Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom
on AdoramaTV I'm Ruth Medjber
and joining me on the show today
is photographer Beta Bajgartova.
Beta thank you so much for joining me
on the show today.
Thank you for inviting me.
Yes, it's a real honor.
I love your series; A Woman's Work
Thank you.
I think it's fantastic
which is this fabulous book
that you produced.
I love when people do books
proper old-school, hardback
gorgeous big books.
Would you tell us a little bit about
how this series started, how it evolved,
what inspired you to start it?
So I think it started about two years ago
I was approached by a friend photographer
in Czech Republic because I'm Czech
so my friend photographer asked me
whether I would like to participate
on the exhibition that he was organizing
and the the theme of the exhibition
was ‘Women and Beauty’.
I think that all women are beautiful.
I started simply photographing my friends
and my friends are in the book.
One of them is a felt designer
and another one is minister in Unitarian Church.
Another one is cinematographer
and all of a sudden the story started to emerge,
they are all women
who are in very interesting professions
and they are very inspiring.
So that's how it started
and then I spent the next two years
travelling all over Ireland
and searching for the women
who are in interesting professions
and predominantly male professions.
Awesome, it's great to see
and you there's a lot of women
in this book isn't there?
Yes it's 53 women and the project
is still ongoing
because there will be a big exhibition
next year in the little Museum of Dublin
brilliant
of those photographs,
so I would like to show new photographs,
so I just started to shoot women,
I just went to Galway to photograph
an Air Traffic Controller.
Cool!
Yes and I am going to be photographing
a lady who was a Programmer back in the ‘70s,
which is really great
and sometimes I get just a tip from a friend
or from the woman that I photograph
she would say, hey do you know what?
I know there's really lovely Goldsmith
who is working.
See women, we look after each other.
Exactly, exactly.
That's it. We recommend other people.
I know this other girl, that's all good like.
That's cool.
So that would be one one way
of searching for those women
and another way would be me just thinking okay
so I really need to get prison officer
and I need to get the fisher woman
so I would make a list
and then I would use Google
and go through other ways
to find these women
who are based and work in Ireland.
To get a book this size
and to do it like this
would cost a lot of money, right?
How does someone afford to do a project
that takes two years photographing
fifty-odd women
which is quite expensive traveling around Ireland
and at that stage do you get a grant,
is that how you do it?
An Arts Council grant how do you,
how do you fund something like this?
Okay I had to find sponsors okay
and I also with the help of my friend
who is in the book
as a cinematographer,
we did crowdfunding campaign
so that was half of the funds that we needed
which was about four grand
and another €4,000
I got from three sponsors.
I am very lucky photographer
because I have a contract
and I have a relatively stable job
if I get a contract for a year.
I work three days a week,
my work is photographing stills
for Fair City in RTE.
Fair City is our kind of soap
that's Irish drama,
Irish national television RTE.
Okay.
So that's the bread and butter and that's
enabling me to have more freedom
outside this gig so I can afford
to invest my time
to projects that are not
that are not commercially viable,
that don't make money.
So with the three days a week then,
doing stills on Fair City, maybe you could
tell me about, maybe have you got that job?
and what it is and how you go about shooting on a day?
So stills photographer in RTE
it's basically a public job,
so I had to tender for that.
Oh great.
The work is quite demanding
and exciting at the same time,
it's not difficult when
it comes to technique and photography
I must say that I have learned to shoot
in the dark really,
because you're doing stills
in the studio and the lights are
it's completely different
then what we what we would imagine
so I learned to shoot
in very difficult light conditions.
Do they break for stills
or do you just have to shoot
while they're shooting?
So basically the drill is when your film
photographer, film most of films,
they shoot on one camera
and you basically
when you're at film
you tend to stand with the camera person
and you have a blimp
which is the cover that
that covers all the sounds.
I wondered about that.
The sound blimp.
Because when you're clicking away
people can hear it
and the audio be recorded?
Yes. Sound Blimp.
Sound Blimp,
but I don't have the sound blimp
and the photograph
photographing in soap-opera
where people are using more than one
camera is completely different
because like in Fair City
in the studio they would
use three cameras at the same time
so that means that the visuals
for 2D picture would be completely different
I often have to ask after they shoot
the scene, I often have to ask
if I can do the stills
and basically rearrange people
get them closer because they may be
way too apart for me
so I have to rearrange it.
To fit them all in one nice-looking frame
Exactly and the frame
that I have to take in five seconds
it basically has to
and tell the story,
tell some sort of moment,
the narrative of the drama,
so when I'm there working on the set
I either get some pictures during the rehearsal
but mostly I would be standing there
watching the scene, watching what the
director does and what the actors do
and then I would be thinking
okay so this is what I need to see in the shot
this is what they want me to photograph
so when they finish the scene
they say cut, scene is clear
and I would just jump in
and shout "can I do the stills?"
