Bromley Art Society Bringing Artists Together since 1947

Andrew Herbert’s talk (on 4th April) was fascinating and heavy in content and there- fore I have endeavoured only to summarise this intriguing evening.  
He posed the question “How does a judge judge?” and proceeded to outline the  many elements of photography and to explain what a judge looks for. He listed those  elements which pretty much coincided with the ‘rules’ of painting albeit under different  names. Content, technicals – exposure, focals and aesthetics. He said that portraiture  would come under technicals and landscape under aesthetics. However, if a photograph depicted an emotional subject (war, street children etc.) it might be deemed a  good photograph even though technique might he lacking. 

On the subject of colour he said that the photographic palette eomprised red, blue,  green, yellow, magenta and cyan and, of course, black and white whereas more hues  were available to painters. However he considered that composition was the greatest  similarity between the two media. 

Andrew then involved us by inviting us to list painting ‘rules’ and we specified the  golden section, triangles and circles, perspective (lead-in lines), foal point, tonal  values. recession, framing. light and shade, and symmetry. He then touched on one  striking disparity between the two media and that was ‘differential focus’ which occurs in photography but which he hadn’t seen in painting. This involves subjects appearing to he in and out of focus. For example blurring the foreground to concentrate on a  more distant object and vice versa. He also highlighted another difference – that of  viewpoint which, in photography is usually about five feet above the ground. He then  showed some of his own photos and we discussed their strengths and weaknesses. 

At this point the dingbats among us were grateful for tea break as our brains were  throbbing. 

After tea Andrew dealt with the history of photography from Daguerreotypes which started about 1839 when the negatives were on paper, then the process moved on  to copper plates, through glass plates and then onto cellulose with which we are all  familiar. He explained that early photography was the preserve of scientific types  (chemists) and when glass plates came in, artists and chemists collaborated. 

He then showed us some slides of famous ‘old masters’ and discussed why, as a  photographer. he considered their perspective and composition etc. to he good or  bad. At this point my brain had stopped throbbing and had settled back into its  normal state of torpitude. 

Should this report seem long and boring I would stress it is purely the fault of the  writer and no reflection on Andrew’s talk. At the end of’ the evening we felt that we  had learned a lot about the relationship between art and photography and, as  promised, it was certainly something different.

Jill Reardon