January 2025

This journal records the detail of my mastery of art photography through 10,000 hour deliberate practice

Hours 9,359 to 9,440

(February 2025)

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31^st January 2025

Hours 9,439 to 9,440

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30^th January 2025

Hours 9,436 to 9,438

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29^th January 2025

Hours 9,431 to 9,435

(2h) Amersham Coffee meeting, detailed discussions:

1. Mark Seymore, following his talk on Monday including his recommendation of his favourite photographer, the Canadian, Magnum Photographer, Larry Towell
2. Jeremy Schrire, whose, largely monochrome, street photography is of a similar style and quality to Mark’s
3. Laurie Turner, superb Constructionist images created for the Beyond Group’s “Primary Colours” challenge – of my Primary Colour Images, Laurie was less impressed with those that contained an objective element, i.e., any photographic component

(1h) updating this journal

(2h) Amersham Colour Group – comments on my images below:

Image	…..	Comment
		“Helsinki Nocturn Dyptych”
		“Helsinki Diurn Diptych” The eye jumps between the pictures and this adds interest I like the sense of flow between the images
		“Magritte Door I” Colours blend very well Like the way the man’s feet blend into the background giving the impression that he was really there Looks like a portal to another dimension
		“Magritte Door II” The lighter top half of the image gives the impression that the man is coming out from the background With both of these images I got the impression that the people commenting felt that I had only added the man to an existing background

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28^th January 2025

Hours 9,427 to 9,430

(1h) creating the “Inner Sight” collage for the RA’s Summer Exhibition

(1h) processing and submitting images for this Wednesday’s Colour Zoom meeting of the Amersham Photographic Society

(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – Set Subject, “Reflections”, PDI competition

Image	…..	Comment
		“Flam Reflections” 18
		“Bergen Morning” 16 Very abstract (which he did not think was a good thing) Should have been in the Open section but was erroneously entered in the Set-Subject – but no big deal
		“Self-Portrait with Philosopher” 18 Should have been in the “Reflection” set-subject section but was erroneously entered in Open
		“Zebra Mother Feeding Calf” 16 Would have preferred the image with less space above the animals

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27^th January 2025

Hours 9,423 to 9,426

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – excellent lecture by Mark Seymore on his Travel/ Street Photography – Mark has 4 FRPS distinctions and has been a professional photographer for nearly 40 years

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26^th January 2025

Hours 9,421 to 9,422

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25^th January 2025

Hours 9,419 to 9,420

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24^th January 2025

Hours 9,416 to 9,418

(1h) researching the Student riots in Paris May 1986, which is frequently referenced by Mark Fisher as the last meaningful student protest or uprising by the proletariate as it escalated to involve c. eleven million students, teachers, trade unionists and workers of all kinds. However, my interest was prompted by finding that Mark Polizzotti had dedicated the last chapter of his book “Why Surrealism Matters” to this event as it marks two key events:

• the high point: surrealists are by definition anti-establishment revolutionaries. The two months of riots spawned vast amounts of surrealist street art and graffiti. The most famous slogan “Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach” is profoundly surrealist
• the end: at least the end of the confinement of surrealism to the group calling themselves “the surrealist” as the art was now everywhere. The French Surrealist group was officially disbanded a few months later – André Breton had died before the riots (September 1966)

YouTubes from the 50 year anniversary:

• BBC Newsnight: “The legacy of May ‘68″
• France 24: “Talkin’ about a revolution: France mulls legacy of May 68 protests“

(1h) working on the “Surrealism 100 Years Later” post

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23^rd January 2025

Hours 9,413 to 9,415

(2h) starting a post “Surrealism 100 Years Later”

The works of Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Freud (1856-1939), relating to the individual’s role in determining their own destiny, were adopted by the political right and are currently used to support the neoliberal agenda in the US and elsewhere. Mark Fisher claimed that, Freud in particular, under values the influence of societal context, as expounded by Jaques Lacan (1901-1981). Nietzsche was lionised by the Nazis particularly his concept of the oubermench whereas Freud was persecuted for his Jewish heritage

(½h) The Living Philosophy YouTube “Carl Jung: What is the Collective Unconscious?” – the idea that much of the unconscious is shared. Whilst true in the case of the psychological aspect of instinct, Jung is generally discredited due to his beliefs in mysticism and the occult

(½h) prep PDI’s for next week’s “Reflections” competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club

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22^nd January 2025

Hours 9,411 to 9,412

(2h) Amersham Coffee club

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21^st January 2025

Hours 9,407 to 9,410

(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club, excellent lecture by Mark and Buckley-Sharp

• the key to retouching is always to under-do it
• selectively sharpen a detail and the whole image appears sharper
• sometime mistake or problems can be embraced as a feature, e.g., blur or noise
• get the colours right!

