BBC 4: The Great British Photography Challenge

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There's a 4 episode series starting this summer which might be interesting. I didn't know Chris Packam is apparently an award winning wildlife photographer.

Rankin and Chris Packham headline BBC's Great British Photography Challenge

www.digitalcameraworld.com

BBC's Bake-off for Photographers airs tonight

Rankin and Chris Packham headline a new TV series tonight - T Great British Photography Challenge
www.digitalcameraworld.com www.digitalcameraworld.com

www.bbc.co.uk

Rankin to mentor photography talent in new challenge series for BBC

Portrait and fashion icon Rankin to find a dynamic new name in British photography for the Great British Photography Challenge - on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer this summer
www.bbc.co.uk
 
Ooh, I love a challenge series on TV -- SAS WDsW, Strictly, the one where TV personalities had to learn a musical instrument (Jo Brand learnt church organ) -- so this is one that is right up my street. Photography AND a reality challenge series, my cup runneth over.
 
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I just saw that episode 1 was on Monday so I'll be watching it later. Just a heads up for anyone interested, here's the iPlayer link.

www.bbc.co.uk

BBC Four - Great British Photography Challenge

The search is on for an exciting new name in British photography.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
 
Interesting, nice to see that BBC is taking an interest in serious photography. I wonder if the army of selfie takers will ever move over from convenience to more diverse story telling. Camera sale trends don't point that way at the moment
 
Is this a new series? I thought it was a repeat. I remember something similar on quite a few years ago.
 
srichards said:
Is this a new series? I thought it was a repeat. I remember something similar on quite a few years ago.
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Not sure but it was worth it for the last episode where one of the students responded to critique with, "Jog on Rankin!" :LOL:
 
Really enjoying this so far too. Feels a bit more constructive in the criticisms of the photographer like they're actually trying to help them more :)
 
Yup - the constructive criticism is what I like - I'm all over Manny, he's laid back but incisive; the other sidekick just screams "I'm unnecessarily quirky" though. Right off the bat I wanted Paul to win, but I'm sure he won't.
 
CavGez said:
Interesting, nice to see that BBC is taking an interest in serious photography. I wonder if the army of selfie takers will ever move over from convenience to more diverse story telling. Camera sale trends don't point that way at the moment
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Shame it's on BBC Four. Audience measured in 100s of thousands, at most. Maybe even 10s.
 
srichards said:
Is this a new series? I thought it was a repeat. I remember something similar on quite a few years ago.
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Think the previous show was the Sky Arts Masters of Photography.

Am prefering this series though as the criticism feels more constructive and Rankin (and colleagues) seem much more invested in helping the contestants do well - something that was always lacking in MoP where it felt like if you didn't get on Toscani's wavelength then you were doomed, regardless of what the other judges thought.
 
Not sure about some of the criticism, I suspect the average club judge would throw at fit at some of Rankin's comments. The studio session where he raved over the girl from Luton who does portrait as her usual stuff. He loved her shot of the girl with the prosthetic, I just sat there going "she's cut half her left boot off!"
 
It beats the Sky Master of Photography in that the 6 photographers are there for all 4 weeks, rather than someone being put out every week. This should allow them to balance up their good efforts with their not-so-good shots, so that seems fairer. The winner will be the one with the best exhibition at the end, with the art director pointing out that it's the content as a whole that will count, not just a couple of standout shots.

The trailer for next week showed a large format film camera being used, so that should be interesting in itself! I'd be backing Georgia as the potential winner so far, but Rankin suggested it was still all to play for.
 
Georgia is the one I think will win. Her family photo was so far ahead of all the rest. One of the others may catch up so who knows.
 
GordonM said:
Not sure about some of the criticism, I suspect the average club judge would throw at fit at some of Rankin's comments. The studio session where he raved over the girl from Luton who does portrait as her usual stuff. He loved her shot of the girl with the prosthetic, I just sat there going "she's cut half her left boot off!"
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That was the first thing I noticed about that shot.
 
As a regular club member we benefit from such feedback all the time and I found the comment were not that different to those I would expect to hear at my club. I enjoy the programme but think at least one of the contenders is struggling technically which should not be the case at this level.

Dave
 
I quite enjoyed last night's programme. I think not binning someone every week is a much better model than the occasionally abusive comments that man on MoP comes out with. I find some of Rankin's comments a bit odd but there is no doubting his enthusiasm. I wish it was a longer series now.
 
