Following on from my blog about last Friday's Cake Break for the MS Society, of which Bee Photography was a part, one of my images is in the local paper. The photograph is of Sarah Guilfoyle of Beaus and Belles Music http://beausandbellesmusic.com who provided the toddler entertainment.
Debbie Watts at Bee... Photography
Friday, 10 May 2013
Wednesday, 8 May 2013
Fundraising for the MS Society
Friday 3rd May 2013
Last Friday I had the pleasure of taking part in the MS Society Cake Break http://www.mssociety.org.uk/ms-events/2011/05/cake-break-2013 which was a shopping morning and fundraiser organised by Iona Baird for The MS Society. This was a table top sale consisting of local mum's in St. Albans selling their products, of which I was one and a percentage of our sales were donated to the MS Society, Those present included:-
Heather Coleman, Neal's Yard Remedies https://www.facebook.com/NYRHeatherColeman/timeline, Akiko Redshaw from Akiko Jewellery http://shop.akikosjewellery.co.uk,
Rachel Brown from My Secret Kitchen, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rachels-Secret-Kitchen/426417640765679,
Fiona Dagenais of Dagenais Designs https://www.facebook.com/dagenaisdesigns?group_id=0
and Lisa Nichols of TheBookMums https://www.facebook.com/lisanichols1?fref=ts
The event was held at The Bakehouse in St. Albans http://www.localbakehouse.co.uk close to the Cathedral. We couldn't have asked for better weather, the sun shone the whole time which meant that the toddlers could be entertained outside in the courtyard by the lovely Sarah Guilfoyle from http://beausandbellesmusic.com.
A few photographs from the event are below. A great event for a very worthwhile cause.
Last Friday I had the pleasure of taking part in the MS Society Cake Break http://www.mssociety.org.uk/ms-events/2011/05/cake-break-2013 which was a shopping morning and fundraiser organised by Iona Baird for The MS Society. This was a table top sale consisting of local mum's in St. Albans selling their products, of which I was one and a percentage of our sales were donated to the MS Society, Those present included:-
Heather Coleman, Neal's Yard Remedies https://www.facebook.com/NYRHeatherColeman/timeline, Akiko Redshaw from Akiko Jewellery http://shop.akikosjewellery.co.uk,
Rachel Brown from My Secret Kitchen, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rachels-Secret-Kitchen/426417640765679,
Fiona Dagenais of Dagenais Designs https://www.facebook.com/dagenaisdesigns?group_id=0
and Lisa Nichols of TheBookMums https://www.facebook.com/lisanichols1?fref=ts
The event was held at The Bakehouse in St. Albans http://www.localbakehouse.co.uk close to the Cathedral. We couldn't have asked for better weather, the sun shone the whole time which meant that the toddlers could be entertained outside in the courtyard by the lovely Sarah Guilfoyle from http://beausandbellesmusic.com.
A few photographs from the event are below. A great event for a very worthwhile cause.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
St Julian's Community Cafe Launch
On 22nd November, I had the pleasure of photographing the launch of a much needed Community Cafe at St Julian's Church in St. Albans. ststephenandstjulian.org. The Mayor, Eileen Harris and Archdeacon Jonathan Smith cut the ribbon to declare the cafe officially open. The cafe has free wi-fi and very reasonably priced food. Here are a selection of the photos.
Tuesday, 9 October 2012
The Ethics of Photo Manipulation
As photographers
we all see the artistic advantage of using such a tool such as Photoshop; however,
where do we draw the line and when does such a tool become misleading?
Manipulation of
images is nothing new, it’s been going on since the invention of photography. One of the oldest cases in point are the
images that became known as the,
“Cottingley Fairies.”
Around 1917 a set
of five images were taken by 16 year old Elsie Wright and her 10 year old
cousin, Frances Griffith in order to prove the existence of fairies at Cottingley
Beck where they had been banned from playing.
The photographs caused much debate and Elsie eventually admitted that they
had been faked using cardboard cutouts from a book. Frances, however, insisted that the final of
the five images was genuine.
