Category Archives: Photography

By [email protected] (Chris Britcher)

© Kent Online

Taking a look back on my mobile phone, I can chart the pictorial history of my children’s growth from their childhood through to the fine adults they have become today.

Looking back on my own youth, photographs charting my teenage years are – and this is by no means a bad thing – few and far between.

© Kent Online
You didn’t really see this then…you certainly don’t now

I have had a fundamentally flawed, life-long, fashion sense and some ludicrous haircuts I sported are best remembered by no-one. Least of all me.

Mind you, with so little hair left now, it would be nice to reflect on what a thatch I once had.

But in terms of pictures of nights out with my friends? Almost none. Ditto trips to music festivals or the such like. Granted, family occasions would catch my metamorphosis from boy to man occasionally, but otherwise the tail end of my teens and early 20s made previous few appearances on film.

However, today’s generation are awash with images of themselves, their friends and their surroundings.

The advent of top-notch cameras on today’s smartphones means images are snapped left, right and centre. No longer do we have to pick and choose our moments. No longer are we restricted in the sheer number of shots we can take.

© Kent Online
Today we are all armed with top notch cameras in our pockets courtesy of the smartphone

I will not be alone in recalling the days when you got 24 pictures to a roll of film (or 36 if you wanted to push the boat out).

It was an era where a shot taken in poor light, too close, or slightly blurred, was not worth the risk. You had 24 shots and if you mucked one of them up, well it hurt you in the pocket.

It wasn’t as though the process was particularly expensive. A roll of film in 1990 would set you back about £2.50 and developing anywhere between £3-6 depending on how quickly you wanted the prints back.

Photo developers were a staple of the high street back then. Many trips to the upstairs of Boots in Ashford town centre (at the opposite end to where they used to sell records) were taken to drop off a film and collect it a few days later. Often only to bemoan some poorly framed shots or ones where my finger somehow managed to infringe over the lens.

Then, the good ones would make it to the photo album – to be forever stored on a dusty bookshelf.

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Once upon a time, we relied on photo albums for our most precious pictorial memories

Talking of which, it reminds me of the darkrooms of the first newsrooms I worked in. A secret world of red lights, trays of fluid and pictures hanging up to dry – developing those shots was an art in many ways. Enter at the wrong time and expect an expensive Nikon to be thrown hard at your head (as light exposed all the film and thus ruined them…hence the phrase darkroom). None of this instant image on the screen business to check the quality was good and then emailing it on. Press photographers had to trust their instinct, hope for the best and use roll upon roll of film in pursuit of the right image.

But back to my youth, taking a camera around with you wasn’t really an option. It was something of a faff. Even the ‘pocket’ ones were lumpy affairs. And if you’d spent some money on a decent one, what you didn’t then want was it being bashed about on a night out in your coat pocket.

So we didn’t bother.

Nor, for that matter, did anyone at the time bemoan the lack of anything to capture the moment. We just enjoyed each others companies and chatted. In fact, on a trip to the Glastonbury Festival almost 30 years ago, we took a camera to capture the experience – only for someone to break into our tent and swipe it. Lesson learned.

Better just consign everything to the old memory bank. Which, of course, starts to erode when you get older. Which makes the loss of those photograph opportunities something to regret.

© Kent Online
Granted, pictures from my youth wouldn’t look THIS old…at least they were (mostly) in colour

Mind you, I was also woefully lazy. I know I took rolls of film of a tour around the old Wembley Stadium and a trip around the Millennium Dome in its first inglorious weeks of being open at the dawn on the century. I meant to get the films developed, of course I did, but life got in the way and they got lost. Little bits of personal and cultural history forever gone. Clearly it left a mark as 25 years on, I still kick myself.

But not any more.

Now we have quality cameras literally in our pockets at all times. At any given moment our friends and family are capturing us on camera and we them. Along with the sights and scenes around us.

And so often it is the backdrop of those images which will enthral folk in the years to come. How often does a local village or town Facebook page show an old picture of how the high street looked 20 or 30 years ago and everyone chimes in with memories of the shops or buildings that once stood but are there no longer.

Chances are, if we’d have more than 24 shots on a roll of film, we might have taken some images of town centres had we known their popularity a generation or so later.

© Kent Online
We rely on the ‘cloud’ to keep our precious digital images safe

For today’s youngsters. having such a wealth of pictures provides them with a permanent record of their lives. All the highs and lows which make up the tapestry of their lives.

I often hear the complaint that we don’t look at pictures anymore – that we snap them and never look at them. Nonsense. They’re all on your phone which, I’m reliably informed, we’re all glued to in this day and age.

Of course we look at the pictures – and certainly more often than we do those dusty old volumes of yesteryear. Or we splash out and get them turned into professional looking photo books.

Would I have liked more pictures of me in my youth? Hair style, complexion and fashion not withstanding, then yes, I think I would. As much for the places captured in the frame as for my ugly mug. Would I have liked an iPhone quality camera on a night out in the 1980s and 90s? Again, yes. There are friends, faces and places which my memory is losing its grip on.

As long, of course, as the ‘clouds’ we are all relying on storing our images don’t just go pop overnight.

Lexar is a trusted name in digital storage and has just announced that they have received the award for the “Best memory card” from Photography news readers for their Lexar® Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II Cards GOLD Series.