Is the next one the last?

I've enjoyed it more than MoP. I watched the first series of MoP and thought the Italian judge wanted the Italian tog to win. He did.
I remember him commenting on one of the (Italian tog's) images saying "it is so bad it is good."
 
Peter123 said:
Is the next one the last?
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Sadly, yes.

One thing I like about the contestants is that if they get it "wrong" they take Rankin's (and the team's) advice, move on and usually do better next time. It's also nice to see that Ali sometimes doesn't know how good she is. But I was surprised to see that in the parkour shoot only one of them used flash (though Paul knew that it wasn't necessary) and none of them seemed to be using burst mode. OK, so the latter involves a lot more culling, but they didn't seem too pressed for time.
 
Just watched last weeks on iPlayer. Surprised with the parkour that virtually all the shooting was done behind them showing mainly backs. I wanted someone to go the opposite side and get faces.
The client photo shoots were very interesting. I had to google ‘morph suits’ for a start....
 
The next week clip at the end this week suggested they will be exposed to large format next week, looking forward to that
 
I was surprised that one of the contestants found it difficult to capture a moving bicycle. I think I would have struggled with the cactus task but the others would have bee fun.

Dave.
 
Dave Canon said:
I was surprised that one of the contestants found it difficult to capture a moving bicycle. I think I would have struggled with the cactus task but the others would have bee fun.

Dave.
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They're not really what I'd call multi-genre technicians. From what I've seen they've all focused up until now on photographing the thing they're interested in, e.g. fashion, street, abstracts, etc.. if you only shoot fashion and portrait, then you're probably not going to nail panning or long exposure straight away. They're shooting techniques and subject matter for the first time - so it's good they're giving space to make mistakes and the jury isnt too hard on them.
 
Peter B said:
The trailer for next week showed a large format film camera being used, so that should be interesting in itself! I'd be backing Georgia as the potential winner so far, but Rankin suggested it was still all to play for.
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I think at some stage it was mentioned that Thomas Joshua Cooper was going to make a guest appearance, and as he is associated with using a 7x5 (at least by me) , this could well be the reason for the seeing the large format camera. It will be interesting to see if the contestants are actually asked to use a 5x4/7x5 film camera on an assignment.
 
myotis said:
I think at some stage it was mentioned that Thomas Joshua Cooper was going to make a guest appearance, and as he is associated with using a 7x5 (at least by me) , this could well be the reason for the seeing the large format camera. It will be interesting to see if the contestants are actually asked to use a 5x4/7x5 film camera on an assignment.
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There will be some steep learning curves for a few if they are asked to make use of a large format camera.

I’m really enjoying the series and the mixture of assignments followed by the creative criticism. But I do find myself shouting at the tv at some of the contestants lack of technical knowledge (though I guess the program is not trying to intimidate the average hobbyist photographer using a phone and making use of ‘insta’ by focusing predominantly
on composition). Do hope it gets commissioned for a second series.
 
martin_h said:
There will be some steep learning curves for a few if they are asked to make use of a large format camera.
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They will certainly need a little help to use a 5x4, and a watchful eye to make sure they don't do things like removing the sheath with the aperture still open, etc, but at least conceptually a 5x4 is easy to grasp. film one end, lens the other and a shutter in between. I'm ignoring movements.

I'm enjoying the series as well. It's not a very demanding watch, which is good, but nor is it a very satisfying one, which is bad. But, I would still like to see it back, with more episodes, fewer assignments per episode, more mentoring from the guest experts and more feedback.

And yes one of the great benefits of modern technology is the ease in fairly reliably producing photographs with acceptable sharpness and exposure with hardly any technical understanding of how things work. Which is good, because it opens up photography to so many more people than it used to be available to. The intellectual cost of entry is now very low. But it also means that many people seem to move on from this entry level, to become "serious" photographers without ever learning the core technical skills needed to deliberately craft their photographs into images that match their vision.
 
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Is it my eyes or was the photo of the red flower in front of the white wall oof? It looked to me like the wall in the background was sharp and the flower soft, at best.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned it, not even pointing it out and saying they liked it because of that.
 
JayJay said:
Is it my eyes or was the photo of the red flower in front of the white wall oof? It looked to me like the wall in the background was sharp and the flower soft, at best.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned it, not even pointing it out and saying they liked it because of that.
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Probably your eyes then ;)
 
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