Australian documentary and fine art photographer
Nick Bedford is a fine art and documentary photographer based in Brisbane, Australia.
I never quite understood the effect social media was having on my mental wellbeing until I took a calculated break from all three of my online presences, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The latter two I simply logged out and ignored, but Facebook I decided to deactivate, at least for a week or two.
Read MoreComing home from Bali was a bummer, but I was glad to get back into the swing of routine life. The strangest thing about travelling and returning is that you can feel so many different things towards either side of the flight. Bali was two weeks of non-stop novelty mixed with relaxation and excitement. Brisbane is home, routine, safety, comfort and familiarity.
Read MoreOver the past two and a half years, my photographic process has been under continuous reduction and refinement to the point where it is now all about minimalism. I've swept the floors, thrown out the empty boxes and sold off the items I no longer need to a point where I shoot many subject matters with one perspective on one camera. After years of making pictures, my process has shifted its weight to the making of the pictures themselves and little else beyond the resulting images.
Read MoreGanesha, Hindu God of Beginnings
Travelling is one of those things that you often wished you were doing while the life you are leading throws up obstacles to prevent you from doing it, so when Hannah asked me if I'd like to go to Bali, I thought about it for a second then jumped at the chance. It occurred to me that I'd never given Bali any thought other than seeing friends I know visit there on occasion. Being a photographer with a love for hiking and mountains, I expected myself to go to New Zealand next, and yet, after running around the popular Indonesian island with Hannah for two weeks, I'm now unsure as to when I would "fit in" that visit to New Zealand.
It's not that I don't believe the mountainous snow-capped lands of New Zealand (Middle Earth) wouldn't be a great destination. There are some amazing hikes I'd love to do such as the Routeburn Trail, but in hindsight, I had rendered myself blind to once again experiencing a very different culture and environment to our own. In the end, Hannah was the one who set up most of the trip's general direction and we filled in the gaps on the go.
Driving past a cockfight on the way to Sahadewa.
I'm guilty of photographer's tunnel vision when approaching the idea of travel, thinking more about the locations and the mountains I would see and giving far less thought to the cultures I would experience instead. Our short race around Bali has given me far more of an appreciation of the Indonesian culture and has heightened my excitement for a potential visit to Japan in 2017, my first in the country.
We stayed in four different locations across the south, central and eastern regencies of the island. Ubud was first and it was a great place to start because it allowed us to become familiar with the way people in a bustling town go about their day, such as how the countless scooters and small SUVs squeeze their way down the thin streets, learning to deal with the very different scale of currency (10,000 Rupiah to 1 Aussie Dollar) and interacting with the Balinese people who are very much used to visitors. As a self described "city kid", I felt at ease being amongst the busy streets of Ubud.
Hannah writing notes whilst I read at Kafe, Ubud.
From making Kafe in Jl. Hanoman our local for lunch to seeing the White Herons in Petulu and experiencing the wonderful Sahadewa Kecak and Fire Dance, our five nights at Ananda Cottages amongst the rice fields was the perfect introduction to Bali. We're both avid readers and podcasts listeners so it was often easy to sit back and spend a good half hour just being quiet and absorbing the surroundings before moving on.
Exploring the rice fields near our first stay in Ubud. The peak in the distance is Gunung (Mount) Batukaru, north west of Ubud.
I've never been a big theatre goer, more out of ignorance than disinterest, so I was delighted to find myself watching a performance that was so different to anything I'd seen in the past. The Kecak dance surprised me to point of laughing many times throughout the show, from the percussive "cak" and haunting verses sung by the men to the fascinating movements and actions of the various characters. I didn't understand the Indonesian words, but I almost didn't have to.
Bali is much closer to the equator, and as you might have guessed, it's hot. You get used to the heat however, despite coming from the middle of winter in Brisbane. Sweating buckets on most days becomes part and parcel. We only experience that half of the year here, but Bali is just always hot and humid. When everyone feels it all the time, it no longer becomes an issue. Another more modern aspect of Indonesian culture is that given the small and often unmaintained roads, the most common vehicles you'll see are scooters and smaller versions of people movers and vans.
As far as we could tell, there are no road rules in Bali. The traffic simply flows according to the attentiveness of each and every driver. Although this often causes long delays, I never once saw any vehicle collide nor any pedestrian struck. It was almost liberating in comparison to the strict, safety first, zero freedom rules we have in Australia. Roads have lanes painted on them and there are traffic lights in some built up zones, but it's really more of a guide.
