Thursday, August 26, 2010

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

interview: oliver bryce yates


Your name, age, and where you live?

Oliver Bryce Yates, 24 - Getting on I know haha, Sydney Australia.

Why photography? What brought you to it, and gave you such a passion for it?

I was drawn to photography by the ease in which images can be executed. Unlike other art mediums

photography is all but instant.

I see film is the major form of your work. Why not digital?

Quite simply I don't like the color range and the way in which the majority of digital photographs look. You can't make a digital photo look like medium format or even 35mm, it’s something about being a chemical based process that produces beautiful images even if you have very little skill. Everyone is more or less in the same boat with film. I think that just having an organic process like film means that you have to pay more attention when you are shooting; it’s not a case of checking the viewfinder and reshooting.

Film is banished, forever. Now what?

If there was a digital camera that produced the same results I would of course start using that. I’m not a purist. If however I couldn't get the same style I get now I would probably move onto another art medium (God I hope that doesn't come off as cocky as it looks haha)

How much support do you receive from your friends and family? Do most of them know about what you do?

On a whole they support what I am doing and I am thankful that the people around me are happy to be photographed. It makes life that bit easier when people are comfortable with having their picture taken.



Since starting in 2009, how far has flickr gotten you? What has been the best things that happened to you?

Flickr is somewhat of a love/hate affair. I like the fact that it has exposed me to people's work that I perhaps would not have seen otherwise, but I am not a fan of the way you cannot truly organize your photographs to work together in a series. It has though allowed me to orchestrate an exhibition here in Australia that I would not have been able to do without the website. So I guess you take the good with the bad.


i asked a 4th estate member at random, and
jordandavidsmall, would like to ask: after looking through your portfolio, I’m curious about how the elements of your process shape your photos. how do you balance the things you do before you click the shutter with the things you do after you get negatives back? For example, are you thinking about the fact that it's a double exposure when you are shooting? And on the other end, how much importance do you place on post-processing, like editing or cropping?

I originally had a camera which allowed for repeating frames, so all the double exposures were very much planned out. As for how much emphasis I place on post production I keep it to simply scanning and removing any dust off the negatives. I am not a massive fan of relying on fixing up mistakes later and on the off event that I have works that I want to use in a show the option to hand print the works is a huge bonus.


what would be your biggest inspirations from day-to-day?

Most probably the people around me, it would be a pretty boring existence without them. I am also really inspired by magazines and photographic books, I think it was one of the reasons I was drawn to photography.









---------

.