The State of Play

Everyone has a camera these days. It's on their phones, you can't get a phone without a camera these days. Compact point and shoots are de rigeur for everybody. On a recent trip to Bali, every second Japanese tourist had a Canon G-10 slung around their necks. It's all at once encouraging and discouraging. Just take a look through the various photo-sites and you'll see what I mean.

There is simply a whole load of trash out there passing as 'interesting' and 'good'. Digital makes it too easy to take a bad photo and the methods of dissemination, coupled with enforced political correctness makes it difficult to say anything resembling truthful critique of a photo, let alone comments along an open no-holds barred style. We hope to change that.

So let's start with a few basic facts (and the list is by no means exhaustive):

Sunsets are boring.


Canon G10

Kids are boring.


Leica M8, Summarit35/2.5

Pets are even more boring.


Nikon D700, 17-35mm Nikkor


Good photographs require work. That means effort. They pop to the viewer, whether the viewer ultimately likes it or not. Liking or not liking an image does not say anything about whether it's a good photograph or not. It may not be something you want to hang on your wall at home, but it's something that made you think, and sometimes, remember.

founder: Fuzzbucket

Two Worlds, Seminyak, Bali
Leica M8, 35/2.5 Summarit-M

Fuzzbucket is alive and well, and cannot get over how images can appear better than real life. Harnessed within a coccoon of education and convention, he broke out and decided soon enough, that anarchy isn't sufficient. These days, he eats more than is good for him, sleeps not enough, and spends a lot of time stuck to the viewfinder. He is also an unapologetic smoker and prefers the packs with the babies on them. His amplifier does not reach eleven, although he wishes badly so.

founder: Cojones

hommage a Salgado, Canacona, Goa

Leica M8, 50/1.4 Summilux-M ASPH

Cojones is a photojournalist and macrophotographer. He is technically masochistic and prefers a challenge, and has developed a recent allergy to color since discovering Leica. He learned photography by the consequences of experimentation and statistics of large numbers of frames, and bows in deference to the technical skill of Adams, the timing (but not technical ability) of HCB, the aesthetics of Salgado, and the huevos of Majoli. He is not particularly hard on his equipment but has laid more cameras to rest than the average person has had sexual partners. Film is by no means foreign - there is more Provia in his fridge than food - but does not offer the per-image flexibility of a good raw file, and for Cojones, the new darkroom reeks not of chemicals but of Photoshop and a Wacom.

not quite square zero

There are three types of photographers. The type that buy cameras and pretend, the type that buy the cameras and make money, and the type that shoot. We are photographers of the third type. We use whatever works to capture the things we see. We report on the common and uncommon world around us that people don't see but not notice because they barely live it every day of their lives.

We don't like bullshit. We like to show and tell it like it is - according to us, anyway. We would like to provide sensible, but uncommon, points of view; paying tribute to aesthetics, and avoiding unnecessary dogma. We don't settle. If it's crap, it gets binned - though it may not be by the person who shot it.

We look forward to your company. Welcome to the brass ring.