Why This photo?

SEATTLE (AP) — In baseball, the postgame Gatorade bucket dunk is a common occurrence after a big win, such as a walk-off. It’s something we anticipate and prepare to make photos of after each home win just in case, but you never know exactly how it’s going to play out.

While we need to photograph and send the “regular” action as part of the game report, I’m glad anytime I can highlight nice light, details or reactions when covering baseball. Here, the photo of Mitch Haniger’s actual game-winning hit was nothing special. In this case, the reaction was what we were after.

How I made this photo

While the chosen Mariners player is getting interviewed postgame, we keep an eye on the dugout directly to our left to see if anyone picks up a Gatorade bucket to douse their teammate. Midway through, I saw shortstop J.P. Crawford grab a bucket.

In Seattle, because the television cameras that are used to film the postgame interviews are located along the first base well — the area where the photographers work next to the dugout — we are mostly stuck trying to make images from that space. We’re usually just hoping to find a window where we don’t get blocked by the on-field reporter and don’t block the TV cameras (a cardinal sin).

I’m always trying to find ways to make clean images out of chaos. Postgame I will sometimes choose to stay with a 70-200mm lens, keeping the shutter speed over 1/1000th, and get as low as I can. This helps maximize the amount of clean sky in the background and creates more separation than a wider 16-35mm lens. Sometimes it’s a tradeoff, and I sacrificed a nice full-body water dunk photo for the above image.

Why the photo works

Cropping, cropping, cropping. It’s a huge part of sports photography and this photo was no exception. Sometimes you make the photo within the crop — without it, it’s an average or even throwaway image. If you can find the right crop, it can make all the difference. Two of my best baseball photos from last season also came from extreme crops that I’m glad I found — otherwise they might be in the trash.

As Haniger was dodging the water, he ended up in the middle of a wonky frame. I chose to push in quite a bit to focus more on his expression, straighten the image and toss the distracting elements.

While I like peak action as much as the next person, sometimes the penultimate moment can be fun as well. We can see the anticipation and a bit of a wince as Haniger tries to cheekily dodge the blob of water headed towards him. A lot of sports is really about the emotion. ___ For more extraordinary AP photography, click here.

Lindsey Wasson, The Associated Press

 ‘Amaranthine’, meaning everlasting, is the new series of self-portraits by Nikon photographer Helin Bereket, which was inspired by Nikon’s latest campaign ‘Standing the Test of Time’. Last year, Nikon tasked photographers across Europe to showcase their understanding of an image that would stand the test of time, using its new mirrorless camera, the Nikon Z f. 

With props from Charlie Chaplin’s 1915 Tramp silent film, make-up and swimming costumes from the early 1920s and 1950s and a 1960s brutalist architecture backdrop, Bereket photographed herself as an actor who embodies different styles and eras. She plays all roles of the story, which is polychronic, dissonant and multilayered. 

Striking different poses, Bereket blends the aesthetics of classical sculpture, grand manner portraiture, silent film, slapstick, traditional Japanese arts and contemporary fashion photography. At times, the actress is gracious and monumental, at others contemplative, calm and peaceful. Sometimes she even teases the viewer. But, ultimately, it’s clear that she is a serious entertainer. 

Staged in a monochromatic image taken on the Nikon Z f camera, her images transpose us to a bygone era, yet nothing is ‘old’ in them. As her audience, we recognise the modern architecture and the cutting-edge photo technology deployed and so we begin to believe that we might encounter the subject in the image today. While her clothes and demeanour look timeless, they could equally be thoroughly modern. 

Bereket recycles not the past but the present, our current urban space, style techniques and technology, creating a confusing structure of time, which is open to infinite interpretations. By employing elements from the past to confuse and intrigue viewers as to when the images were taken, Bereket’s self-portraits challenge the audience to see beyond the surface.

Tech details

Camera: Nikon Z f
Lens: NIKKOR Z 24–70 mm f/2.8 S

Helin Bereket

Helin Bereket’s journey into the world of photography began against the backdrop of Berlin’s vibrant cultural landscape. With a bachelor’s degree in architecture and a master’s degree in art, she embarked on a path that seamlessly blended her interests and education. Bereket’s keen eye for detail and creativity allows her to craft a unique language, reflecting her personal ethos and emotions.