Our driver Wayan, family man with three children and often our tour guide helped us discover many interesting locations along the way to our second and third stays, from Taman Kertha Gosa in Semarapura to Tirta Gangga, the water palace, in Abang.
Street in Semarapura
Part of the water palace which was formerly the royal palace of Tirta Gangga owned by Karangasem Royal.
These lads at the water palace were taking pictures of each other, so I first took their's with their own then asked to make my own picture. Smiles all round.
After a good four hours of driving and stopping along the way, we stopped in Amed where our next stay was. The roads were quieter. No bustling town streets here, but plenty going on regardless. The east Bali beach town of Amed is home to an assortment of beach side villas, farms and mountain roads following the coast and leading back into the mountain ranges.
This ended up being more of a relaxing three days of snorkelling and hiring scooters to explore the roads up and down the coast as well as enjoying the Indonesian cuisine. Nursing some minor bumps and bruises from coral formations while snorkelling (in my case) and a slip on the beach rocks (in Hannah's case), we found Amed a little slower than we had become used to in Ubud. The interesting thing I found with the food in Bali was that despite being a self-declared meatosaurus, I ended up eating almost entirely vegetarian meals. Since coming back I've tried to keep this going too.
A portrait of Hannah in the afternoon sun.
My favourite beach photo tradition...
Kids playing on the beach.
These two came over to chat to us while we stopped for a break.
Loved riding the coastal and mountain roads in Amed.
Our couple of days on the beach turned into two nights at Great Mountain View Villas in Sidemen, a cozy but beautiful stay on the slopes of the hills facing Gunung (Mount) Agung, a 3,031m stratovolcano which last erupted in 1963. We both found it mesmerising, as the highest mountain ranges near us are only a third of the elevation. If you're up for the challenge, there is a 12 hour hike you can try, otherwise Mount Batur has a four hour hike but was described as quite busy, so we were okay with not doing the trek in the end.
This doesn't do it justice.
Yellow coconuts growing between the villas.
Sunset over the hills facing west.
Hannah insisted on "dragging" me to a cooking class, but it was a great experience in the end and further heightened my appreciation of the traditional ways of Balinese living. Yuka, our Green Kitchen cooking instructor, took us through the rice fields to collect the ingredients for each of the several dishes then made our way to the kitchen where we proceeded to prepare each component by hand in a workshop fashion, from squeezing coconut milk to pounding spices and vegetables into sauces.
Our last few days were spent in the southern end in Uluwatu where we stayed at the very new Hideaway Villas. Other than a day trip to Seminyak and visiting the Uluwatu Temple on the coastal cliffs, we spent the remaining time catching up on reading and relaxing.
Even with only two weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, aided partially by generally avoiding the areas flooded with selfie stick wielding tourists (despite being tourists ourselves!) and can recommend anyone thinking of visiting the island to seek out the traditional Balinese cultural elements if they can.
Uluwatu Temple along the cliff edge.
Hannah enjoying a Margarita.
Always funny turning the camera around...
This photo blog for me has a become a lifeline, a cathartic process, a place where I can finish a day of shooting then move forward to the next day out. I've written about this in the past, but I wanted to revisit the topic.
I recently "put the foot down" and declared to my inner dialogue that I am 100% not going to accept commissions anymore, given that the last photo shoot I did was last year. In the past it was always something I fought against—the notion that I should, for some reason, not close the door on photography work, considering my older collections of portraits of bands, party shooting and other commissioned jobs.
But now that I've been shooting for myself so completely over the last year or two, I finally said "No". This is it. I only want to make photographs for myself. In the end I still make portraits all the time, make plenty of landscapes, take photos of a band on the odd occasion, but it's entirely opportunistic with no pressures to "deliver". It's me with my one little camera and 35mm perspective, all the time.
And as I keep discovering every few months, my bodies of work such as street photography, landscapes and portraits are building themselves. It feels great to have spent the last couple of years and see a cohesive bundle of good and great photographs that I can draw on in the future for projects such as photo books. Just recently I created a 20 page photo book of landscapes and nature related photographs for my father's birthday, drawing on the last few years of sunrise hikes and mountain climbs.
