Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine  (Read 964 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Online Online
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« on: January 29, 2019, 06:34:33 pm »

Steven Jensen.

Excellent color street photography, dark and moody.

https://www.lensculture.com/steven-jensen

https://eyeshotstreetphotography.com/steven-jensen/

RSL

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16046
    • http://www.russ-lewis.com
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #1 on: January 29, 2019, 07:48:04 pm »

Well, they're fine pictures of streets.
Logged
Russ Lewis  www.russ-lewis.com.

Ivophoto

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1103
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2019, 05:29:07 am »

Steven Jensen.

Excellent color street photography, dark and moody.

https://www.lensculture.com/steven-jensen

https://eyeshotstreetphotography.com/steven-jensen/

In a Brent Stirton Canon advertising article about the Eos R (yes I’m guilty) a nice term was used:

 Photographing the gamut of the human condition.
Logged

OnlyNorth

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1266
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2019, 05:53:59 am »

Very brave to be out with camera there.Beautiful picture!
Logged

Two23

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 827
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2019, 09:59:51 am »

What is it about Scotland that photographers seem to move away as soon as they can? ;D


Kent in SD
Logged
Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris,
miserere nobis.

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Online Online
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2019, 10:56:47 am »

 ;D

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2019, 12:32:47 pm »

What is it about Scotland that photographers seem to move away as soon as they can? ;D


Kent in SD

As mentioned in my recent longish post:


"I started my own studio and took it, slowly, into fashion. I found myself on a lot of trips for dress manufacturers, shooting advertising for House of Fraser stores, various general advertising agencies and the IWS (the International Wool Secretariat), the latter opening the door to Vogue in the UK, which was sort of odd in that most people do magazine work in order to attract commercial clients, whereas for me it worked the other way around. But it wasn't to last – the storm was gathering fast.

The fashion world in late-70s Scotland was contracting very quickly, and fees were tumbling because the few remaining people still buying photography knew only too well that we needed the work. We were being well and truly screwed. But nobody in my neck of the woods, really, was into calendars other than those that David Niven describes at the end of his forward to the first Pirelli Calendar Book, as featuring “whimsical terriers and thatched cottages” or, in the case of Scotland, yet more bloody lochs and snowy mountain peaks.


Now, that was quite some time ago, and most of my good clients there have either folded, been taken over by English firms or otherwise removed from the spending scene. I don't know what that scene is today for young photographers wanting to do fashion and calendars, but to all accounts, my version of it is a thing of the past. Some people made their buck shooting landscape when that meant 4x5, skill and investment. Digital and the shamateur have probably sabotaged most of that niche for the professional - others can tell you more accurately than I.

Industrial photography used to be a good number, with at least two big Glasgow studios, Studio Swain and Ralston's doing good work; Swain used to do some of my E6 processing for me. There was good business, too, with the whisky trade for bottle shots etc. Swain went kaput, and I think (but don't know) that the same fate befell Ralston's. Wedding shooters, no doubt, remain in business, but they were always considered a trade apart. Another studio doing advertising photograhy was Bryan and Shear - I don't have any recent news of them.

I guess the simple answer to the exodus is as it ever was, and why America, Canada and Australia, not to mention England, saw so many Scottish migrants... the local version of the Route 66 tale.

Rob
« Last Edit: February 01, 2019, 08:48:53 am by Rob C »
Logged

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Online Online
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2019, 12:48:16 pm »

For the site that claims to want to talk about photography (or at least look at it), not gear, or politics, or climate, or... we seem to prefer to talk about anything else but photography.

The Scottish guy's photographs of Ukraine are wonderful, colorful, moody, socially reflective. Everything good photography should be. Have we really become that blasé about photography?

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2019, 01:13:46 pm »

For the site that claims to want to talk about photography (or at least look at it), not gear, or politics, or climate, or... we seem to prefer to talk about anything else but photography.

The Scottish guy's photographs of Ukraine are wonderful, colorful, moody, socially reflective. Everything good photography should be. Have we really become that blasé about photography?

Yes, I believe that we have. I certainly have, and apart from a maximum of perhaps up to about ten shooters, nothing much turns me on anymore. And those are all old favourites. Whether that signifies hardening of my brain (is that possble?) or just a considered judgement based on a lifetime of looking, is hard to say. Nobody else can answer for me of course, so I shall never know.

You have to accept that for somebdy who has lived that life all of his own adult life, the exposure to different standards and genres has got to be greater than that of the amateur with other responsibilities and demands on his time. It's no claim to fame, just how available time works out.

Rob

P.S.

I should add that none of the above opinion detracts from the quality of the photographer's work, which I think is visually very attractive. The problem is, as pointed out, that there is so much good stuff already around that we do become saturated (just like some pictures) and desensitised.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2019, 02:38:01 pm by Rob C »
Logged

Cornfield

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 442
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #9 on: February 01, 2019, 08:43:25 am »

Hi Rob, enjoyed your post.

Bryan and Shear moved from being photographers to being a pro lab.  They did this around the time I had made a splash opening my own pro lab in Edinburgh.  Busines was fantastic for me from October 79 til around the early 90's.  Edinburgh based advertising photographers were sending the film to London by the old BR Red Star service.  If they we lucky they could catch the first train around 6:00 am and get the processed films by by early evening.  Within a year of starting I have E6 and C41 machines up to 8x10.  We could print C-types up to 8x4 feet and Cibachrome up to 20x30 inches.

I sold my stake in the lab 92 and started looking at digital.  Wish I could go back in time and do it all again.
Logged

Rob C

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 24074
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #10 on: February 01, 2019, 09:10:20 am »

Hi Rob, enjoyed your post.

Bryan and Shear moved from being photographers to being a pro lab.  They did this around the time I had made a splash opening my own pro lab in Edinburgh.  Busines was fantastic for me from October 79 til around the early 90's.  Edinburgh based advertising photographers were sending the film to London by the old BR Red Star service.  If they we lucky they could catch the first train around 6:00 am and get the processed films by by early evening.  Within a year of starting I have E6 and C41 machines up to 8x10.  We could print C-types up to 8x4 feet and Cibachrome up to 20x30 inches.

I sold my stake in the lab 92 and started looking at digital.  Wish I could go back in time and do it all again.

Hi, thanks for the update with Bryan and Shear! They used to do a lot of photography work with Struthers Advertising, and then John Struthers died... Sidney Shear did very nicely, thank you, and for a while lived more or less up at the end of my road; later, he bought further out into the country, in a very expensive area.

Another Glasgow-based processing lab was MNS, which were the initials of the three founding partners. The only one I got to know was the N: Donald Nisbet. He and one other partner both had Ferraris, one red and the other blue. I never had a Ferrari but I did have a little X1/9. Kinda toy version, if you like.

"Wish I could go back in time and do it all again." I second that emotion, but I'd have to throw in the value of knowing then what I know now!

Rob

bassman51

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 142
Re: A Scottish Photographer Living in Ukraine
« Reply #11 on: February 01, 2019, 04:16:17 pm »

Nice images.  Different than the typical B&W daytime Street shot, with moody colors and lots of backlighting. 
Logged
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
Pages: [1]   Go Up