Rob.Hudson's photostream  

becalmed

OK I'll be honest, I've been mulling over whether to release this to public view for a few weeks. I can't help thinking it is little more than a pretty view with some nice light. Mrs.Hudson loves it, others I have asked for opinions seem to like it, but for me I wonder whether I have added any value. Ah well here is a nice snapshot from my holidays.

You all have my permission to be honest for once!

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Uploaded on Jul 18, 2009

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Life clings

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Uploaded on Jul 13, 2009

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seeing through remembering

"We see with memory, which is why none of us sees the same thing, even when we're looking at the same thing"
David Hockney

Memory – the glimpse of history that surfaces in the mind, a conjuring trick we play with our own narration. I like to remember childhood holidays with our Dorset cousins, at least when bad memories aren’t bubbling to the surface, unwanted and wishful. The sea, gas and tar smell of the beach hut on the promenade (in the days of egalitarianism not price) the hot sun and sandwiches that fulfilled their peculiar prefix. Cousin Dick (ex RAF) driving too fast in an Austin Princess that whined as if it was about to take off, swooping through quiet country roads and plunging into the long dark track (it is always dark in my memory) past overarching woods and through waving fields of corn, turning that last corner and plunging again deep down into the woods before the welcome relief of warm a glowing light.

Memory for me is visual, I am a visual being and the narrator in me probably manipulates my images to suit my addled perceptions. When I’m out taking landscapes, the biggest challenge is to strip myself of the visual baggage we collect like tramps. But of course to remember is to personalise, so there must be something selective in the process to retain individualism and not produce random and meaningless pictures or to oversimplify and produce something largely intellectual.

Copying of course is the sincerest form of flattery. I wonder if someone out there is copying my (or your) ideas? Are they stealing memories too? It is one way to learn and we have all copied, but there comes a time when copying is no longer enough, a time when we must put ourselves into our work to demonstrate we are alive, if only to oneself.

Cameras copy, but have a strange relationship with memory, they capture time in long exposures in a way that creates a new reality, a history or a memory that was never there. They copy movement by creating patterns that interlink two points in time, the opening and closing of the shutter. There is a whole universe free of human time perceptions that it appears only cameras can see.

And people ask why I love photography!

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Uploaded on Jul 8, 2009  |  Map

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Klimt's Island

Well actually it's called White Island and lies off St Martin's in the Scilly Isles, Cornwall, but it was almost certainly inspired by a Klimt painting Music 1 that used to hang on our wall (well OK, a print not the original!) It probably looks like a rather tenuous link to you, you’ll just have to trust me on this - look at the plants. It’s funny how these things worm their way into our sub conscious and pop up when we are least expecting.

I have frequently thought that my photography could be “self defining” – one of those essential qualities that distinguish one person from another; part of my individuality if you like. I suppose I’m hoping for easy answers, a hook to hang my images on (unintentional pun!), but the more I try to explore who I am and how that relates to my work, the more confused I become. I know it sounds rather self-centred, but to understand and further my photography I need to understand and further myself. However, “the elusive ‘I’ shows an alarming tendency to disappear when we try to examine it”. I’m sure many of you are going to say something like “ Hey I just go out and take pictures, philosophy and psychology don’t come into it!!!” and that is perfectly OK, I’m certainly not criticising you, but if you’ve ever taken a photograph and wondered where “it came from”, or realised that you weren’t consciously creating it, or have found yourself working intuitively or even would just like to, then you’ll have some knowledge of one of the great joys of pursuing a more introspective method of thinking about photography.

How do we advance that self-knowledge, find that spontaneity and harness that intuitive moment? Do we seek inspiration through the art of others or is that just another pollutant of the self? Was I stealing from Klimt or inspired by Klimt? To ignore other’s creative output would surely mean a shallower perception of the world and a degree less appreciation of how others see it, but does it really teach me anything fundamental about myself or am I just thieving ideas albeit in a time addled and confused subconscious manner? I used to think it was ironic that I found deeper and more satisfying inspiration through the written word, in particular poetry and some well-written travel books, than through other’s images, but maybe that is starting to make some sense. It allows me to explore moods and ideas rather than be a purely visual influence. Given that we can’t hope to expunge the experiences we’ve already had, then the work of others is just going to have to be a building block to that personal complexity through which I hope to discover creativity and maybe even originality.

In my initial thinking about how my personality interacts with my creative side, I quickly determined that my “art” should try to reflect who I am and reveal some inner insights. Sometimes it maybe illuminates unexpected things about me even to myself, to the point of seeing something transformed beyond the apparent expectations of my own ideas. There must be some sort of interaction happening between those unconscious parts of ourselves and the photos we produce. This could of course be another type of “self” – self-delusion. Could it just be pure luck?

The British landscape photographer David Ward recently wrote
“That vision is only very rarely pre-formed. Rather, the subject spontaneously suggests the vision. My photography is perhaps more akin to jazz than to classical music. I enjoy extemporising rather than performing from a score.” I’m sure many of you, like me have experienced a transcendence of your expectations and perhaps David Ward’s words gives some hint about the way we should work to achieve that. Photography is taught through rules, but that is perhaps a strange way to instil artistic ideas. The technical must be learned, but that really is the easy bit! It is through intuition that we find that perfect angle, composition and a whole host of other subconscious analyses, it’s then that the satisfying moment of creation happens.

The philosopher David Hume wrote “man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement". So without irony, photography could be about capturing more than one moment, the visual subject and the interior vision in combination. That moment when you choose to press the shutter release can be more than happenstance. I know there are times when we feel like we are fumbling our way to images, even having to work at them, at that is maybe no bad thing, because within that process the visual and the inner vision may combine for that one sweet instant to produce something special, even amongst the humdrum.


Go create!

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Uploaded on Jun 25, 2009  |  Map

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