The British summer time, it has been said, consists of two fine days and a thunderstorm. 

While this may be somewhat of an exaggeration, it can be said that we certainly never know what we’re going to get in the UK, however, that just makes us even more determined to enjoy the good days. 

This summer the Print Sales Gallery at the Photographers’ Gallery in London’s Soho, will celebrate the romance and nostalgia of a British seaside summer with ‘By the Seaside’, which will run from June 28 to September 08. 

From the glitzy heyday in the post-war decades, to 21st century staycations, seven UK-based photographers capture the British seaside in all its eccentric glory.

The Photographers’ Gallery was founded in 1971 as the first public gallery in the UK devoted solely to photography, and remains at the forefront of preserving and presenting photography in all its forms. 

What is lesser known, is that the gallery is home to the Print Sales Gallery. All the photos exhibited in ‘By the Seaside’ will be available to purchase from £600 plus VAT. Profits from print sales support the Photographers’ Gallery public programme.  

The Great British Seaside Holiday

The great British summer holiday came into fashion in the post war years of the 1950s and 60s, largely thanks to the Holiday Pay Act of 1938. This granted paid holiday leave to working class employees, and was the first law on paid leave in the UK.

The result of a 20 year campaign by trade unions, the one week paid holiday fell short of the two weeks originally demanded.

Nonetheless, this was the start of a society changing movement in the UK, and people flocked to the its many, previously sleepy, coastal towns.

Where you went largely depended on where you lived. For example if you lived in the north near the mill towns, Manchester, Liverpool, or Glasgow, you would probably go to Blackpool or Morecambe. People from Leeds would set off for Scarborough or Filey, and Londoners would aim for Margate or Brighton.

This was also the golden age of all inclusive holiday camps, designed to give housewives a welcome rest, and provided endless entertainment for children.

Whether just for a day out or a week’s holiday, the seaside promised fun and escapism, and despite the allure of the Caribbean ocean, the pull of a stick of rock and a bucket and spade still fills many Brits with a friendly nostalgia.

If you want to capture some summer nostalgia this year why not try out some of the best film cameras around? You could also go back to basics with the best disposable cameras, or the best retro cameras.

Black-and-white photography is, technically, the oldest genre in the field, dating back to the inception of early photographic technology in the 19th Century. However, despite the advances in color film processing, the practice of eliminating colors has remained popular as a style choice, offering plenty of opportunities to experiment. 

With the advantages of digital cameras, particularly the advent of dedicated cameras for black-and-white photography, monochrome shooters have adapted new techniques and ways of processing images – yet working solely with greyscale tonality remains a complex task. Black-and-white photographs have a timeless quality and offer a unique perspective on reality. Being limited to shades of grey only shifts the focus to the subject, and certain characteristics in the scene become more prominent. 

I had a conversation with monochrome expert, Mostafa Nodeh, about his photography. His black-and-white work is exceptional, showcasing a preference for simplicity and deliberate avoidance of distractions, thus allowing for clear and impactful messaging.

Interview

Mostafa Nodeh

Mostafa Nodeh is a self-taught artist and photographer living in Gilan, Iran. He is known for his minimalistic black-and-white landscape photographs, which are deeply rooted in themes, ideas and symbolism inspired by concept photography. Mostafa’s photography art invites viewers to take a break from the fast pace of modern life and has been featured in various publications, attracting a large international audience.

In addition to the best cameras for black and white photography in the digital realm,  the best film cameras enable you to get truly back to basics with your mono photography.

Glastonbury is soon upon us…
After first attending Glastonbury Festival in 1992, photographer Liam Bailey has been at every edition since. He’s compiled his shots of the event for the first time in a book.

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Liam Bailey came to both photography and music festivals later in life. After stints in odd jobs, the British photographer found his passion while attempting to teach football to American school children.

Uninterested in learning soccer (as they called it), the Chicago school noticed his chemistry degree and handed him the keys to a camera development studio. There, Bailey learned the tools of his future trade.

After moving back to the UK, it was a chance gig with a charity that handed him his first Glastonbury press ticket in 1992, aged 27. The festival had already grown to be a legendary part of the British music scene since its founding in 1970, but Bailey went in somewhat unaware.

