Life Between the Poles
Welcome to Life Between the Poles. This is a podcast about Photography and my obsessive hyper focused observations of humanity and how it intersects in my life. I'm a retired photojournalist and commercial photographer spanning 35 years but I do continue to shoot personal work with multiple digital and analog cameras. With this podcast their will be content that has nothing to do with photography but has every thing to do with how I interpret daily life around me. This podcast also has nothing to do with football goal posts but does deal with the glass half full and the glass half empty and everything in between. Thank You for listening!
Life Between the Poles
Gag Reflex and the Camera's Hot Flash
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Starting off at the gym with new observations of absolute astonishment. There's always new observations of interest you may find surprising and entertaining. I then move onto the purpose of the Podcast with my observation of recent trends in photography that demonstrate in my opinion laziness in the name of breaking away from norms of 20th century craftsmanship. Intended to be fresh and new but actually old and done before. There are very few today that are successful in using direct flash in a creative way but not so much as a gimmick but as creative license they've perfected. This direct flash technique has been used for over 35 years that I know of, but now curator's find it cutting edge from emerging photographers. For me, it's distracting that diminishes the viewers viewpoint when looking at the image quality from a social documentary sense. It's a technique that exaggerates the reality of a scene, by intruding, bruising and dramatizes real or not so real feeling, sometimes mood and definitely reality. When I see the blast flash technique I see the shadow's first then the subject in front of the camera. In my opinion that's gravely wrong. Focus should always be one the human condition and not an over dramatic surreal flavor of the month shadow on a wall. I know, I may be attacked with disagreements on this but study documentary or social documentary work of the profession and then tell me I'm full of shit.
Thank you for listening and help me grow this channel. Have a great day. Many of the photographs I talk about here are on Facebook: Brad Armstrong the Avatar picture is my wife and I with Smokey the Bear, Instagram @ shade_image / commercial and editorial portraits Instagram @ barmst360