Final Analysis
Roger Hicks considers… ‘Night watch at salmon farm’, 2018, by Euan Myles
This image is one of the winners of ‘Portrait of Britain’ – a competition organised by our esteemed rivals the British
Journal of Photography. A selection of images from the competition has now been ( beautifully) published by Hoxton Mini Press, with a foreword by Will Self.
I cannot look at this picture without smiling. It’s so cheering. Even though the hut is probably not as warm as it looks, the contrast between the interior and the half-light of dusk is a textbook example of the emotional value of colour temperatures.
The amount of planning that has gone into the entire picture is impressive. For a start, the interior is very carefully and evenly lit: you can see the reflections of the two lights in the kettle. Ah, yes, the unusually shiny blue enamel kettle: not the banged-up semi-antique you might expect. And those mugs: they’re both clean and shiny, and apparently new, rather than being stained and badly mismatched as would so often be the case. Then there’s the cordage on the floor. As soon as you think about it, you realise that it would be all too easy to trip over; but then the photographer in you thinks that without it, that dirty, muddy floor would be all-too obviously dirty and muddy.
As soon as you start thinking like this, you start to wonder how much other careful preparation has been done. That net to the left of the door, for example: it does break up the wall rather nicely, doesn’t it? And the grille of the dock is commendably clean-swept. The light on the door and the handle of the net, too: there’s just enough spill to keep it close in colour to the interior of the hut. The cordage on the left: was it given a few artful tugs, the better to fill a rather dull grey hole?
None of this is to detract from the picture for a moment. It’s superbly done and, as I say, very cheering. It’s an interesting exercise, though, to re-cast it in your mind as a black & white image. Immediately, you could live with much simpler lighting inside the hut: maybe even a single light, though at the very least a big bounce, such as a Lastolite, would help even things out. A battered old kettle and mismatched mugs might be more in keeping with the mood of such a picture, and you could probably get away with nothing on the floor. All of which illustrates that the difference between black & white and colour is often more than a simple conversion. Think before you shoot.