Once a year, the readers and editors of Photography News vote on their favourite photography tech—everything from cameras to accessories. The Lexar® Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II Cards GOLD Series was nominated along with seven other excellent cards and won the best card award.

According to Photography News, “the need for reliable and fast memory cards is greater than ever. That’s just what you get with the Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card.” “The Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card has the powerful performance that professional creators need to capture stunning photos and cinema-quality video while also delivering 300MB/s1read speed to accelerate post-production2,” said Joey Lopez, Director of Brand Marketing.

The Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card is compatible with UHS-II and backwards-compatible with UHS-I cameras and comes in capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB.

It is available online for the following MSRP:
32GB—$49.99
64GB—$79.99
128GB— $169.99
256GB—$269.99

You can check out our review of the Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC/SDXC UHS-II here…

The Central Missouri Foster Care and Adoption Association will offer free family photography sessions next month in Jefferson City.

The organization has scheduled to hold a full day of photo taking sessions for foster, adoptive and kinship families on April 1, according to a CMFCAA news release. The location for the Jefferson City sitting has yet to be announced. The family portraits are going to be on 10-by-10-inch canvases.

Each photo-taking session is set to last at most 30 minutes, with the photographer taking photos of the family and individual children. Interested families can sign up free of charge at signupgenius.com/go/10C094AA8A829A1F8C07-family, according to the news release.

All time slots between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. have been filled already, according to the online sign-up form. Interested families can email CMFCAA Communications Manager Gerry Tritz to get on the waiting list or be notified for the next photography event, according to the news release.

CMFCAA will hold similar sessions March 18 in Rolla, as well as March 25 in Columbia and Osage Beach. Some time slots are still open for those locations, according to the sign-up form.

The Rolla sitting is expected to take place at the Lions Club Park, 1061 S. Bishop Ave.; the Columbia sitting at the Shelter Gardens, 1817 W. Broadway; and the Osage Beach sitting at Studio T Images, 1104 Runabout Drive.

These events are only open to relevant families in the 24 counties the organization serves: Audrain, Benton, Boone, Callaway, Camden, Crawford, Cooper, Cole, Dallas, Dent, Gasconade, Howard, Laclede, Miller, Maries, Moniteau, Montgomery, Morgan, Osage, Pettis, Phelps, Pulaski, Randolph and Texas.

Apart from giving the participating families their photos, the organization also plans to use of the photos taken to decorate its offices in Central Missouri, according to the news release.

The organization is a nonprofit that is founded in 2007 to provide a variety of services to foster, adoptive and kinship families in Central Missouri, such as training for foster and adoptive parents, according to its website. It served 1,276 children in 2022, according to the organization’s online magazine.

Each time she completes a piece of art, Tawny Chatmon performs a quiet rite.

“I say a prayer over the work before sending it out into the world, so that it does what I intended — to positively impact everyone who views it,” said Chatmon, a photography-based artist in Annapolis.

Public reaction suggests that her prayers are answered. Chatmon’s art has appeared in museums and festivals from New York to Vienna. Her works grace the homes of celebrities like Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and Jay-Z, and have sold for as much as $55,000.

Chatmon’s best efforts — multilayered fusions of photographs and paint — portray confident young Black girls, with exaggerated hairstyles, wearing resplendent garb with intricate designs. She paints their gowns, flecked with 24K gold leaf, onto the photos, a painstaking process that can take months.

Her creations, she said, are both a nod to Black heritage and a retort to those critical of the embellished coiffures trending among Black girls today.

“I want to portray that Black children are precious, Black hair is beautiful and the Black family is strong,” said Chatmon, 43, who is married and the mother of three.

It’s not the career she envisioned, growing up in Prince George’s County. Then, acting came first.

“I told my high school teacher that I would thank him [on camera] for the first Oscar that I received,” she said. When the stage fancy cooled, Chatmon’s parents bought her a 35 mm camera that she used to begin doing small commercial photography jobs for $50 apiece.

“Photography just grew on me,” she said. “At first, it was something that put food on the table. That changed in 2004, when my son was born. Now, my camera had a purpose; it was in his face every day. I could capture every amazing little thing that he was doing.”

Friends and family liked her work and had her chronicle their kids. Chatmon’s reputation grew. Businesses took note; both the YMCA and National Education Association sought her savvy. Motherhood, she said, had lit the fire:

“I went from not even thinking of photographing children to [knowing] that was all I wanted to do.”

[ Annapolis artist Tawny Chatmon is a voice of ‘Black resistance and joy’ at Banneker-Douglass exhibit ]

If a brand-new life gave her art meaning, a tragic death gave it soul. In 2010, Chatmon’s father, James, succumbed to prostate cancer.

“He wasn’t afraid to die, but of his grandchildren not remembering him,” she said. “I photographed [the upbeat times of] my dad’s nine-month battle, from him and my mom singing to him playing ‘Barbies’ with my daughter — thinking we’d have a story to encourage Black men to take prostate cancer seriously. I never assumed the worst would occur.”

His passing helped sharpen Chatmon’s focus.

“Death became real for me; I thought, ‘My life has to have some kind of purpose.’ I told my husband that I couldn’t do commercial photography anymore.”

Now her art celebrates all of Black culture, through the lens of its children and their proud ethnic roots.

“I feel I am contributing to the world my kids are living in,” Chatmon said. “And when I die, I am leaving something important behind.”