I do mean creating, I'm wondering. The mix of reactions I got, mostly challenging the image, suggest that people either have a fairly pre-conceived notion of what it should be (wrong light, not following rule of 1/3s, subject not clear etc.), or they responded quite heavily to the title and tried to draw it into some deeper meaning of how it related to the image itself. "21 Things..." is an Alanis Morissette track by the way.

For the record, the title was randomly selected from iTunes on the basis that it was on the screen in front of me and it struck me as about the most perverse title I could see, and importantly, it was the sort of title that was likely to attract attention - a bit like sending our emails with 'free sex' in the subject line. There was also a small hint of "let's see what they do with this then" in there. The title was an exercise in attention seeking, pure and simple.

The image came about following a thread posted on a photography forum discussing why there seemed to be a view on the forum (and elsewhere) that everything had to be razor sharp or it wasn't worthwhile, whether that be lenses, sensor resolution, film resolution, images, focus and so on. Conclusions as to the reasons for this varied, but largely settled on the idea that we were probably brainwashed into that view by the manufacturers who want to keep selling us the latest and greatest and even better than the last product, the limits we've barely tested since last time we succumbed to breaking out the credit card. OK, so 1-0 to the marketing guys.

Within the discussion though, there were a few who were prepared to test whether it had to be that way, whether photography had to comply with the prescribed rules, fed regularly by any number of publications on the shelves of WHSmith and Waterstones. It's a discussion that's been around since the dawn of laying down images on sheets of paper coated with silver salts - it's probably a tired discussion at that, but each generation of photographers seems to find it anew. I did my Ansel Adams phase a log time ago and whilst his works stands to test of time in my view, it's not a style I wish to emulate, as it seems to lack any emotional content. To me these days, it just appear to be a straight documentary record of what was in front of the camera.

Increasingly these days I find myself looking for images that seem either to ignore, or more often never really learned 'The Rules". With the advent of the digital camera, there has been an explosion of creativity released into the hands of people who have probably never read a photography magazine in their lives. The results are intriguing. Add something like Photoshop into the mix and all of a sudden, the most unusual things start happening. Now there are those who will say that the tools available in Photoshop are just a mimic of stuff that people were doing in the wet darkroom, and that's true. Those sort of result could only be achieved though through a hugely complicated and equipment intensive apprenticeship, and wrecking your household plumbing into the bargain. What digital has done is make it oh so accessible, especially when any technique you care to mention is tutorialised in 5-easy-steps on the internet - that certainly didn't exist when I pulled my first roll of FP4 out of the dev tank. But I digress...

I wanted to try and come up with an image that departed from the rules, but could not be loosely termed 'a snapshot'. It also had to lend itself to having some sort of treatment applied to it that would be at least in keeping with the image and was very definitely deliberate - I certainly didn't want anyone to perceive it as an accident. The image I found was taken whilst waiting for the Kowloon to Hong Kong Island ferry last April. Unlike virtually everything else I took whilst there, it was shot on a little Panasonic P&S, rather than the DSLR. Inevitably, the quality of the image wasn't that great, but I'd looked at it a number of times and had wondered whether it would ever [pompous moment] reveal it's true nature [/pompous moment]. OK, so I linked what was essentially a crappy snapshot with not much going for it. It was blurry due to camera shake, it was blurry due to the focus being a bit off and the subject matter was of dubious interest value to anyone but myself. It wasn't going to render up any pixel sharp masterpieces, so I went all grunge on its ass. Inspired by some of the personal stuff I've seen of Aeric Meredith-Goujon (him again), the image was battered into something approaching submission, but still came out the other side, stronger I suspect than it went in. It looks dark, it looks gloomy, it looks like something has been brooding down there and is only biding its time until it can catch you unawares. The result you can see further down the page.

There is a good chance that it would be utterly meaningless to most people, but to me it represents a moment time and a place that was good for me. Sitting waiting for that ferry gave a few minutes of reflection in what had been a rather hectic holiday, we'd just had a high tea at the Peninsula Hotel and we were back off to the island to collect some stuff before heading back to the hotel, a quick clean up then back down to Lan Kwai Fong. The image sums up that peaceful moment for me and presents me with a sense time and place - a notion I keep coming back to.

Is it a great shot? Never in a millions years...

Do I like it any way? Certainly do...

Is it art? You can be the judge of that when I'm dead...

Did it get a little attention along the way? Hell yeah!

Is it a photograph? What else would it be if it wasn't?