Double Happiness - Chien-Chi Chang

I'm sure many of you have seen Chien-Chi Chang's book 'Double Happiness', but it is one of my inspirations and if you haven't you should really check it out. You can see all the images here on the Magnum site, although it is really worth taking your time with the book if you can.

Shot over a few months in a Taiwanese marriage agency in Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), it shows the bones of the process of commercially arranged marriage between young Vietnamese women and Taiwanese men.

The book focuses on just 3 key shots and follows different couples through these scenarios; the women lined up to be picked, the visa and marriage applications, and the final ceremony. It is the strength of this formula which makes the work so conceptually and emotionally strong. As you don't need to think about the backgrounds you focus on the people and emotions they portray, and the repetitive nature of the shots illustrates the number of people who go through this process, while retaining the individuality with which they respond. These two aspects combined make for a strong message, and the subtlety of the instants caught give the work a complexity beyond a point driven home.

At a talk I went to a couple of years back Chien-Chi said that while this work took only a few days (over a few separate visits), the process of getting access to the marriage agency took several years. It's a reminder that great photojournalism takes patience.

Multimedia workshop

Just a quickie to mention that the guys at duckrabbit are doing a weekend multimedia workshop in the fabulous Trinity Centre in Bristol on the 10-12th July. I haven't seen any other courses in the UK aimed at photographers using multimedia, so it's a nice indication of growing interest in this way of using photography.

And now for something completely different.....

I don't usually post stuff like this but Elspeth Diederix looks like she has great fun with a camera!
She's obviously a commercial photographer and all her work is constructed, either physically or with huge amounts of (not always subtle) Photoshop. Some of it makes me gag a bit but there's equal amounts that make me smile, and it's nice to smile on a Friday!

Dileep Prakash - Anglo Indians

Found this great series of portraits by Dileep Prakash on the Photoink site, of people with joint Indian and British or European heritage. It's obviously a long term project with a broad range of people and environments involved, and there are some beautiful images in there.

Based in New Delhi, the Photoink site is worth looking at in itself. PhotoInk publish books, organise exhibitions and sell prints, as well as being an agency. They only represent a few photographers but the standard is high, look forward to seeing this one grow! Their 'writings' section is interesting too, with articles from Indian Photography magazines.

(found via Asian Photography Blog)

Terry O'Neill Award

Oh, also, the Terry O'Neill Award 2009 is now open for submissions.

Laura Letinsky

Laura Letinsky is currently exhibiting at the James Hyman Gallery in London. 'Likeness' features work from her series, 'Hardly More Than Ever'; images of leftovers, delicate trails of domesticity and hints of what has been.

NYPH09/Venetia Dearden

Venetia Dearden, Somerset Stories

I've been reading some reviews of New York Photo Festival this morning and although there have been a fair few criticisms (see here and here), those that I've spoke to that attended had nothing but praise for the event. I would have been really interested to see Jon Levy's show, 'Home for Good', as there were some great bodies of work in the show and I was keen to see how these worked together.

You can see Jon Levy talking about the show here. There's also a slideshow of the work in the show here.

Watching this reminded me how much I like Venetia Dearden's 'Somerset Stories: Fivepenny Dreams'. Returning to the place of her childhood, Venetia documents the pastoral lifestyle of Somerset. The images are imbued with intimacy, showing a way of English life that now seems arcane and idealistic. They tell gentle and quiet tales of family life, of community, of food production and of ethical living; mixing personal moments with contemporary issues.

Tanyth Berkeley

Tanyth Berkeley, Claire with Blue Velvet

Some beautiful portraits from Tanyth Berkeley.

Also on flickr...

Following on from Anna's post, there is an amazing archive of US Army medical photos and illustrations that is being made available free on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution license by the National Musuem of Health and Medicine.

There's some really incredible stuff on here, although be warned, some of the shots are a little gory!

(found via Amy Stein)

Flickr Commons

Trick Photo c.1875, George Eastman House archive

I've just realised I haven't really put anything about Flickr commons on here though I regularly look to see what's new on it. Since the original Library of Congress success, all sorts of archives have started distributing their work on here and there's some amazing treats. Though I'm fairly sure the largest files are smaller than they were they're still pretty useful sizes.