That's where I really love the process of just making photos, publishing the ones I like, and not worrying about how much of the greatness factor is in them as long as they are competent and mean something to me.
The photo blog in particular is not meant to only be about "great" photos that are few and far between. It's about releasing the pictures I enjoyed making from my grasp at the end of the day and letting it them into the wild to take on their own meaning. I've only really been shooting this way for three years. I can't wait to have been making photos consistently, in the same way with the same eye for ten or twenty years. My own future of photography makes me excited.
And that's where I'd like to touch on the most underrated camera design, rangefinders. There's an amazing thing that happens when you use a camera that does not also incorporate the depth of field into the viewfinder. With rangefinders, you don't get to see the soft, out of focus components as they will be. Instead, you are shown only the detailed compositional elements. It means that you actually still consider those elements even if they aren't in focus.
To me, it has become really important to not rely on composing with a shallow depth of field. It can become a crutch in ways, especially as you are learning how to deal with it, and the rangefinder gives you to facility to see all of the elements in focus as they will be placed in your frame, regardless of whether you have elected to include or exclude them from the focal plane. That is calculated as an extra measure of composition in your head, but it doesn't tend to distract like it can with a through-the-lens viewfinder such as in SLRs.
One of the other benefits of having a viewfinder on the side of the camera is that by design, your face is still showing (unless you shoot with your left eye, of course). With a rangefinder, I don't feel like I'm hiding my face behind the camera body. It's a fluffy issue, but one that I do I prefer now that I've used those types of cameras for so long now. It's probably why the new Mamiya 7 medium format film camera I bought feels so natural to use.
And finally, the lens are so tiny. Gone are the days of wielding enormous SLR lenses. Even the Sony mirrorless FE lenses are as big as a DSLR. It didn't take long for me to get used to a 35mm lens that was the size of golf ball.
In my view, street photography primarily has one of two purposes, to document or to make art, even though these may both be present in some quantity. Artistic street photography associates less with the who, the where and the when, emphasising the composition such as lines, subject placement and colours. Documentary street photography associates more with those aforementioned human elements.
But these intentions behind street photography are easily brought to odds with the vulnerability present in the act. Making a photograph of a stranger walking down the street can, especially if you have a non-confrontational nature, cause anxiety and apprehension as to the consequences of such an act.
In most other genres, there is a certain amount of control in how you make a photograph, whether it's a portrait, a landscape or something else entirely. You can typically move and pose your subject, add or alter the lighting, adjust the set or props, or simply take your time.
On the other hand, what I find most satisfying about street or documentary photography is the lack of control. To make a great photograph of a unique moment with a stranger takes more than just technical skill. It requires a constant awareness of your surroundings, precise execution of timing and a certain lowering of your inhibitions, which is arguably one of the biggest components of the genre for me.
Imagine if someone walked down the street, pulled up their camera and took your photo as they passed. How would you react? Would you be put off? Offended? Or perhaps intrigued?
As someone who practices street photography, I guess I would be more intrigued than anything. I would wonder if they are also a street photographer? I would wonder what do they shoot with and where I might see the resulting image later on.
On the flip side, someone without any knowledge of the intent behind street photography might take offence at their photograph being taken without their permission. Many people not only dislike being in photos, but also have a justified scepticism when it comes to ill-intent and suspect motives, especially in an age where everyone has a camera in their pockets.
One aspect of practicing street photography is realising that at some point, someone may take noticeable offence toward you, possibly even with physical violence. Even if this is likely to be a rare occurrence, as someone who prefers to bear no ill will towards anyone if I can help it and also has no other intent than to create interesting and thought-provoking photographs, I honestly don't know exactly how I would react. Does the desire to create art prevent you from thinking about how others may feel?
To me, that's where the public's perception about photographers in general can come into play. A certain camera can put off a certain vibe. A DSLR or large-lens mirrorless camera can often incite a voyeuristic vibe. Indeed, in my very own city, there are a few photographers who wield telephoto lenses and wander around the mall scoping out people, taking no care at all to hide their possibly misunderstood intentions.
Rangefinders and compact mirrorless cameras, on the other hand, often not only are small and unthreatening in appearance, they often disarm and introduce a novelty factor. "Is that a film camera?" is a question I am often asked by people I meet when they see my digital Leica M. It's not, but people are easily fooled. In the grand scheme of camera gear, the rangefinder design has largely fallen out of fashion except in cases such as the Fuji X Series cameras.
