Street photos with 21mm

[vladhed]

Now that's a good site to have bookmarked, thanks for the link ! That guy is 21... and it took me up to 28 to realize I liked photography 😛

Yeah, it's impressive. I shot about a hundred of rolls of Tri-X or HP5 between the age of 16 and 19 with my Nikon FE until I decided I'd make a better engineer than photographer (and there was more $$ in being an engineer 🙂 )

Of course we didn't have web-sites back in the 1980s, displaying ones work was always a real chore and I found I didn't have the "people skills" (read: smoozing) to get lots of shows. Interestingly enough everyone says I'm a good engineer because of my people skills ?!

 

[vladhed]

Pretentious is an understatement! 😉

[...]

All that being said, it's a pretty cool site. Welcome to America James Wakefield, we welcome everyone like us or not.

Todd

He does admit to admiring Diane Arbus and the fact that he always interacted with her subjects before photographing - something he admits he needs to work on. I think he should, it would improve his work. (not that I have the guts to do it).

I remember when I was that age and used to hang around the art department at University (other end of campus from engineering) and easily half the students were pretentious like that. It seemed that rabid self-promotion was required - I mean if you don't think you're the best thing since sliced bread, no one else will.

I'm still friends will a few of those people, and most have certainly mellowed a lot - basically now they're more secure financially (either through their art or not) and don't feel the pressure to establish themselves.

 

[James_W]

Hello, I'm James Wakefield - thanks to everyone for their comments on my website Urban Exposure. Felt the need to address a few points. Interesting that some regard my dialogue as pretentious - that was certainly not my intention and does not reflect my personality, but I occassionally get a bit excited when discussing photography. The aim in the dialogue of the site is also to give people further information about how I go about taking pictures so they can understand and learn for themselves - this is because I have a lot of students emailing me asking me for such advice!

With regards to my America work - it is currently being printed in a short run of 200 hardback books. I have found people who are not American to be particularly receptive to the work, whilst Americans themselves generally are not. I don't want to go to deep into this, but the images I shot there fit the interpretation of America as an artificial and insular environment. The comments I have on my site pre-empting the images are at the moment very biased, so I plan to rehash them. The book has no comments by myself, just a foreword by a professional writer - so the viewer is left to make their own conclusions.

I stand by my observations, however, and still believe they are in keeping with the revolutionary representation of America by Robert Frank in the 1950s.
Also, the book is a significantly better edit than the work shown on the site. I plan to update the site to better represent this. The final book has 69 images over three sections: People, Place, Politics.

In terms of my understanding of the world, this is obviously relative to my age, which you have recognised. However, I say what I see and I photograph what I see - there is not really much I can do about this! Also, I chose America exactly because I wanted to experience a new urban environment. I did not go there with a prejudiced view, and I am certainly not anti-american, but the images I shot reflect a darker side to this existence that do not reflect my original intentions when I went out there - I was actually quite shocked by the images I took!

In terms of being told I am brilliant - I am currently engaged in the final five weeks of a Photography degree - they never tell me I'm brilliant - they just push me to my absolute limits which often results in self-doubt and frustration, but then a bigger will to continue.

I have been told that my previous work suffers from a level of emotional detachment which is why I have engaged myself in two social documentary based projects since completing the USA one that demand absolute engagement. I have not used a waist level viewfinder for over two years - I currently use a Contax G2 & Canon 20D.

Also, I don't use word to create my website! I use dreamweaver, and if this is frowned upon then bear in mind that the last update took me two weeks of solid work and my concern is with image and style - not HTML code!

Thanks for visiting my site and be sure to check out the feature of me in this week's copy of Amateur Photographer (UK).

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Best regards,

James