Mike Broadway – PhotoBlog

Boy and pigeons - Hyde Park, 1980

Soon there will be no more decisive moments, no more perfectly (or luckily) timed exposures capturing the ideal composition of human and street topography, no more envy of Cartier-Bresson’s instincts. We have hardly caught our breath from the demise of film and another technology inflection point looms like a second wave crashing over a stunned and struggling swimmer.

In June of this year I bought what will probably be my last still camera, A Nikon D300. That was five years after my first digital camera, a D100. Roll the clock on less than five years from now and there is zero chance that my next camera will not have high definition movie capability. And I am not talking measly 2 mega-pixel broadcast resolution High-Def, I am talking 9.7 mega-pixel, 3626×2664, 4K theatre resolution at 30 frames per second.

Shooting near 10 mega-pixel images at 30 frames per second you can’t miss the moment, at least not all of them. The wedding photographer won’t have to say cheese any more; the mother that blinks will have her eyes open and on camera two seconds later so print that frame. The fashion photographer can grab 30 seconds of video, at night, in the rain, and take the one shot where the model had just the right angle in her elbow.

The way we make photographs will change, what we photograph will change; some of us will adapt easily, some of us won’t. That’s OK, this is not the first time that the tools have changed. Change is good. Postmodern critics declared the end of art, there was nothing left to do. They were wrong, change is the catalyst of art.

Disinterested rider, Star of Texas Fair & Rodeo, Austin

Who I am is flattered that someone chose this picture for the cover of their first CD titled, “who i am”

I know why I took the photograph but I don’t know why the boy bothered to get on the ride; it does not look like he found it thrilling. What we read into photographs rarely has much to do with what was actually happening or how the people present felt about it. This exact photograph taken as a family snap would carry a different set of possible meanings than it does presented in this blog context as an art object.  

As ‘art’, images are tools for us to understand ourselves; Rorschach tests. Maybe the empty seats speak of isolation, maybe the endless dull circling is an analogy to our 40 hour week lives, maybe the chains speak of the fragility of our existance or, maybe, about trust, faith and hope? Making and looking at photographs is one of the ways that I find out who I am.

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If you happen to live around Austin, Texas, you can find Central Time Jazz Collective playing in town once or twice a week at local restaurants; check out their gig list at http://www.centraltime.org/gigs.html. If they still have any in stock, you might be able to collect a copy of the CD from the group while you are there. Or you can get MP3s of their tracks from Amazon.com; I particularly like the cheat.