Incase they forget about you?
Stay there, I know you said cut but wait.
So and then I would need to rearrange them somehow
get them closer or do some part of the scene
that would be significant for the
narrative and as I said, I have to,
I have like five seconds to do that
and be completely invisible
and it has to be technically perfect
so no pressure and it's really interesting
because I am interested in all forms
of visual art, so it is interesting to watch
the directors work as well
because Fair City
would have different directors
it's not just one director who would be working
there and they would come from UK
as well and we also have some Irish
directors and each one of them
has a slightly different approach, different
different kind of approach
to work, so it's really interesting
and you do learn a lot.
It's great.
Does it make you nervous when a new director
comes on board?
No, that's what,
I think that's why I do photography
I love the challenge
I don't want to be nervous
I want to be able to approach
the person and grab the person.
Yeah embrace it and run with it.
Yeah exactly yeah.
Well I think so,
I mean I was looking over your stills
and they are just so full of drama
I was like oh my god,
I really want to watch Fair City now.
That is the point, you need to,
you need to, it is a teaser for the drama,
and in an ideal situation
the still really, when it's published
in the papers,
it has to make you say oh my
god I really want to watch this.
It does, it massively does,
they jump out of the page at you.
Did I notice as well that you sometimes shoot
for a magazine and things like that?
Yes people now are hiring me for portraits
and for features.
I also shoot products,
I shoot fabrics for one company yes.
All of our viewers are always really
interested and so am I
in knowing how people found photography
and how you got into the job that you're doing now,
so would you enlighten us as to that?
I got a camera from my aunt
when I was, I think it was the equivalent
of like sixth class in here.
Okay.
I got a little Pentax camera
and it was manual
and I also got two rolls of film
with that but I have to say basically
when I finished those two rolls
and got them developed
That was it,
because it was just really expensive
to buy film, get it developed
without having the darkroom
there was just no tradition whatsoever in the family.
The interest in people and in stories
brought me to study journalism and I became
journalist at the age of 23,
I mean aspiring journalists
and I started working in a local newspaper
small local newspaper
in a town where I come from
and it's probably the same now
everywhere like local journalists in
small papers, they have to do everything
they have to write stories and they have
to take their pictures
and that was the first time
I got my first crash course
on photography,
I was told so here is your camera
you go and do the interview there
and then do the picture,
but don't do picture of the,
don't do wide frame,
just give me nice detail
and that was the first and only course I got
for many many years
I was trying to, I was trying to follow that,
ever since I started photographing
for the newspapers or for the papers
I was completely hooked
and it was just passion, passion, passion
and I was excited more at seeing
the photographs on paper
more than seeing my written words
and it continued throughout
the whole journalists career.
I then worked or ended up working
for a national radio station in Prague
and I was a reporter like,
in foreign desk Department
so I would get to travel sometimes.
Cool.
Yeah it was really cool
and I would always take the camera
and take the pictures
and I would be just shaking
with excitement to bring the films to
the lab and then getting them back
and that was just like
it was a huge passion.
One of your series that I love
and I want to ask you more about
is your Dreams. Yeah.
So when was it created
like at what stage in your career
because I could normally I can pinpoint
when people have done something in their career?
but with you maybe it's on going maybe it's new?
Yeah.
When did you do it?
This was in 2012.
Okay.
It was when I got the gig in RTE
for the first time so I had the job
and I had the time
to be able to create something
outside the job and I was
always and I am actually always thinking
how to create a story in one frame
you know because people would say
oh portrait, you have to tell
us the story about the person
and I'm like yeah
that's kind of nice cliche
but really how does it?
Okay like story come on
in one frame?
Yeah.
Difficult.
Very difficult,
so I decided
that I will approach,
approach people
and I will create stories
and I created all those ghost effects
in the Dream Series
by using long exposure.
You're picking people,
you're giving them a story
and your telling it in the frame.
Yeah.
Fantastic I want to get into
that in loads of detail
as well as all the details
about how you shot A Woman's Work
and the technical side
of what you use on your Fair City stills
as well so if you wouldn't mind hanging on
with me and then in episode 2
part two of our interview
I will chat more in detail about the technical side.
That would be my pleasure.
Thank you, thank you so much Cheers!
Well that's all we have time for
in this episode
but stick with us as I'll be
chatting to Beta again
all about the technical side of her work.
If you'd like to brush up on your own photography
skills check out the Adorama Learning Centre
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thanks and I'll see you again soon.