Author: Petteri Sopanen

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Mentor

I have come to conclusion that I need a mentor.

You?! I hear someone asking unbelievingly.

You, who have education to fit just what you are doing, education that is both journalistic and photographic. You who have over ten years of experience in the first row of media professionals.

Yes, me.

But I didn’t say teacher, I said mentor. It’s different. Teacher is someone who is above, mentor is someone who is on the same level wit you. Teacher is someone who knows and/or can do something you don’t. With a mentor you’re equal, so that you can use your mentor as a kind of mirror to see more clearly where you stand yourself. Your strengths and weaknesses. In best situation this is two-way process, so that actually you are mentor for your mentor too. Win-win situation.

As a photo editor I might be making dozens of choices every day about which image to use and which not. But then I have a job to do. I’m given an article to illustrate, I know the story, I know what I’m looking for that story. A simple mission.

Situation is very different when I’m making choices with my own photographs. It’s emotional, I know situations behind every image – how, where, what, when – everything is much more complex. I feel I’m almost blind with my own images.

That’s why I need a mentor.

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Valoisa Huone

I was studying for my Master’s Thesis when I first read Roland Barthes’ famous book Camera Lucida. It was our lecturer Kimmo Lehtonen who made us read it, and not only read, but our group also discussed quite a lot about themes Barthes was writing about. Officially, with Kimmo in the classroom – but also unofficially in the evenings with the glass of red wine by side of Barthes…

It was a kind of wake-up-call for me in this kind of thinking around photography. And I can say that it was good and needed one.

Now I have adopted name Valoisa Huone (Camera Lucida in Finnish) as the name of this blog and my website – a mark of respect for Barthes, Kimmo, my fellow students of that time – people who have affected to my photographic efforts since then.

Not much have actually changed on the website but changes are on the way. Not huge revolution but small steps of evolution.

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Inspiration

Some time ago Dazed & Confused published an interview with Nan Goldin. She talked about inspiration, how movies have always been great source of inspiration for her, mentioning specially Lars von Trier and his movies.

Inpired by this I thought to write something about inspiration.

Back in late 90’s Nan Goldin herself was my strongest source of inspiration. That was an era of more personal approach in photography for me. I had an identity of documentarist even then, but was also on a phase of searching big things.

Like what it is and what it should to be a human, man, a person related to other persons. Things like that. Did I find what I was looking for? I’m not sure. But I did some photos that satisfy my eye still, over ten years later. I think I should be thankful to Nan Goldin…

When I was planning the portfolio pages at October 22 I went through some of the older work of mine. Some of which have been stored for years without a single look at them. And strange or not, I noticed that many of the older images were still interesting and fresh – even more than many present photos.

I think I’ve been kind of lazy lately. I’ve become a snapper. Guess I’ll need something or someone to inspire me again to become a photographer again.

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Updates

Just a few notes about things happening.

Portfolio page is now online. Some thoughts raised during the process, but I try to write them open a bit later.

Prints then. I have now an account at redbubble. It’s a on-demand and online print service. I’m not going to build a big collection there, but instead work on a kind of on-demand philosophy myself too. Which means that when you find an image you like on October 22, mail me the name of the image and it’s photoID (these are on info field of each image), I upload that image to redbubble and then let you know it’s available.

Here is the straight link to what’s already available there.

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Well done

Ideas have been around for a quite long time. Waiting, waiting… But now, finally I’ve gotten them cooked and roasted and baked so that I can call them well done.

Finally, I have gone through quite a big amount of my existing photographs, made choises, post-processed, tagged keywords etc.etc. So that they are ready for publishing. And I’ve found an platform that seems to suit my needs and ideas.

PhotoDeck it is called and my own site there is finally online!

Ok, it’s not ready, but I thik its enough well done so that I dare to put it out.

You’ll find it here.

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Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

aka. my complex relationship with pro level DSLRs

One of our associate editors came and asked some photos of our editing office. I chose to pick employer’s camera for this quick assignment, Nikon D3 with 24-70 Nikkor. I shot about 30 frames, no flash, only existing fluorescent light – it means, quite bad lighting conditions which means quite high ISO (2000 actually). Loaded pics to Bridge, picked three, quick edit in Photoshop and imported them to our content managing system and called editor that her photos are ready. Fifteen minutes. Fast and effective.