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20^th January 2025

Hours 9,405 to 9,406

(1h) producing “Self-Portrait with Philosopher”, left, and “Flam Reflections”, below

Both potential entries for next week’s “Reflections” set subject competition at the Stoke Poges Photographic Club

(1h) Amersham Photographic Society – zoom talk by Ruth Grindrod “My Vision, My Practice” – Norfolk based landscape photographer

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19^th January 2025

Hour 9,405

(1h) updating this journal

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18^th January 2025

Hours 9,403 to 9,404

Kertész’s photo reminds me of Edward Hopper’s “Rooms by the Sea” which is also frequently interpreted as a self-portrait; largely on the basis of Hopper’s adherence to Goethe’s philosophy that every work is a self portrait (see my blog post “Revised Top 10 Painters“)

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17^th January 2025

Hours 9,401 to 9,402

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16^th January 2025

Hours 9,397 to 9,400

(1h) creating revised versions of the Sunny and Stormy Eye images (originally based on Magritte’s False mirror), and changing the text on the Magritte’s Pipe (based on M’s Treachery of Images) to English as this relates more directly to my Statement of Intent implying that the images are more than merely copies of Magritte’s paintings

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) YouTube: “Jacques Lacan in 10 Minutes”

• known as the French Freud
• structuralist who differentiates between the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real
• develops Freud’s concept of the Ego to be less individualistic/ autonomous, and more influenced by collective social and structural forces

Neoliberal ideology tends to emphasise personal responsibility and autonomy, whilst downplaying the influence of systemic inequalities

(2h) Amersham PiC Group

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15^th January 2025

Hours 9,395 to 9,396

(½h) updating this journal

(1h) Amersham Coffee meeting

(½h) watching Crash Course Theatre: “Dada, Surrealism, and Symbolism“

• symbolism preceded Dada and advocated:
  • truth in excess and extravagance
  • truth in apparent chaos and insanity
  • truth in subjective experience
  • platitudes and natural banality are dangerous
  • we need to be ever more audacious
• the first/ most important Surrealist play “The Breasts of Tiresias”
• “Ubu Roi” predates the above and is so base as to exceed the limitations of any of the art manifestos
  • symbolist in its focus on chaos and excess
  • extremely scatological
  • first play to be openly hostile to the audience who it shows to be bourgeois and stupid

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14^th January 2025

Hours 9,392 to 9,394

(2h) Stoke Poges Photographic Club – sometimes the judge is just not attuned to one’s style

Image	…..	Comment
		“Henry Moore’s Shed” 17 Only positive comments made – damming with faint praise
		“Conversation” 15 I just don’t get this [other people commented that it wasn’t my best]
		“Jardin du Luxembourg” 16 Would have been better with a different sky and more detail in the trees [Kevin Day, member of SPPC and a experienced judge, thought it was one of the top images of the evening]

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13^th January 2025

Hours 9,389 to 9,391

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) YouTube – Great Art Explained: “Van Gogh’s Last Painting“, the 1890, Tree Roots, dark and gloomy expressing his mood prior to taking his own life (the theory of him having been murdered by two local youths is currently discredited). The painting, through its tight composition, shows his influence by Japanese artists such as Hokusai.

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – PDI competition, my entries below:

Image	…..	Comment
		“Man and Woman” 17 Doesn’t quite work – a bit one sided. Cut off behind the man’s ear and flip the image
		“Portrait of Survivors” Held back – 18 Not sure judge noticed the people

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12^th January 2025

Hours 9,386 to 9,388

(1h) creating “Bauhaus shapes colours and sizes” below

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11^th January 2025

Hours 9,384 to 9,385

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10^th January 2025

Hours 9,382 to 9,383

(1h) selecting and processing PDI for next Monday’s competition at the Amersham Photographic Society

(1h) processing and ordering prints on the three different paper types for my RA Summer Exhibition entry