Not only that, learning to use your camera efficiently so as to take the shot and move on fluently is something that helps reduce my own anxiety regarding that exposure to vulnerability, even if it's all in my head. People often notice you when you have a camera up to your face as you walk by. It's hard not to! People don't usually walk around with cameras in front of their faces.
But if you can pull off all of that, seeing the potential for a street photograph, zone focusing beforehand, nailing the composition in a split second and guessing the exact time at which your subject crosses the focal plane can lead to great satisfaction when you review your day's work and make the selections.
One of my fundamental desires in attempting to make street photographs is to capture some semblance of a story within the frame, to portray a moment as a moment, not just a person standing idly amongst their environment. If I can capture someone mid-walk, mid-smoke, mid-laugh or clearly in the depths of conversation or thought, I've been successful.
To me, it is these moments that make a street photograph something worth staring at. To wonder what they were doing, what was making them laugh or cry, or where they were going is what I would consider the elements that elevate these kinds of documentary photographs into the realm of art, and make them worthy of printing and viewing on paper or in a book.
As my dive into the genre of street photography gets deeper, I find myself beginning to pursue the artistic and documentary nature of it more, wanting to seek out existing works, existing photographers and read about the events that were taking place at the time they were taken. I don't attribute this drive solely to myself. My friends within the photography community have greatly influenced my desire to know more about such photographers and the times and environments they lived in, from politics to war, socio-economic trends and fashion statements, to the colours, tones and styles of composition that made their own work truly unique.
I hope that in fifty years, I'll be able to look back on my own photographs and see something like this in my own work.
Film is an interesting subject for me as a photographer. Time and time again I’ve been tempted to give it a go, and more often than not I’ve left those one or two rolls lying in the shoe box for months, if not years, but recently I tried an experiment. I told myself I would put down my digital camera until my unused rolls of Kodak Portra 400 were shot and sent off for processing. It only took about two weeks to do so, but it left with a profound change in the way I approach using my camera.
Having a display on the back of a camera is a logical choice. It has not only revolutionised the learning process, it also gives you the confidence to approach difficult subject matter and lighting conditions that are less predictable, such as studio work, as it grants you the ability to correct your mistakes immediately and perfect the work, two things I greatly appreciate as someone who has worked in a professional capacity before.
But, as I’ve found over the last few weeks, this immediacy also comes at a profound disadvantage to thoughtfulness. With instant photo review at your fingertips, it’s surprisingly difficult to prevent yourself from checking your photographs, even if just to see what you took, let alone making sure it was executed properly. It amounts to a feeling of instant gratification that provides none of the trust, discovery and meditative qualities that film cameras give you. Instant gratification isn’t always the best thing when you are trying to live and capture moments instead of reviewing them the moment after.
I’ve been photographing for about six years and have been shooting with my Leica M for over 18 months now. I trust it, I know it’s pros and cons and tricks, and I know my own skill level, but even after all of this I still constantly want to hit that Play button.
Firstly, that I fully appreciate the facility of shooting to a digital negative with great latitude, pixel-level sharpness and no requirement to spend not-insignificant quantities of money on development and lo-fi scanning (or even more money on high-res scanning).
Secondly, that I do trust my camera to do what I need as I see and execute it through the viewfinder. I had to shoot fully manual on the Leica MP, and was more at the mercy of its light meter than ever before, for example.
And thirdly, that I can still make good photographs without the aid of instant photo review. As a disclaimer, my experiment with the rolls of film and a Leica that needs a focus adjustment meant I didn’t have “high quality” images this time for a couple of reasons, but my photography itself didn’t change at all.
I now feel like covering up the screen on my digital Leica M. I love shooting with it, and it's a beautiful tool to use, but I don’t feel like I need a display anymore except in some rare circumstances. I absolutely enjoyed simply moving on straight after clicking the shutter without thinking, “Hmm, I wonder if that came out okay?”
Digital camera displays are an absolute necessity for many people and as a photographer who has shot a wide range of subject matter, I can fully appreciate why, but there’s a thoughtfulness, a meditative quality, an intention to shooting without a display or on film that is troublesome to reproduce with a normal camera. When I pick up my digital M next time, I want to add some of that feeling back into it and try to ignore that urge to review the image I just created.
