Finding my own voice: Matthew Maber’s street photography

Posted by Olivier Duong in Film Photography

Matthew Maber shoots color and black and white, digital and film, here’s a back and forth with him along with some images.

Matthew, please tell us a bit about yourself

My name is Matthew Maber, I’m a street photographer, My day job is as a graphic designer and technical Mac fella in our small family design agency.

What inspired you to become a photographer?

Initially I had seen some amazing night-time long-exposure light painting photos in our localPortsmouth At Night Flickr group and wanted to catch up with these guys and try that out, see what the secret to magic was behind the images. A few have since become very good friends and moved on and expanded in their own photography.

Then my interests expanded to our Southsea Skatepark, shooting the amazing BMX and skateboard there with a wide-angle lens literally a few inches from their back wheel. Ive also shot a few club night dance music events and portraits for friends or friends of friends.

Like many street photographers it seems, I started wandering the street taking photos of architecture and becoming increasingly bored of that and braver, starting to actually shoot people.
I bought a Fuji X100 the day it was released because I loved how tactile it is and then sold my Nikon DSLRs and lenses to friends.

The X100 has been a gateway drug to film. As it stands street photography is nice thing to do for downtime outside of work and to get some fresh air.

Where in the world are you located?

I like in Southsea, UK

What is your primary interest in the streets?

I have no grand plan, Im still “finding my voice” I think. I have a few vague themes I keep an eye out on when wandering and am trying to narrow down, but I think Im still in the single image phase. I would like to think Im getting a little better but I may be kidding myself.

I look for not necessarily ‘interesting’ people as that can be a somewhat easy trick, but lately scenes which pique my interest due to the composition or the mundanity to me of my locality which others may well be interested in. What is boring every-day to someone in LA or Tokyo is not the norm for me so I am interested in it.

In your opinion what makes a good colour street photograph?

I think that would be a good reason to be in colour – as in something in the image which makes it being in colour worthwhile or that it would lose without the colour. Digital shooters have it easy with just flipping to black and white at will, with film unless you’re going to cheat and change to black and white after its amore conscious decision with the scene. I am currently struggling somewhat to decide which I prefer between colour or black and white.

Ive gone though what I imagine must be most street photographers “shoot it ALL in high contrast black and white” phase and am now predominantly shooting colour using cheap Poundland £1 a roll Agfa (rebranded Fuji I believe) and usually dropping the black and white film in for winter as certainly here in the UK I feel the black and white is good for Winter but the often too short Summers we get are worthy of full colour.

Im not sure I answered that question but maybe black and white is good for the emotion and colour is good for the mood, though this isn’t mutually exclusive of course. I still have the odd black and white shot I get back that I’m very pleased with, it seems harder to get the black and whits “right” in my humble opinion.

You shoot both film & digital, please give us your comments on each one of them in the streets

Well as I said, the X100 was a gateway drug to film – I love how its all very direct and through that I came by a Yashica Minister III very cheaply on ebay and then feeling the need for something better the “budget Leica” Canonets, firstly 28 which I found restrictive as its realistically full auto, then a QL 17 which I bought from Bellamy at Japan Camera Hunter.

Needing more control which I should have done first, I found a reasonably priced Leica M6 and the Voigtlander Nokton Classic 35mm f1.4 which of course being 35mm is actually the X100’sequivalent focal length so thats useful to jump between them. I think the M6, X100 and Canonet 17 are my final cameras for the foreseeable future.

After that waffling, as for actually using them the main difference would of course be speed. The X100 can be set to auto making quick shots that much easier than film, though in all honesty I generally use my X100 in A or S priority and manually focus by zone.

That said, whilst the M6 forces you to manually change and check exposure the practical use is not much different for me. Also being forced to go manual with the M6 has been quite enlightening and whilst I did already somewhat understand the basics of exposure and am self taught, being forced has I think given me a greater appreciation for some details of exposure and possibly more importantly not to worry too much with film.

I have now found I can usually guess the exposure and just check in camera which is somewhat reassuring. The wait and then Christmas day-like surprise of getting film back from the process/scanners has been a definite draw for me – it slows me down and makes the photo taking more of a process and something to be experienced.

Any tips for folks who want to start shooting film?

Id say if you can, set your digital camera to manual for a while to see how it feels, but preferably buy a cheap 35mm off ebay or a charity shop. Film is cheap enough to come by and processing isn’t really that bad – if it all fails and you find yourself impatient for the instant gratification of digital then you have a nice ornament.

Any anecdotes?

Well Ive yet to be attacked or shouted at on the streets like many others Im sure, Ive had odd and confused looks. The times Ive approached people to ask it’s been fine but I don’t generally take portraits so thats very rare.

Any closing comments?

Thanks for inviting me and asking me questions. I hope people like my photos and will see me grow as a photographer.

I’d encourage people to take part in the Free Art Friday movement. Just search for the #freeartfriday or #faf tag on Twitter and Instagram and the Free Art Friday page on Facebook.