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9^th January 2025

Hours 9,380 to 9,381

(½h) updating this journal

(½h) opening an entry for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition for 2 “Collage of interwoven photographic papers (photorag, baryta and metallic)”

(1h) processing both prints and PDI’s for next week’s Stoke Poges Photographic Club’s competition, set-subject “Broken”

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8^th January 2025

Hours 9,378 to 9,379

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7^th January 2025

Hour 9,377

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6^th January 2025

Hours 9,374 to 9,376

(½h) creating the alternative “Primary Magritte II” above

(½h) creating a Flickr album for the above series of images and updating this journal

(2h) Amersham Photographic Society – Lecture by Kevin Pigney ‘Passion for Wildlife”

• depth of focus follows the inverse square law. So if a lens give a 30cm depth of focus at 20m, at 10m the depth of focus is only 7.5cm
• particularly in lower light, expose to the right as this tends to create images with less noise
• on dull days create high key images by intentionally over exposing in camera

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5^th January 2025

Hours 9,372 to 9,373

(½h) shooting the Elf Village on Stoke Poges Bell’s Hill

(1½h) creating a “Primary Magritte” image combining the theme of the last few days with Magritte’s symbolism

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4^th January 2025

Hours 9,370 to 9,371

(2h) creating a new version of the “Primary Shapes and Colours” which I renamed “Primary Namibia” and in the same vain, “Primary Northumberland” below

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3^rd January 2025

Hours 9,366 to 9,369

(2h) updating this journal and starting the “Winter 2024/ 25” post and updating my “Revised Thoughts on Art” post to include thoughts and ideas from the 1^st, below

(1h) BBC Art Documentary: “Bauhaus 100“

(1h) producing “Primary Colours and Shapes 4” below, partly inspired by the Bauhaus documentary, but mainly for the next Amersham Beyond Challenge

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2^nd January 2025

Hours 9,361 to 9,365

Woke up with the realisation that the reason we don’t see the Northern Lights as well as a camera does is because the human eye relies on cones to see colour and rods for low light which detect only levels (or changes of levels) in luminescence. Digital cameras only have colour sensors, so even at the very lowest light levels, images are still in colour

[The above is merely a theory – it appears to fit the data, but I have no idea if it is the primary reason why this phenomena occurs]

(1h) reviewing and slightly updating my “Lab Colour” post first published on the 1^st June 2020

(2h) Amersham Coffee and lunch groups

(2h) Amersham Beyond

My dog playing chess images, created on December 30th for Challenge #49 Cheer up!, were admired for their technical skill, even my Steve Brabner who is the undisputed master of Photoshop at Amersham

The best entry of the evening was Laurie Turner’s Constructivist work which was inspired by Sir Terry Frost (British Abstract Artist 1915-2003) who created brightly coloured work that inspires positive emotion

New Challenge #50 Primary Colours

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1^st January 2025

Hours 9,359 to 9,360

(1h) Great Art Explained YouTube: “What is Art? Marcel Duchamp” history of the definition of art:

• 12^th Century, Oxford English Dictionary: art is “Skill at doing anything as a result of knowledge and practice”
• Charles Batteux:”Fine arts are fine or beautiful things (‘which please’ of themselves), always ‘in imitation of nature’ and requiring genius” (1746 Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe (The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle))
• Duchamp’s Fountain and other Ready Mades defied the claim that art must be beautiful; instead they are art because;
  • selecting an object is a creative act
  • when an object’s practical function is removed, it becomes something else
  • the act of presenting the object and giving it a title, introduces “a new thought,” thereby giving it a new meaning

Possible creator of the Fountain, rather than Duchamp himself, might have been his friend, the Dadaist, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, although a different woman actually sent it in and Duchamp has always claimed authorship

(1h) two photography YouTubes (both a bit basic but sometimes it’s good to go back to basics):

• Cody Mitchell “9 Years of Camera Setting Knowledge in 29 Minutes” the exposure triangle and some creative ideas including having somebody out of focus in front of an in-focus landscape
• Sean Tucker: “Street Photography: Practical Advice for a Good Mentality”
  • travel light and wear good shoes
  • if stuck in a rut, try a different focal length, otherwise keep to the same one
  • don’t worry about hit rate – take the shot – why not?
  • walk more and visually exercise even if you don’t have a camera with you
  • just wander
  • trust your own opinions over those of beginners on Instagram
  • remain curious – about everything, read widely and gain inspiration from different sources

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(December 2024)