While I'm onto archives (though this isn't photography based) you really should lick your lips at the (high res!) gems on BibliOdessy.

Qu Yan, MuChen & Shao Yinong, Xiong Wenyun and Chen Nong...

Chen Nong, Gugong 6, 2004

Came across the New York based China Square gallery via Conscientious.

There's loads of interesting art photography on their site (if you look at the artist list, names in black are photographers). There's very little straight documentary work on there, but some great creative stuff with threads of the documentary tradition throughout it, and certainly some challenges to where boundaries between these photographic genres are drawn.

Qu Yan's work is a notable and interesting exception, straight interior shots of local government offices, which reminded me a little of Jan Banning's Bureaucrats series.

Mu Chen and Shao Yinong seem a pretty prolific pair who have also produced some straight documentary series of public spaces, this time village halls (here and here). However, in a bit of an artistic sea-change they have also produced a variety of hand-tinted photography (here and here).

Chen Nong is also producing some really fabulous tinted work, using photomontage (pictured above). His 3 gorges dam work is great; politically charged, it would be seriously stretching the word to say this was 'documentary' but certainly documents a community soon to be dispersed in an original, engaging way.

Xiong Wenyun's work I took to be straight when I first saw it but is also a melding of documentary and constructed imagary, read more about it here (but try not to look at the grotty scans, better images here and here).

LPA Futures

Images by Joel Redman, LPA Futures 07

Lisa Pritchard Agency have chosen five young photographers through their Futures competition that they will be representing as new commercial talent. The competition is an interesting move for the agency and shows how agencies are becoming less rigid in the way that they take on new photographers. The winners will be showcased at theprintspace from 14/05 which will run until 10/06. There will also be new work on show by the previous photographers from the LPA Futures division. They've selected some great photographers that I'm sure some of you will already be familiar with from their documentary/fine art work, so the show will definitely be worth checking out! We will be publishing interviews here with the winners over the next few weeks.

Diemar/Noble

A new photography gallery has opened in central London. I didn't make it to the opening last night, but the present show looks great, with a powerful series from Jenny Gunhammer. I'll write some more when I've been to see it!

Quick guide to multimedia part two!

Editing!
OK so you've got all your raw material and now you've just gotta try to make it all come together...easy!

If you've shot the pics and sound then you're in a good position because the story should already be clear in your head and you'll have mentally noted the most representative or quirkiest images/quotes along the way. If you're producing for someone else this bit is particularly hard. In both instances I'd advise some sort of script/storyboard before you start playing with a computer, it will save you a few re-edits!

I've always used final cut pro for editing. It's a really great program and has been used for editing feature films, like No Country for Old Men. Mediastorm have loads of info on editing with FCP, their workflow document is really handy as a starter (they also have a doc on exporting from FCP using different compressions, which can be thoroughly confusing!). There's also a really good video tutorial with Brian Storm (Mr. Mediastorm) on the Apple site, you have to sign in but it's free.

A lot of people use Soundslides for simpler slideshows of images, if this is what you want to do, then do it and don't bother with FCP, it'll be more of a headache than you need! If you need a freeware sound editing programme to edit the sound you could use Audacity (help with using Audacity here).

Most people seem to get the sound together first, the sound is absolutely crucial as it gives the piece it's flow, so it needs to be clear. There's more excellent tips on the apple site for making the most of your sound; fixing noise, removing clicks and pops, in Soundtrack pro (the FCP sound editing program) here and here. There's also some good stuff on the Berkeley Digital Media site. The best way to edit sound is just to listen to it. Put your headphones on, shut your eyes and trust your instincts, you'll quickly notice whether your sound is smooth or not, whether the levels are right, and whether certain bits move to slowly or too fast.

I find its good to lay out a shape of the piece with crucial bits of sound and crucial images, and then really work on the sound, before dropping in further images, so you don't have to tweak the image timings too much. And the long and the short of editing is play, as far as I've gathered so far! Sometimes images 'should' work well togther and don't, sometimes wierd conjunctions are really interesting. If you keep your story in mind, your standards high and keep playing you'll get something amazing in the end!