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What was the one that did it for you?
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The picture that you saw and thought, that’s what I want to do…
I remember being in an airport, years ago, delayed on the way to New York, much too excited to read a book,
so I went to the news agents and bought a, Special Edition of Q magazine. The 100 Greatest Rock’N’Roll Photographs.
Not the kind of thing I normally would have bought, I think the cover image of Madonna (by Rankin) might have been
what attracted me to it in the first place… I think I can remember listening to the ‘Ray of Light’ album a bit around that time…Anyway, it was full of pictures and just what I needed…
I kept coming back to a picture by, Robert Ellis, of metal fans at an AC/DC gig, it was taken in October 1979 in Glasgow
I know this picture is just way too small, but I haven’t been able to find a larger version on the web, I did try to scan it
from the mag, but it didn’t work as it was a two page spread.The thing I loved about it was, the feeling, the emotion, the involvement, and the insight of Ellis to turn his camera on the
fans.
In the mag he described the scene, explaining that the stage was so high, if the fans were to get close, they wouldn’t have
seen anything. He use the space to shoot them, saying “their air guitars were irresistible”
I remember looking at it and thinking… I’d love to do that, feel that emotion and capture it… It’s not the scene, it’s the atmosphere.There were also several pictures by Jill Furmanovsky I just love her work,
all of it… I later bought her book ‘The Moment’ which is still one of my favorite photography books…
Here are a few from her that I couldn’t stop looking at…Jeff Buckley
Joy Division
She said of the picture of Buckley, his manager was grumpy and didn’t want her to take the picture, Buckley whispered in her ear “be quick”
and sat down at the table… The flowers had been pushed into his hand by a fan as he walked off stage.
She shot four frames, and said the light was terrible…She also described his charm, and how as he walked away, she felt as if she was in love.
Furmanovsky is most famous for her work with Pink Floyd, and again it’s hard to find some of these pictures on the web, but another one that I still
go back and look at is a portrait of Dave Gilmour, looking directly into her lens.
In her book, she wrote, how Pink Floyd were her idols, and how she couldn’t believe it when she got the job of going on tour with them, she described
the band members individually, and said how Gilmour “made her weak at the knees” that feeling is clear when you see the picture, it’s a bummer I
couldn’t find it, but I will bring the books to the Mournes trip, if anyone would like to look at them.The Joy Division picture, I just liked the arrangement and the beer cans and the fags.
So, they are what did it for me… The pictures that made me flirt with the idea of photography.
When I look at them now, I think I probably feel differently about them…
I’m looking at the tones and how they were printed and thinking about the settings and maybe even what film was used, technical things, but back then
it was all about the connection between the photographer and the subject, and everything else in-between… The atmosphere.So, here is an open invite to post the one or ones that did it for you…
Edit: It’s a pity I couldn’t post the pictures directly in the thread, didn’t work, must be a copyright thing.
I can’t find the specific photo but I was a McInroy wannabee. I saw his website back in the old
days, when we were both climbers, and I said to myself, “I could do that”. I’m still a big fan of his
but his recent oeuvre lacks the character that was evident in his Velvia days.
If you can find his older pics on his website – before his cave and rock/sunset/woolly water days –
there are some really nice shots there.Andy, if you’re reading this, don’t be offended, you’ll always be my hero.
Going to Monza gp in 1999 and picking up a copy of F1-Racing magazine….Darren Heath’s images were mega then and different than usual boring head-on/pan shots, everything shot on Velvia, the colours just popped off the page. There wasn’t a particular shot, all of them helped me decide shooting F1 was what I wanted. Getting there 3 years later was a combination of hard work learning to shoot on film, spending so much money on developing and kit and luck getting to know the right people!