Ive managed to drop a few framed pieces but it’s open to any art form you can share really and its a nice feeling seeing your piece taken to a new home or just hoping it doesn’t end up an a street cleaner’s dust cart. Check out this video here:
 

Check out Matthew’s website here

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Photography: getting back to basics

Matthew Graham June  2014 

As a keen photographer and art lover, I’ve often asked myself which of the two I prefer. By art, of course, I mean painting, though photography, as a form of visual expression, is undoubtedly an art form and is apt to give as much pleasure as anything else within the confines of a frame. But I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be able to accept the parity that photography seems to have achieved with painting.

These days, it seems all too easy to gain artistic prestige on the basis of taking a few photos. In an age saturated with digitally-enhanced images, art acts as a more honest visual refuge, embracing us with a tangible humanity that invites us to think in a more reflective way. Art touches us in a way photography cannot.

But photography has its place and I love it. Most people have a relationship with it to some degree, and digital technology and the inclusion of a camera on most mobile phones has spread the snapping habit. It is ingrained in modern culture. Yet, as art forms go, photography is a young one. Its starting point is traditionally viewed as the year the world’s oldest surviving photo, View from the Window at Le Gras, by Nicéphore Niépce, came into being around 1826. Though the Greeks and others along the path of history had a knowledge of optics and could create an image using the camera obscura (pinhole camera), they could not preserve it. Inventive zeal and the application of chemistry during the 19th century eventually solved the problem of holding down a scene from reality, of fixing it permanently in order to create a durable image that could be reproduced many times over. The photograph – literally ‘light drawing’ –  and photography were born.

The complexity of taking a photograph during the 19th century gave photographers a claim to artisanship: calotype, wet-plate collodion, dry gelatin plate – photography’s early language reinforces its status as art. In addition, the cameras were large and crafted in brass and wood and the chemicals used to bind the images to glass plates, and then to extract them, had dangerous names like silver nitrate, which had to be handled directly by the photographer.

Roll film and the first film camera, developed toward the end of the century by George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, changed everything. Eastman made photographic equipment affordable to the masses and freed amateurs from photography’s intrinsic chemical aspect. The chemicals required to produce an exposure were in place on the film strip, while image processing could now take place by passing your roll of film to a photographic laboratory. During the 20th century, however, professional photographers would come to be defined not only by the cost of their cameras but by the visceral link they maintained with photographic chemistry in the darkroom.

Though film photography in the 21st century may not be dead – the red safelights of darkrooms still flicker on and off in some quarters, and Ilford continues to produce black and white film in the depths of Cheshire – something has changed. A rather big something. Digital technology has revolutionised photography completely. Completely. Computers, the internet and the real-time availability of the photographic image has taken photography into realms that George Eastman could never have dreamed of. Now, we plunder it shamelessly in the manner of propaganda to add kudos to our social media pages: taking selfies, snapping food in restaurants (a peculiarly female habit), smiling with partners to advertise current togetherness levels and revealing our latest location in an irritating, faux-blasé manner. Digital technology, it is true, has made photography immediate and fun. The visual downside to this, though, is that across the internet there is a proliferation of bad photography that would once have remained firmly in a Supersnaps wallet somewhere in the attic. To rub salt into the wound, the loathsome Instagram positively encourages people to take grainy pictures with awful filters. Photography appears to have taken a beating through its democratisation and inextricable link to social media.

We now have a generation of people who have no experience of film photography. Though digital technology has undoubtedly made the business of obtaining an image easier, the process is a more clinical and detached one. Before digital photography, you would take 24 or 36 exposures on a single roll of film and wait days for Boots to develop it. Now a camera allows you to store hundreds of shots on a memory card which you can use over and over again. You can then view those hundreds of photos courtesy of your computer in a matter of minutes. Remarkable, really.

Or is it? Many photographers are becoming increasingly dependent on photo-processing software such as Photoshop and Lightroom, not to make slight improvements here and there but to transform an image completely. The magazine section of your local WHSmith is stuffed full of glossy magazines devoted to this post-processing, all purporting to offer ‘essential’ advice on how to get the best image from your computer. What is the point, though, of taking a photograph then sitting for hours in front of a screen trying to make it better? Isn’t the idea – and ideal – of photography to preserve reality, to trap those photons art cannot? Worst of all, we seem to have developed the habit of elevating software-savvy charlatans to the status of ‘whiz’ – even ‘artist’ – amazed at their know-how while forgetting that, in the main, they are people who probably cannot draw.

We need to get back to basics. Those who love photography understand that it’s an art, and practising an art ought to be a pleasure. Did Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the great early photographers, tamper so assiduously with her stunning Victorian portraits? David Bailey, too, is great precisely because of his lack of interest in composition and his post-processing lightness of touch. For sure, Photoshop and its ilk have a place in the vapid, airbrushed world of commercial photography, but for more personal photography do as little as possible with your images. If you’re not happy with a photo, try cropping it or return to the scene a little wiser at a later date and take another shot. Any good photographer will tell you that there’s nothing more satisfying than taking a photo that requires little or no editing. It may sound obvious, but if you have to spend an inordinate amount time working on a photo to make it look good, it’s probably not a good photo. Just delete it.

A balanced, not overly-composed shot in colour or black and white will always win the day. With photography, like most things in life, less is always more.

By Matthew Graham

Main image, chosen by the Editor of Northern Soul, is by Matthew Graham (Country lane, Downham © Matthew Graham, 2014)