My hope is that the Leica M-D, a recently released display-less digital camera, is not a lone product, and spawns similar bold moves by arguably more affordable camera manufacturers.
There are two things that have made more of an impact on my photography than anything else and that is the gear I now use and the processing styles I have chosen.
For the last two years I have almost exclusively been shooting in landscape orientation with a 35mm equivalent lens and a single, lightweight and compact camera, and this has given me an enormous appreciation for consistency in the photographs I make. My photographs finally feel like they are truly "mine".
Before 2013, it's like I had no vision whatsoever. It was a free-for-all of focal lengths, orientations and post processing styles. Other than my portrait work, the DSLR and zoom lens was the ultimate consistency killer in my pictures.
Fast forward to now and no matter what I take, if it's a good photograph it feels like it fits perfectly alongside entirely different photographs because the perspective is the same and my style of framing is consistent.
Discovering VSCO also had a profound impact on the way my photographs feel. Before this, I would change all kinds of settings in Lightroom and as a result each photograph felt different, not a part of a whole body of work.
For a while I was using Kodak Portra 400 colour and Ilford HP5+ B&W emulations but have since swapped to Fuji 800Z and Kodak Tri-X. As a result of using VSCO, my colour and tonal range is consistent.
The added benefit is that I know what I'm going to get when I'm out in the world ready to make a photograph. It's like using film because the film decides the colours and black and white tone for the most part. You have to make sure the subject matter works, and you let the processing set the mood, and you only tweak one or two things like exposure.
There's nothing more disorienting than looking through a body of work and finding that it doesn't actually feel like a body of work. While it may not become your whole way of shooting, I strongly encourage anyone struggling to find their way to reduce all gear options to a single focal length and camera and shoot that way for a good many months.
You may hate it or it, if you're like me, it may transform your photographic journey entirely.
This photo blog has been incredibly inspiring for me over the last year and it feels like I could contribute to it for the rest of my life, given my desire to shoot a lot of street and personal photography these days.
I was inspired to create it after purchasing my Fujifilm X100s camera and I quickly worked out a consistent style for the pictures I publish. In particular, I had been following the blog of Severin Koller for a while and it just made sense to create something in a similar vein.
But why post to a photo blog?
Perhaps the biggest reason a photo blog helps is that it can be the vessel that drives the process of shooting. Street photography is especially applicable to this because it is about as free form as photography gets. You just pick up your camera and walk out the door. There is no shoot preparation, no bundle of gear in a large bag to carry, and you can easily tie it in with coffee and catch ups.
Every creative person I know has an innate craving to create new work, whether its every day or every month. For me, I've found it takes about a week for me to recharge but when you get into a rhythm of shooting every weekend, it really becomes a cathartic process and let's off steam.
Every time I contribute to my blog, it involves practicing my craft beforehand. It helps you become proficient with your camera, focusing techniques, as well as being able to efficiently compose a shot in a fraction of a second. It also helps you become more objective at selecting your final choice of photos.
The more you shoot and the more you edit and discuss your work with friends, the better you'll get, even if it takes a while to be noticeable. Practice doesn't just involve using a camera, but processing and choosing your images as well.
It's an excellent reason to practice consistency in both the making of photographs but also your editing of photographs. Almost every post I've made to this blog has been a horizontal 35mm focal length photograph in black and white. Only on rare occasions has it been anything else.
It has taught me that I can make strong photographs using only one orientation, one focal length and one processing style. It teaches you to prioritise the subject matter and composition of your photographs before anything else.
As an added benefit, it also creates a strongly connected body of work with which to draw from after months go by. It's the reason I want to create a book at the end of the year. All of these photographs share a single, consistent style.
And finally, it teaches you to make decisions about your work. Posting that final selection of 5-10 photos after a day of shooting is the end of the process and lets you get back to the other things in your life until you go out and shoot again.
Many people tend to sit on photographs for a long time or never post their work and can become apathetic to their work. I'd rather shoot, edit and put them on the table for people to see then go have dinner and work on something else.
Your opinions of yours or others work will always be evolving, you can't help it.
If you're wondering what to do with your photographs, and feel like a photo blog is the way to go, don't hesitate. It's been a wonderful outlet for my work, regardless of the size of my audience. I'm not worried about likes or clicks anymore, and neither should you. Shoot, publish and grow.