Hello, my name is Martin Dorey and you are watching AdoramaTV. Today I begin a new
series about film and photography in which I meet photographers I know and
admire and rummage around their kit bags. The one thing that joins them all up is
the fact that they often work at the extremes. Now one of the photographers
we'll meet, follows big-wave surfers around the world to capture their
moments of glory. While another one travels to the northernmost parts of
Europe and North America to talk about environmental concerns
Today I'm gonna meet Andy Hughes. Now he's a photographer and lecturer and he grew
up in a Yorkshire mining town during the eighties, in the miners strike, and it cut
his teeth taking photographs of life in a mining village. Later he went on to the
Royal College of Art where he got an MA and then he went on to become the first
artist in residence at the Tate Gallery in St.Ives in Cornwall. Later he produced a
book called "The Dominant Wave Theory" in which he took photographs of plastic
rubbish in the littoral zone and it's about the extremes of working in that
area I want to talk to him today. Ok Andy so shooting in the littoral zone
which is the area between the extreme low tide and the extreme high-tide. could you
just explain to me a few of the problems that you might have had with shooting?
well all those sort of challenges I've always found, I've sort of taken them,
taken them to heart because I learnt to surf, say, 25 years ago, so, so been aware
of like the
shifting of the tide, the sea, particularly wind, the winds off shore,
on shore, all those sort of inclement, kind of environmental factors, that when
you take a camera into that zone, you are definitely, it's going to, you know, receive
quite a serious hammering. So what the are issues that you say you take this camera
your Nikon today, into the littoral zone, what are the issues there?
Well one of the key thing is moisture..moisture and the other big thing for me
photographing these pictures over a long period of time, it's the grains of sand,
so sand being blown around acts like sort of sand paper just
whipping across the surface of the lens, so anything you can do to you know
to basically protect that body of the camera from the grit of the sand it seems
like, to list them sand is the top, hardest one, water and moisture and salt those
those are the four big problems.
Ok, so this is digital camera, so the moisture, how's that going to affect
digital camera. If you are right down the water's edge, like, when I started
photographing these photographs in Britain, the temperature might be slightly lower
clearly in Winter, it can be quite cold and when you get that kind of inversion
between trying to hide your camera in a bag, which may be slightly, you know,
there is temperature difference between your bag, that you know is holding that
in a safe zone, when you take it out and then you've got cold zone, like say in Britain,
you see that moisture appearing inside of the lens, you know, the temperature inversion
So, it steams up. It's affecting the lens and the optics but also does it have any effect in the long
term on the body? Well I think I've had about four. The first digital camera I bought was a little Fuji
In the sort of mid-nineties, then I moved up to three different
Canons and then three years ago I went to Alaska and upgraded and bought this Nikon.
And both the previous Canons I think you know, traveled all over the
world and none of them actually, none of them stopped working.
Which is the key thing, they all worked.
And I have shot thousands and thousands of pictures on various beaches.
So you've shot all round the world with with the Canon and with this and no
problems at all. No! how are you protecting your your camera when you go out and
obviously you know for a shot like this is getting dark, may have been windy.
I don't know, you're right down in the sand. Yes it's right down in the sand. What I always do
sometime I have, obviously things, like cleaning kit. You know a little camera cleaning kit so you get
a little blower brush and all that kind of stuff. I often take things, like you
know tissue, obviously to clean things up even just things like old bags, sandwich bags.
You know things like that. So you can always cover your camera up, I even I take things
like cushions you know? Like you lie down on my knees so it's not just the
camera you know? When I was doing this
as well so I had another set of accoutrements with me to be able to make
these photographs including shovels.
You take a little kit with you, yeah so what if you got here, this is a great little camera
cleaning brush, it's called a lens pen, it's actually by Nikon, so it's got
a little brush in there. You can get any little grains of sand off. Sometimes I use a blower
brush, but of course a blower brush is no good if it's slightly windy is it?
Ok so lets talk about Glastonbury Opus and let's talk about the conditions that you have to go
through to get some of these shots. Now let's look at this one here, this guy
here. When was it taken? How was it taken? What camera did you use? And how did
you how did you get those shots and come away with the camera that still lived! Yes Glastonbury is
a huge event, I mean quarter of a million people in fields and everyone partying and
listening to music, generates a lot of waste, that's why we're there to
photograph it. I took the Nikon and was out of hours and all times of the day
looking for the sort of excessive so popular culture really which is depicted
in these. This particular picture after was after The Who had played, about maybe about
2 o' clock in the morning so was about to clean things up. Interesting thing is the
smell, and it's kind of like very low light here, cause the Main Stage lights have gone off
This camera was set to the highest ISO things like 64,000, and then of course you know
in post-production, the ones that were all taken in the early hours of the morning. I wanted to
keep some of the noise actually, I mean the key thing about it is, that although
this is a zine, my intention, is that these things might really be part of an exhibition at
some point and these could be produce at scale
your talking meters, so the fact that a lot of photographers using digital technology
get worried about noise I'll be doing the opposite, I'll be trying to make these as big
as the Canon lead the noise to make them more grainy to actually I'm interested in the
image beginning to break up ir not being absolutely perfect you know!
Your camera's been through some tough times I mean how tough was that from a
working point of view. Well the thing about this is that it was the mud it wasn't
particularly, you know Glastonbury over period of time has been well known for the mud
it wasn't particularly muddy, only rained for half the day, one of the main stage areas,
it was pretty filthy, and you can imagine, I remember this because I had this camera
and I was trying my hardest to hold it just literally that far above the mud, that is quite
hard, because this is actually quite a weighty camera, if you feel the weight of that - it's actually quite heavy so
the thing is that when you've got this, very low on the ground, you know what kinda hold
the camera the one hand above the mud there you are kind of
just thinking, one slip and it's going to go! I think it's more to do with concentration.
My wrist was actually after three days was quite achy - 'cause there was a lot of trying to put
this in unusual space's. And did you carry a spare body? I did actually when I went to
that. I see now why. I took a college camera I took a Canon 5D, I think as a backup. Just in case.
Did you end up using it. I did actually, you know what, it's really interesting when you look at it
I just shot some of the daytime stuff on the Canon, and some of the night-time stuff on the Nikon
yeah, and when you look at the files on the screen
The are very different, I know there's a lot to do in post-production, but my overall
impression was, that the Canon produces images which might sound of a little bit of a strange
description, but seemed a lot smoother. A little bit punchier in colour but quite
smooth, wheras the Nikon feels to me a little bit more filmic and
I mean that's like, the analog material, it just seems to have, it's not too
smooth. Which I kind of like.
Thanks for joining me on AdoramaTV today. Next time I'll be talking to Andy
on a field trip with the students in this absolutely beautiful part
of the world, and how they're using a plate camera to improve their knowledge
of digital photography. But for now please like comment, or share this
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