Tom Wood might easily be categorized as a documentary or street photographer. His photographs fit comfortably within the finest tradition of a certain kind of “straight” photography: incisive, decisive visual moments extracted from the chaos of life and transformed, by the medium, into compelling images. To claim, then, that his photographs are receivers of sensations, ciphers for that which is intangible (not to mention invisible), could be deemed extraordinary. It is certainly ambitious. Photography, inherently, deals with what can be seen. Its mechanical attention to detail, its dependence on the referent—the object of its scrutiny—is what marks it as totally different from the other arts.

I discovered a good feature on Tom in Issue magazine, that includes quite a few pictures from his ‘Photie Man’ book, and an informative essay on his work. The aformentioned book is also reviewed at foto8 by Ken Grant. Ken, by the way, also attended the same course as I did, and is now documentary photography programme leader at Newport.

I was clicking through a few sites I like to look at, and one page leads to another, when I came across a name that sounded familiar. Turns out Andrew Hetherington wasn’t a lad I wen’t to college with, despite his connections with Liverpool, and his background in Ireland. He is though, a photographer living in New York, and an active blogger. See his pictures here.

Of course, the best way to get to The Island is by boat, and, for those that have no boat of their own, they must pay the ferryman. The ferry sits unattended this morning, in a low tide, waiting for the mist to clear. The water very still, providing a near mirror like reflection. The day holds promise of fine weather later on, but still few people are here to take advantage.

It was the first day of British Summer Time today, well at least the first full day, because of course we lose an hour on the day the clocks change. A brisk walk from my house brings me to a lovely part of the coast, in particular a small area cut off from the rest of the sand by tidal inlets, which we all refer to around here as ‘The Island’. It was an amazing sight today with a completely cloudless sky, completely devoid of any human visitors. How that will change as the summer rolls on, and the sailors uncover their yachts, and the tourists come to ride the ferry.

…about the ‘ethics’ of retouching a picture. I have had discussions in the past with people who think it has nothing to do with photography. Obviously,by definition, a retouched image is embellished in some way compared with the original from the camera, but what constitutes retouching? Is it removing dust and processing marks, for example, which are also nothing to do with the photography. What about stuff that you couldn’t change at the time, but never intended to have in your picture, such as a small blemish on a models face, or some unreachable piece of litter in a landscape? Surely colour corrections, shading, contrast control and anything else that might once have been performed in a darkroom, but these days more often than not, are carried out with the computer, are fine? My view is that all of this and more is not only acceptable, but desirable, so long as the end justifies the means.