Personally, I
think a photograph becomes misleading when the intention of the photographer is
to make you think something fake is real, therefore, I would say the Cottingley
Fairies images were misleading. At that
time photography was fairly new and many believed if there was a photograph,
then it must be genuine, and I’m sure the girls were clever enough to exploit
this. However, having read a bit more about the
young photographers, I learnt that Elsie was quite an artist, and once implied
that she had photographed her thoughts.
Perhaps, in her mind, she was creating a piece of art and if it also got
her out of trouble at the same time, then so be it.
So how about
photo manipulation in today’s digital world?
I recently read an article about a manipulated image of Lady Gaga on the
front cover of Vogue, which immediately reminded me of the cartoon character, “Jessica Rabbit” from the film, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Let’s put the three
photos together, the front cover, the actual Lady Gaga and Jessica Rabbit.
The similarities
are striking. Of course, nowadays, we
are more sceptical of photographs, and it could have been an artistic decision
by Vogue to manipulate the image, but my worry is how many self-critical teenagers
believe this body shape is real? How many of them go on to have low self-esteem,
eating disorders and/or an obsession with cosmetic surgery. I’m not the only one to be concerned about
this. An All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image was established in 2011 and on the point of digital manipulation the Royal
College of Physicians said it was, “damaging “ and that, “retouching is part of the unrealistic nature
of images which has become a malignant process”.
To me, changing
someone’s body shape seems wrong and I think the magazines should have a duty
of care to its’ readers. Why not be more creative with the camera instead? If the manipulation makes the person
unrecognisable, it may just as well be a cartoon character, which would be more
obvious to the viewer.
To end on a
humorous note, the photo below was manipulated, not by me though!
Dorothea Lange - The People's Photographer
Dorothea Lange was one one of the great documentary
photographers of all time; She said of herself that she lived a very, “visual
life.”
She was born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in
1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Two pivotal events in her life were to provide
her with a deep understanding of suffering which she was later able to turn to
her advantage. At age seven she
contracted polio, leaving her with a limp and at age twelve her father left
home never to return. She took on her mother’s
maiden name and refused to speak of him again.
Her decision to take up photography first surfaced during the long walks
after school to meet her mother from her job as a librarian in Manhatten.
She studied photography at Columbia University,
New York, and was taught by Clarence H White, one of the pioneers of Fine Art
Photography. She became informally
apprenticed to, famous portrait photographer, Arnold Genthe under whom she
learnt how to understand and connect with her subject, believing this to be the
artistic part of photography. In
1918 she moved to San Francisco to set up a successful portrait studio and soon
after married a well-known painter, Maynard Dixon, with whom she had two
sons.
In 1930, as the Great Depression began, Dorothea
took her camera to the street and turned her attention to the unemployed and
homeless. This got her noticed by The
Farm Security Administration (a government relief agency) who offered her a
job. In 1935 she divorced Dixon and
married the Economist Paul Schuster Taylor who educated her in social and
political matters. Together, they made a
great team, documenting the plight of the desperate; Taylor
gathered the data and Dorothea took the photos.
The result was a report called, “An American Exodus” which they subtitled, “A Record of Human Erosion”, and in it they wrote, “We have let them speak to you
face to face”.
Her most iconic image is that of the “Migrant
Mother”, a portrait of Florence Owens Thompson, a desperate mother of seven, living
in a pea picker’s camp in Nipomo, California. Within days of the image being published the
camp received 20,000 pounds worth of food from the federal government. The photograph came to symbolize that
entire era of American history.
In 1941 she gave up her Guggenheim
Fellowship award for excellence in photography to highlight the treatment of American
Japanese families being evacuated from their homes to prison camps after the
attack on Pearl Harbour, a procedure she deeply opposed.
In 1944 she worked with, famous landscape
photographer, Ansel Adams on a feature
for Fortune Magazine documenting the Kaiser shipyard in Richmond.
In 1952 she co founded the photographic
magazine, Aperture.
Dorothea believed her eye to be the camera
lens. In the last few years of her life
she suffered ill health and as a friend sat beside her bed one day, she said,
“I’ve just photographed you”. She died
of Esophageal Cancer in 1965 aged 70.
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