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Take the Pepsi Challenge

I am an aspiring amateur photographer who sometimes wonders whether he wants to join a club that would have him as a member.

I am concerned at times about the current state of photography, professional or otherwise. On the one hand, I am awestruck by the talent demonstrated in some of the photos on Flickr – amazing shots that are scarily intimidating, as well as inspiring.

At the same time, I wonder about the qualities required to take good photos now digital cameras are everywhere. I picked up a copy of ‘The Digital Photography Book’ by Scott Kelby. What’s the first thing he says to do? Buy more equipment: the better the equipment, the better your photos will be. What started as the democratisation of photography (following its predecessor rock ‘n’ roll, made with home recording equipment) seems less democratic than ever.

There seems something disingenuous with this model because it appears to replace talent with technology (and concomitant economics). It needn’t apply, and doesn’t work for many things. There’s a joke on the golf course that the new guy: ‘Has a 400 dollar golf club and a ten dollar game’. As a novice (and even later) you can’t simply improve your game by buying a better club.

When technology does make a difference – you’ll find it easier, most likely, to write something on a computer where you can re-order, copy and paste, etc than you would with a pen – you are still left with a gnawing hole where the writing should be. I’m not sure this is a problem facing photographers, as the disciplines differ by degree.

Even if you struggle to point and click you can improve your efforts afterward to such a degree that they’re largely unrecognizable from the original. For example, as a novice you learn quickly that taking shots in RAW format (if you have a digital SLR camera capable of doing this) means you can radically change photos using tools such as Photoshop. So can you tell the difference between a ‘real’ (untouched by tools such as Photoshop) and a ‘fake’ photograph? Try the Pepsi challenge here.

I hope you did better than me. What was interesting was that so many people couldn’t spot the difference. Some were more obviously fake than others but often a photograph split opinion: you can see the results by completing the challenge.

But does it matter that the photo is real or fake? Here, the recent issue of Robert Capa’s ‘faking’ of his famous ‘Falling solider‘ photo is illustrative. It has since come to light that this shot was staged, taken outside of a combat zone according to newspaper reports. For years this has been considered a definitive statement on the personal horrors of war, a visceral reminder of the individual cost of combat.

Is the appreciation of Capa’s photo – and by extension, photography in general – any less real or fake since we failed its Pepsi challenge?

Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pepsi_Challenge.jpg

On Saturday, me and Jennie followed the war memorial walk at the Glières plateau in Haute-Savoie, about thirty minutes from home. Unlike our previous walk to Le Grand Piton, it offered no summit, no grand views from the mountains which we couldn’t see at the beginning, and barely a place to rest and eat lunch. Rather, we followed a linked series of paths that were significant during the French resistance counter-attack during the latter stages of the Second World War. We started at the war monument.

After an hour or so of walking over the stone roads and passing the re-built infirmary and so on we found ourselves in the walk proper. We began the descent, eventually finding our way into a wood where the trees offered some shelter from the heat.

When you’re on a descent and know you’ll end up where you started, you can safely assume that every step you take down you’ll need to take up on the return, albeit in a difference place. Only on the second half you’re tired and so the ascent feels worse. When we’d walked for about and hour and a half on the way down, we knew we had some walking to do to get back. What’s worse was that it was getting late-ish: although we still had plenty of time, we needed to move quickly without too many breaks – so I started recording ‘on the run’.

I don’t know enough about the events in January 1944 to do justice to it in a retelling (you can learn more here). But we did walk through the sentier de l’attaque, the path taken by the massed German troops towards the plateau where the French Maquis were waiting. As I traced the path taken by the advancing soldiers I tried to immerse myself in their thoughts and feelings, and imagine how it must have been for them and for the French fighters they were about to face.

Despite the great interest in the local area,the walk itself suffered from several issues which made it less enjoyable than it might have been. It seems churlish now to complain – the views, were, after all, quite spectacular and the walk well signposted and challenging – and it has piqued my interest in local history, especially during the war. But sometimes when you finish you feel elated – here, we simply felt relieved.

I’m not sure we’ll take this walk again, but this doesn’t detract from the memories and respect for all the men who fought here, and the courage of the Maquis facing such terrible odds. I took some photos, too – you can find them here.

Walking guide details
This was walk Number 26 in Janette Norton’s Walking in the Haute Savoie: Book 2, South (Between Annecy and Chamonix) ISBN: 978-1852844110. It is described as a difficult / medium walk and took us about 6 hours.