Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: Rob C on September 24, 2017, 02:49:24 pm

Title: Terence Donovan; an interview
Post by: Rob C on September 24, 2017, 02:49:24 pm
http://www.martynmoore.com/donovan.html

Rob
Title: Re: Terence Donovan; an interview
Post by: degrub on September 24, 2017, 03:08:51 pm
a couple of his comments stood out to me as "oh so true" -

"You can't stop technology, you don't want to stop technology. But if you get one of these advanced modern cameras and you're photographing a girl in a black suit against a black background you'd better switch everything off and get out the meter and take a reading. If you don't do that, old love, you're snookered because most of those guys that design cameras, one thing they never do is use them.

"Amateur photographers have got a problem because they've got no reason to take a picture. They're kind of equipment junkies. When you look at a picture that Cartier-Bresson took on a 50mm...

"When I first started, I thought that if I took enough frames, I'd get a good picture. Photographs are taken with the brain, the camera records it, but it's a meta-physical process because what happens in an image is beyond what you see. And the problem with amateurs is that they're too busy with the technical side. It's the head that makes pictures and the cameras record the thought. You've got to be able to read the images.

Art "Photography, for me, isn't art. It's specific. You can have things in photographs that are emotive, a crying child by a car crash or something, but that's not the photograph, that's the content that's emotive.

Title: Re: Terence Donovan; an interview
Post by: Rado on September 27, 2017, 10:05:06 am
Looks like there's a common thread between all the photographers whose work I like - they are/were all workaholics...
Title: Re: Terence Donovan; an interview
Post by: Rob C on September 27, 2017, 02:31:10 pm
Looks like there's a common thread between all the photographers whose work I like - they are/were all workaholics...

Yes, it's why they got there. And you don't do it with a nine-to-five head.

I think it must be one of the most difficult ways of earning a living ever devised; not the photography which is seldom too difficult if you have the mind for it, but the ethos that has to exist in order to make it all hang together and work. Not only does the photographer need balls of stainless steel, he also needs the other services that allow him to work, and above everything else, a client base. It is definitely not one of those businesses you can run out of a laptop: you need physical access to everything. It ain't paint!

Rob