On Photography
By: Fred Shirley
Tags: Photography, Artist, Featured, Photographer, Art

Clifton Suspension Bridge in winter at night, black and white. Bristol, 2018. All photos my own.

On Photography

My journey as an aspiring scientist and artist

I thought for a long time that photography was a bit of an artistic cop-out compared to what I used to consider the ‘higher’ arts. Those that require ‘real’ skill.

It’s all well and good taking a photograph, but anyone can take a photograph. Or so I thought. I have since learnt how wrong I was.

My first big venture into photography was when I was 16 and traveled to Italy for several weeks with my then girlfriend. I only had my phone, but I quickly found myself producing albums and albums of photos.

The colours are wrong and I think quite a heavy filter is applied, but the photo itself is at least on some level quite aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Florence, 2016.

I remember being quite proud of them, though none were technically excellent. Even so, my opinion on photography stayed the same: if I could take a reasonably nice photo, then it couldn’t be that difficult.

By the end of that summer, I desperately wanted to become an artist. Not for praise or financial gain, but because that trip taught me more than anything what the value of art is. Paintings by Botticelli and sculptures by Michelangelo inevitably shifted my perspective, pinnacles of human achievement that they are.

So, a couple of summers ago, I took up painting watercolours. I shall spare you examples of my work; suffice it to say, my skills with the brush were clumsy, kindly described.

I know not to give up on things, but it’s fair to say that painting was not for me, without entirely discounting the notion that one day it may be.

Then I met a man who changed my perspective on art. He had a flare for photography so infectious that I couldn’t help being swept along. My being totally in love with him didn’t help matters any.

I still discounted photography as a medium for myself, despite learning to appreciate it more. I figured art wasn’t my thing, and I should carry on sticking to what I know, which is the study of physics.

He changed all that one day when he handed me his camera. “You’ll be good at this,” he said. “You’ve got a good eye.”

It was with him and with that camera that I took the photo below, the first photo I was genuinely happy with.

A sunset in Bristol, 2017.

The colour is a little over-enhanced and it could benefit from a crop. If I was there again when the sunset looked so beautiful, I’d likely do things differently. But I do remember looking at it and feeling not only a sense of pride, but also a sense of artistry.

That, right there: I captured that moment. No one else did, and they never will. It belongs to me.

It’s been said over and over again but I won’t apologize for repeating it: Photographs are amazing because they capture a moment that only existed for a tiny fraction of a second, preserving that moment for as long as you want it to be preserved. Put another way, the ratio of time that a photograph exists compared to the amount of time that a photograph represents must be around 100,000,000 to 1.

Photographs aren’t just images in the same way that paintings and drawings are images, they belong entirely to reality. But they are also traces that are taken directly from that reality; in some ways like a gravestone rubbing or mould of a person’s face.

Since that photo in Florence and that sunset in Bristol, I think (and hope!) that my photography has only further developed and improved. I’ve branched out into film photography now, and I love the elegance and aesthetic it adds to certain moments which benefit best from it.

My eye is more honed, and most importantly, the obsession with taking a truly good photograph is gone because I know I can do that. Instead, I have become more brave and less afraid of trying new things and new perspectives.

I have a soft spot for this photograph. It’s a little different. Bath, 2019.

Getting it wrong this time round doesn’t mean I will next time, and often getting things wrong pays off. It pays to be a little more experimental.

It’s wonderful that I have photography in my life and at last have a way of expressing myself creatively. It can be frustrating and fatiguing, but those moments when I hold my breath just before firing the shutter are the reason any photographer takes a photo.

I am scientist-in-training who has long that yearned for a way to truly express myself. Just knowing physics has never been enough. I wanted to be more rounded. I’m not Einstein or Feynman, but Einstein was a violinist and Feynman was a sketcher. My university tutor is a keen potter. They saw their needs for artistic expression, and I do too.

When you spend all day studying the most intricate secret workings of the universe, you soon realize that whilst it is amazing and enlightening, physics is not everything. It can’t be everything. The closer you look into something, the more you miss.

That works for some people, but it doesn’t work for me. I need new ways of seeing.

My relationship with the man who introduced me to photography has broken down, but I’m still grateful to him for this legacy he left.

It was kind of him to give me photography to know that I’d love it.