Over a year ago I wrote about a reader’s OCOLOY experiment — one camera, one lens, one year. Here is a link to the article which was inspired by Stephen Jenner’s year-long crusade with the one outfit. In response to this article we heard from Hilary Wardhaugh in Canberra who had developed a variation on the OCOLOY theme as part of her exhibition called The ONE Project. This involves one camera, one roll of film and 28 different photographers. Quite a challenge.
Stephen recently went back to Hilary’s site to see what had happened with that roll of film. Of the 28 photographers, 25 are named but the other three chose to remain anonymous. The results are impressive and you can view them here. I particularly like the one above by Leonie Keogh but have a look for yourself.
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I agree that the occupational portraits are interesting, they attempt to say a bit more about the the subject.
However, I find the few parental portraits the most evocative portraits for this exercise, the photographers are the children, so there are the added poignancies of death and memory.
As Hilary said in the blurb, "The ONE Project focuses on the type of photography that offers the strongest proof of our existence: portraiture".
Working now. A great idea with great results. We definitely waste a lot of time and effort in the digital era with bracketing etc. I tend not to bracket and, when I do it, I do so manually, but I plead guilty to regularly taking ‘one more for the road’. These lovely photos show what a creative photographer can do with just one shot.
Some are straight portraits but others are what I call occupational portraits such as Leonie Keogh’s shot above and the Eastern Orthodox priest image by George Serros. I also like the few landscape or environmental portraits such as the photo from Madeline Bishop. The ‘phone persona’ image is also amusing as that is how many people ‘see’ their friends nowadays. I note quite a few Irish names in the list of photographers which is always the case in Australia. Quite a few of us found ourselves there by one means or another.
This also reminds me of the time when we had ‘the camera’ in our house and some of the photos on the roll of film, which could be in the camera for months or even years, could be taken by my wife or myself or some other family member. The other point emphasised here is that you can take great photos with one camera and one lens. We ‘gear heads’ should hang our heads in shame. I must admit that most times I go out with a lens on a camera it stays on the camera and the other lenses, which I bring with me, stay in my bag. Why do I bring the other ones? Reassurance probably. When I am shooting film with older cameras, I usually stay with the same lens and aperture (usually f8 or nearest to that) all day.
A great experiment with great results. Congratulations to Hilary and colleagues.
William
We performed a "peculiar" version of OCOLOY – Petapixel wrote about us here: https://petapixel.com/2015/11/17/ocoloy-a-one-camera-one-lens-one-year-project/.
Thanks. I will take a look.
I remember your project being posted to "The Online Photographer" here:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/11/ocoloy-show-in-italy.html
Many thanks, the pictures are excellent and yes Massimo there is something about this OCOLOY thing that Mike Johnston set loose, something that seems to attract us, your variation makes for added interest too.
Both links above lead to the article about Stephen. I cannot find the article about the 28 photographers.
William
Sorry William. My mistake I think I’ve corrected it now but am just at Leica Mayfair for the press conference. I will check later.