May 29, 2021

Derek Clark

Essay

Negative 25

May 29, 2021

Derek Clark

Essay

Clue number 1: A curved piece of…some kind of…part of a thing

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

As soon as I looked at the picture of the thumb in Patrick’s last essay, I was reminded of the movie ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, directed and starring Ben Stiller. In the movie, Stiller’s character goes in search of a missing negative (number 25) that is to be used on the final cover of Life Magazine. It’s a great film and self worth seeing; especially if you are a photographer.

From New Monuments by Patrick La Roque — From *New Monuments* by Patrick La Roque

One of my favourite shots in the movie is when Walter walks away from the camera, but the focus stays fixed.

I remember watching Walter Mitty (more than once), a few years after it was released, and at a time when a few of the themes in the movie struck a chord in me. The mixture of the film and the soundtrack had an alluring effect, which was a bit depressing at the time.

It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that everyone is moving forward and succeeding, while you are either stuck where you are or feel like you are going backwards. This is especially true in the Facecloth, Instasham, and all the other antisocial media platforms out there.

These days, I no longer have time for social media, nor care who is moving forward or backward (if there’s even such a thing). I’m too busy working, burning through gigabytes of pictures and video three or four days a week and struggling to keep up with the editing the rest of the week. Be careful what you wish for! One minute you’re feeling bad about not having the work and the next you’re overwhelmed by it. One minute all you’re doing is personal work and the next you are struggling to find the time to do any personal work at all.

If there is one sure thing, it’s that nothing stays the same forever. Just make the best of where you’re at at this moment, because a change is gonna come whether you like it or not.

Get vaccinated. Grow a little tail, and wag it daily!

September 16, 2020

Derek Clark

Definitions, Essay

Definition 36 | Libertas Restrictus

September 16, 2020

Derek Clark

Definitions, Essay

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

Anyone who has seen the movie Braveheart will remember the character of William Wallace, played by actor/director Mel Gibson, cry out the word FREEDOM. Although a bit overused since the movie done the rounds, freedom is not something I've taken for granted. The ability to go wherever you like, whenever you like is not something all people in all countries are able to do. So I find the obsession in the 21st-century to obtain fame bizarre and self-destructive. Fame might bring the financial ability to afford to go wherever you like, but the freedom to walk down a busy street unnoticed is true freedom. To go where you like in total anonymity is bliss!

Coronavirus has removed or restricted freedom in 2020 and possibly into 2021. In the beginning, it looked as though lockdown was just a way to get people to stay at home so that the government could change the batteries in all the birds, but there was a shortage of toilet roll, not batteries, so I guess that wasn't true :o)

Freedom for me is to take a train somewhere and to wander for miles with a camera in my hand. Most of my pictures include people. But as a street photographer, I had no one to shoot on the streets, as a music photographer, I had no bands or musicians to photograph. As a musician, I had no audience to play to. Life really did come to a standstill.

But even now, I feel the rust taking hold of my photography and creativity in general. I don't have the time to shoot long enough to allow the brake pads to separate from the disks. There is a feeling of being trapped, fenced-in, and on the outside of where I want or need to be. Parts of the country, including where I live, are seeing increased numbers and more restrictions being re-introduced. So even now, as we move toward October and the long dark winter, there is as much uncertainty as ever. But I’m not ready to paint my face blue and shout FREEDOM. Not just yet.

June 24, 2020

Bert Stephani

Definitions

DEFINITION 024 | THE EXPLORER

June 24, 2020

Bert Stephani

Definitions

BY BERT STEPHANI

As a kid I devoured books about polar expeditions, climbing Everest and dangerous travels in the rainforest. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his crew were my television heroes and I listened to the cassette tapes my aunt mailed to my parents while she lived in the Congo. I was destined to become a famous explorer. But as I got older there was the preparation of the basketball season that prevented long travels during the summer, work got in the way and then came a family that I just love being with way more than the highest mountain or the deepest abyss.

I still managed to see a nice chunk of the world and explore different cultures and places. During my twenties and thirties it bothered me sometimes though that I never completely released my inner Indiana Jones. But I also started to understand that my childhood heroes all paid a big price for following their passion, a price that I am not prepared to pay.

It’s very unlikely that I’ll discover a new dolphin species, be the first to climb Everest while playing a saxophone or swim across the Bering Sea in just a pair of Speedos. But like in sports, exploring doesn’t require you to be setting new records to enjoy it.

During the lockdown I got restless and started to understand that I really need a healthy dose of adventure to stay sane. Luckily I rediscovered bicycles as a way to explore. In the early nineties I got hooked on mountainbiking. Back then it wasn’t about trails and bike parks, it was about the adventure to go places where a normal bike couldn’t go. It wasn’t about speed or distance (although I experienced plenty of both), it was a way to see something of the world, hang out with great people and it wasn’t bad for my health either (except for the crashes).

Somehow, I found all of that back in the last month or so (minus the fitness and adrenaline kicks). I started taking a camera with me on my rides. It makes me stop more often and enjoy the moment. I’m exploring again, exploring how to explore on a bike again.

All images shot with the X100V

March 17, 2020

Derek Clark

Essay

Definition 010 | The Story Of Her Beauty

March 17, 2020

Derek Clark

Essay

PHOTOGRAPHY & TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

There is only a handful of things that defines me and most of them involve photography. I spoke about street photography in my first Definitions post last month, which is a form of documentary photography. But I also like straight-up photojournalistic stories that are plain and simple, with no frills. What you see is how it was, and all the better if it has an impact on the viewer.

Documentary photographers have to keep their eyes and ears open for opportunities to tell someone’s story. It’s very easy to miss the chance of a good story simply because you were not paying attention to the signs in front of you. Almira simply wanted a portrait taken the night before her operation. She was about to go through gruelling surgery that would be life-changing and the outcome was uncertain. This is the story of her beauty, a title I got from a conversation with Almira.

