Next up in our interview series is Mike Le Fevre.
Sea creature by Mike Le Fevre
please introduce yourself. what is “your style” of photography? I like learning and experimenting. Sometimes my style is a bit too square and straight on. Different angles are good. The interesting thing about photography is that it can be a personal artistic journey, and it’s up to you how much you try and improve, set challenges and search out new subjects. You also don’t know where it’s going to end, how skilled you could become, or you could just stay crap.
how long have you been shooting film? Since 2000, when I bought my first camera – a Lubitel 2. Prior to that with my mum’s Box Brownie in the mid 90′s.
Direct engagement by Mike Le Fevre
Do you prefer colour or black & white? Do you have a favourite film or camera? I like black and white because it’s easier to get ‘arty’ results, because it’s immediately one step removed from reality. It also generates associations with another time. People like fairy tales. Colour photography relies more heavily on elements like limited depth of field, or the colours looking like they’re from the 1970s, or cross processed/saturated colours, or more select ‘cool™’ or exotic subjects, to remove it from reality.
No favourite film or camera. So many different 35mm and 120, rangefinders, SLRs, TLRs and folders have gone through my hands I’ve realised what you use doesn’t matter. It’s the same with film. Film is like a subtle spice, the dish should be a good dish without it. My friend Amanda once said this about Lomo pics, if you strip away the vignetting and cross processing, a photo should still stand on its own merits.
What’s important in camera selection is reliability and personal taste. Plus some aesthetics thrown in. If you’re role-playing being a photographic artist, you might as well have a cool looking camera. I do like 120 for the big negatives.
show us one of your favourite shots and tell us a bit about it. how did you take it, and is there a story behind it?
Cliche 1 by Mike Le Fevre
A while ago I came up with an idea that you could wander a city and end up with a mental (or physical) map of where good backgrounds were, both wall and ground surfaces, with interesting patterns or textures or colours. Typical examples would be a brick wall, or pedestrian crossing. Then return and wait for photogenic subjects. Funnily a couple of weeks ago I was reading a book about Henri Cartier-Bresson which said he would find a background with an interesting form, then wait for fortuitous subjects – children, a man, a dog. Other backgrounds besides walls are down the length of a wall, into an archway, or looking out for places involving strong shadows. Obviously results depend on how much people live their lives on the street. Maybe you’ll find that more these days in certain European, or developing cities in the third world.
There are two classic subjects people want to see – beauty or the freak. Recently I’ve been thinking a photo like this has to be more than just people walking in front of a wall. It has to engender a story telling moment, or the people have to be emoting character with their body language like James Dean. Does this photo achieve that? Dunno.
show us a favourite shot from the MSM pool. what do you enjoy in other people’s photos?
gift wrap by mrs scatteredimage
I concentrate more on the local or personal level. I like seeing photos that show people are mixing it up, and trying new things. This shot from mrs scatteredimage reminded me of the Turin shroud, or the clothing of the two central figures looks like medieval figures you’d find in a Monk illustrated book.
what do you feel when you see a picture you like? why do you like it? It might evoke an association or memory, or rouse my interest. The best ones I guess are where you try and figure out what’s going on, rather than just being impressed by an overall beautiful aesthetic.
give us a question to ask the next person for this series Tell us about a current project.
Thanks for your time Mike! You can see his work on Flickr as silvermiketrate.
NIce article. I must admit I have been using Mike’s thinking around the whole “evoke” stuff a bit to improve how engaging my photos are.
Interesting article. There’s an intriguingly thick veneer of cynicism for both photography and its audience, but seeing a journey that deconstructs that to find something on the other side. At first I was puzzled by a photograph he introduces as delivering what “people want to see” but is his personal favourite, but now I can see that it’s the challenge of piercing through that to find the “storytelling moment”.