What impresses me in D3 and other camera bodies like that, is their ability to produce practically noiseless images even in very poor light. That’s really the big difference between pro level bodies and consumer or prosumer cameras, or whatever they now are called.

It’s also obvious that their autofocus systems are very secure and their light metering systems very sophisticated. I think that D3 is almost idiot secure camera. Put it to Program and give to any snapper and images seem to be great. You have to be hit by lightning or something to fail. I’ve sometimes said that D3 is the best point-and-shoot body I’ve ever seen.

And that’s the problem.

I suppose that as a photo editor I must be categorized as pro in these photographic ranks. But my philosophy and attitude is like Hasta la amateurism, siempre! – amateur forever. I love that exitement when I load photos from card to computer (or take first look to processed slides), are they good or bad, have I succeed or have I failed. If camera I’m using is so good that when hitting the release I already know that images are going to be excellent, there is nothing to rise exitement.

Pleasure of photography for me is in noticing that my photos are good, when there has been a possibility of failure. If that possibility is removed, so is the pleasure as well. I think I will never buy a modern pro-DSLR for myself. Or at least not in nearest future. Maybe some day some company will introduce a camera body that is capable to produce that impressive image quality, but still gives me feeling that  as aphotographer I am still in charge.

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Choices

I visited a friend for a while ago. He’s going to write some text for my book, so I gave him a CD with photos I’m going to use so that he knows the content. We had a cup of coffee and sat by his computer. He showed me some of his latest shots and then we looked through the photos I brought. There was 33 of them.

After browsing through he was silent for a moment and then asked me aquestion.

How can you choose thirty images?

He has probably thousands of images on his computer and said that it feels almost impossible for him to choose couple of dozen from there. My answer?

I don’t know… By feel, I guess.

The background: I’m image editor, photojournalist. I make maybe 20-40 decisions of what image to use, every single day I’m on shift. That is published images, which means that the material I look through consists probably hundreds of images – or hours of video feed, mostly looked through with ff.

So, it’s my job to make choises, I am a professional chooser. And can’t give better answer how I do it. I stopped to think about that in that evening.

I’ve done that for almost ten years now, so of course I have quite strong routine, I don’t have to think how to make choices. It’s buried so deep in my spine or back of my head or somewhere.

But I tried to analyze a bit to be able to give my friend something better than I don’t know. I think it’s almost impossible for me too to choose 30 images from base of several hundred or more. Instead I suggest picking one idea, then choosing one image to fit that idea. That’s much easier. Repeat; one idea, one image, repeat again.

When there is beginning of collection, let’s say 5-7 images, it’s time to stop and look what you’ve got. And then pick next idea from those images – it’s easier than from the scratch. Repeat and repeat again.

Soon you notice you really have picked thirty images. Job done.

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Changing course

What’s happened during this week…?

Terminated membership in one stock photo agency. Started to work a new book, which has circled in thoughts for a while. Bought ten rolls of 120-film, color slide – haven’t done that for years! Soon I will be warming and stretching my fingers – and my memory too – to get those A-12s loaded…

Quite good week, I think. Got rid of something that actually never felt very good. Got started with something new. Found again something that I once loved so much.

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Size of the show

Since I got this new burst of interest in photography I’ve been hanging in flickr quite a lot. I think it’s great. Great that there is place for people to let their work out into the world to be seen without unbearable costs of exhibition in some gallery or publishing of a book or some other old times way. Which, after all, usually reached quite a small audience. And there seems to be lots of persons who really do interestin and inspiring things. (Of course, it must be noticed that flickr is just on of many platforms with quite similar possibilities.)

But very often I also get a kind of bloating feeling. Therre is so much of stuff!

I have collected my own photos into two sets. One is 30 images another now 42. And I think the later is even now a bit too big. I’ve analyzed my own behavior and noticed that when a set or gallery or whatever term we use grows much over 25 I tend to pick one or two images to closer look and then surf to somewhere else. Over 35 and I very seldom look through the set as a whole.

Don’t burst, don’t flood, be critical, be calm. Too much is not just right. My rules to myself.