“I walked out and went down the hill and Manic Street Preachers were playing ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’. I thought it was coming from a speaker,” Bailey tells Euronews Culture. “I’d never heard live music before.”

The moment had a profound effect on Bailey. “It stuck with me from then. It was immediate,” he says. “It’s been like that ever since. I’ve always treated it like a job. Like it’s my responsibility to capture this festival for myself and now for others.”

Bailey hasn’t missed an edition of the festival since then. He’s always there. He travels alone and takes pictures of the crowds, the community, and the spirit of Glastonbury. After over 30 years making this annual pilgrimage, he’s finally collated 86 of his images into a striking visual memoir of the festival.

“Glastonbury: The Festival and Its People” has been released by ACC Art Books just in time for the 2024 edition. It brings together Bailey’s years of documenting the festival, first in black-and-white on his Leica film camera, and his more recent digital colour shots.

For many fans of the UK’s biggest music festival, the draw is the myriad music acts organisers Michael and Emily Eavis book every year. In our conversation, Bailey chats fondly of seeing stars like Oasis, Blur and Pulp in the 90s, Radiohead performing ‘OK Computer’ and Bowie’s legendary 2000 set. But a casual glance through his images and it’s clear that Bailey’s focus is always looking back into the crowds.

Over 200,000 people attend Glastonbury every year. When it’s on, the festival is the seventh biggest city in the south of England, just behind Brighton population-wise. Since its founding, Glastonbury has always been more than just a glorified music venue, with a manifesto that included the environmental and spiritual ethos that is at the core of the annual tradition.

When Bailey first attended in the 90s, Britain was ruled by the right, still under Thatcherism’s spell. Glastonbury felt like a place for the “outliers” of that society then. “We were the people who, to the public eye, were wastrels and weren’t contributing to society. But I was watching these people work from a different perspective.”

Bailey saw people in the community, “supporting each other, helping build and achieve great things.” “I suddenly became very excited about that side of the festival,” he recalls.

The book’s images capture the rugged anarchy that spreads through Somerset each year around the solstice. In one, a grainy monochrome still probably from his early days, two men play acoustic guitars in front of a campervan where a child looks on curiously.

Glastonbury’s values as a place for like-minded music lovers to find community and family outside of normal society and Bailey’s gift for telling the stories of the festival’s attendees in a single image combine perfectly. This “non-chaotic ordered anarchy allows Britain to have a sort of release valve for humans to do these sorts of things.”

“Now we understand we have to support each other. We’ve got to support the environment. It’s not all about work. It’s not all about money. It’s more about wellness and a sense of balance, and being a part of something instead of trying to exploit it,” Bailey says.

Even as the festival gets more expensive – tickets went for £360 (€425) this year – and more camping ground is given to luxury glamping experiences, Glastonbury has no VIP packages on offer. There are no segregated viewing platforms for higher earners. All attendees are treated equally. True to its values, much of the large influx of money from the glamping areas is donated straight to charities like Greenpeace and Oxfam.

Some have bemoaned that the festival is becoming a middle-class stomping ground in recent years, but Bailey stays optimistic. “Everyone who goes there for the first time gets the same experience and feelings as the first time we did,” he says.

Whether you’re a normal ticket holder or one of the 75,000 artists, performers, organisers, and other festival workers like Bailey, everyone is involved in the act of creation at Glastonbury, he says. “We all have to do something to be at Glastonbury.”

When Bailey first attended the festival, cameras were scant. These days, everyone records Glastonbury from their smartphones, and teams of journalists snap pictures across the site.

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While Bailey is technically included in the pool of press photographers invited every year, he recognises he’s not a traditional one. He’s rarely been commissioned to work and has only occasionally had his work shown after the fact. That Glastonbury invites him back year-on-year is testament to the festival’s embrace of artists making art for art’s sake.

Over 30 years since he first attended, Bailey’s book ‘Glastonbury: The Festival and Its People’ finally brings his decades of experiencing the festival into a beautiful single concise volume. “I do feel as though they’ve quietly allowed me to walk alongside it [the festival]” Bailey says. “I think they expected, at some point, I’d probably have to burst out and do something with the work.”

Glastonbury 2024 takes place from 26 – 30 June.