Good thread Sinead-
I was taking pictures for a long time before I saw this one-
but for some reason this one stood out as all that might be possible from a picture-I bought a poster of it, and studied it for hours-
Cafe de Flore au Tot le Matin,
I think it was called, by Jean Loup Sieff-I cant say it was a particular photograph that started me on the road to
photography, my Dad was always in the dark room and and I used to love
to sit on the high stool in the corner and watch him develop the film, it was
like magic, the smells and the eerie red bulb I loved it. Never got into the
film developing myself but always loved to have a camera handy. My sons
bought me my first digital camera about ten years ago and it all kicked off
again, it was a Fuji Finepix 3 megapixel and I loved it like magic all over
again :)What an excellent idea for a thread…
I can’t say with any degree of certainty that one particular image was the one that
did it for me, although there are some that stand out in that they convinced me there was
more to be had from photography than a mere pictorial record of a moment in time, a sort
of paper reminder of a particular instant…A picture might record an instant, a decisive moment, like Capa’s famous ‘Loyalist Militiaman
at the Moment of Death’, but at the same time it might be timeless, like this one by Dorothea Lange…Three years ago when I started out messing about with photography I saw this in a book in the
art section of the library, and although the photograph is from 1936 it’s a scene that might have
been taken yesterday…And then there are those images that you just want to explore for hours, a captured instant in which
many things are going on simultaneously, some related, some not. Like the image posted above by
Joseph I suppose. Though one that I find difficult to tear my eyes away from would be this one,
Massimo Vitali’s ‘Rosignano, Three Women’, from 1995…Don’t you just love that industrial background…
There are too many pictures to pin it down to one in particular, and I know that I’ll keep finding new
ones to amaze and inspire me…Rob.
Saw this image in The Gallery of Photography in 1979…
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…along with a whole host of fantastic land and seascapes by the great English photographer John Davies.
I was the only one in the Gallery at the time and I was completely blown away by the quality of the images, prints and light etc. so I asked John Osman (the owner) if he knew how the photographer captured the images. He said, “why don’t you ask him yourself?”
I turned around and John Davies himself was standing by a wall of his exquisitely printed images. He was a complete gentleman and we must have spent about 45 minutes going through almost every image and he was very open about his techniques equipment and motivation for these pics.
From that day on I knew that I had to be more involved in photography.
I’ll never forget that exhibition. :)
Great replies…
Beautiful pictures too…
Pete, Mark… Do you have links for the photographers you mention? I’d love to see them.
great topic. It wasn’t really 1 particular picture that did it for me either, but I remember being shown some stuff by Chris Clor and it really opened my eyes to the possibilities and brought me into the world of photography. This is one of my favourites by him.
jessthespringer wrote:
Pete, Mark… Do you have links for the photographers you mention? I’d love to see them.
Here’s an example, if not the specific shot….
Andy probably wouldn’t even show this to people now he’s discovered woolly water.
I cant say that it was a photograph that gave me the bug
I was doing a charity cycle ride from my town to Malin head
and while going along the road having a hot half in each pub on route
I saw scenery that I have passed by a million times in the car but
never noticed it until I was on the bike going past slowly and was amazed
so with in a week I had my first DSLR and snapping mad woolly water and allCathal
It was more my own pathetic efforts with progressively more expensive point’n’shoots that drove me to learn more. Eventually I found the cameras worked fine :) I was the one at fault (still am too!). As this realistion sunk in I caught the wildlife bug in Canada when Black Bears kept popping up looking to be photographed.
ART!
I grew up not far from Newgrange in Co.Meath and with my keen interest in Art especially Jim Fitzpatrick’s
work and the surreal work of Salvador Dali, I transposed those influences into experimenting madly with my
first camera in 1981, an Olympus point and shoot. I decided a long time ago to document Photographically the
various historical megalithic monuments around the country (still not finished) and thats what got me into
Landscapes and so on from there.dont remember the first photo which influenced me, so I suppose it was Art which got me into Photography,
painting and sketching took too much time,click of a button – instant art.
Still experimenting . . .
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It wasn’t really one picture that did it for me but more lots of pictures.
Also the technology (Developing and Printing) of it appealed to me. The idea of making a picture.
However working with cheap plastic Kodak Instamatic cameras (which even had plastic lenses)
and / negligible control over exposure etc. getting any kind of decent results was frustrating.Later in London I worked for a magazine printing company. Amongst its titles
were Amateur Photographer, Hairdressers Journal, Nursing Mirror
and a couple of Motorboat and Yachting mags and a number of Car MagsUsually we could get a free copies of the mags – where the production runs were slightly over run.
I started reading Amateur Photography during lunch breaks or taking it home in the evening.
Photography became addictive. It still is! :)
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