Almira’s body language shows the apprehension the night before the operation

Almira contracted German Measles when she was just a few months old in the Philippines, which led to facial disfigurement. An operation was performed many years ago that involved inserting a piece of bone into her jaw, but that bone started to grow and it began to restrict movement. Eating would become a problem unless she received an operation to fix this. She has lived in Scotland for many years with her husband Alex, and although it has taken almost 5 years, the operation was finally scheduled.

We left for the hospital the following morning at 6 am, setting off early in case of traffic but arriving so early that the nurses had not even started their shift. We waited outside the ward, mostly in silence. When the nurse finally opened the door and led Almira and Alex down the corridor to the waiting room, she explained that the ward was empty because no other surgeries were scheduled for that day. She joked with Almira about how special she was to get the full unit dedicated to her. The nurse let Almira and Alex say their goodbyes and then led her off down the corridor until they were both gone.

A nurse leads Almira down a corridor toward the operating theatre

The surgery to repair Almira's jaw with titanium was scheduled to last 5 or 6 hours, but she was in theatre for a total of 13 hours. The following day we arrived at the hospital to find Almira asleep on the bed. She looked like she had been through a war, battered, bruised and swollen. She woke-up and was helped to straighten up on the bed, still drugged heavily, but possibly not heavily enough. She struggled to eat some chocolate mousse, which along with soup and ice cream, would be her only food for the foreseeable future.

Almira was discharged the following day. It was hard to believe the difference from when I had last seen her the day before propped up and looking like she had been used as a punching bag. As she entered the elevator and looked in the mirror, it was as though she was staring into the face of a long lost sister. She held on to a tub of ice cream, even though it would be melted by the time she got home.

Almira stares at her face in the elevator mirror

Almira shows pictures on her phone from when she was a baby - before the German Measles attack.

Almira was back at the hospital a week later to have the staples removed from her head and the stitches from her face. The surgeon had made incisions each side of her eyes and packed them so that each eye would be more level. The wound ran from almost the top of her head down the front of her ear, with a second scar on her jaw.

She had suffered a lot of pain to get this far and she was anxious about the staples being removed. The nurse gently parted her hair to reveal the scar and then proceeded to remove the staples one by one. Almira held the second nurse's hand and gripped it even more tightly each time a staple was removed, her swollen face grimacing with the discomfort. When the staples had been removed the nurse then started to snip each suture, before removing it with tweezers.

Almira anxiously waits for the staples to be removed from her head, and the sutures from her jaw and next to her eye.

When it was over, Almira looked relieved with an almost child-like expression. It was the end of this procedure. But there may be more surgery needed in the future. For now, all that was left was to heal and have the braces removed from her teeth that were fitted to hold everything together during the operation.

Thanks to Almira for allowing the world to see her at her most vulnerable. People have to throw vanity out of the window to allow documentary photographers to tell real stories. That takes real bravery.

A special thanks to all the people that make the UK’s health service one of the best in the world. We are on the brink of the most devastating health crisis in over 100 years, and even though the NHS has been getting underfunded for the past decade, the amazing doctors, nurses and all the other staff will give everything. Sadly for some that could mean giving their lives.

April 23, 2019

Derek Clark

Essay

In The Second City of the Empire

April 23, 2019

Derek Clark

Essay

PHOTOGRAPHY & TEXT By DEREK CLARK

I’m a street photographer, and for me that equates to candid pictures without asking permission. But for this latest Kage assignment, I wanted to get out on the street and ask if I could take peoples portrait. I went out with a Hasselblad 500c/m with an 80/2.8 and an X-Pro2 with a 50/2. I wanted to capture the men of Glasgow with as much character on their faces as possible.

An old man near the train station was causing a bit of a commotion with a piece of religious artwork. Although he looked impoverished, he had actually commissioned an artist to create this painting and having just collected it (on his wheelchair), he wanted to show it off.

I was given a poem about a female athlete by the man with the silver hair and I was asked on several occasions if I was from the press. People are suspicious about cameras these days. It seams that if you shoot with anything other than a phone, you must be press or up to something dodgy, even with an old Hasselblad.

Around one in three said yes to having their portrait taken. In the end I only used two shots from the Hasselblad due to a problem with the lens. Medium format film or a 1.5 crop sensor, can you tell which two are from the Hasselblad without looking at the metadata?

September 10, 2018

Derek Clark

chronicle90

September 10, 2018 at 15:15 PM (Motherwell, Scotland)

September 10, 2018

Derek Clark

chronicle90

By Derek Clark

It’s been a heavy weekend of music related stuff. Rock on Friday, Jazz concerts on Saturday and Sunday, then throw in a white seamless shoot with a mobile setup. That would be all well and good, but try fitting sixteen musicians on a 6’x7’ background. I did manage five at one stage, but that was pushing it. I’ll probably end up using the single shots of each musician and then making a composite.

I’m now at my desk. 1:1 preview's have been built in Lightroom and I’m ready to start editing. This is where I tell myself to be ruthless when culling, but I always end up giving myself more work than I need to.
Okay. Cappuccino in front of me. Sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

September 3, 2018

Derek Clark

chronicle90

September 3, 2018 at 21:40 pm (Motherwell, Scotland)

September 3, 2018

Derek Clark

chronicle90

By Derek Clark

My friend Steven needed to go to Glasgow today to film some B-roll for a project he's working on. So I tagged along and shot some street while he grabbed some footage. It wasn't intentional, but when I started to look at the photos in Lightroom tonight, There was more than a few people lost in their phones.

The world is a beautiful place!
Life is far too short!
These things are worse than the crack pipe!