For more on UNDERCONSTRUCTION, check their MySpace. You can find the rest of my pix from UNDERCONSTRUCTION over on Flickr. But most importantly, come along.

Virtually all the photos here and on Flickr were shot with a Nikon D200 or D300, although a few are from my Leica D-Lux 3 compact. I use the D300 almost exclusively now — the dynamic range and colour are vastly superior to those of the D200, and the metering is way more flexible. It’s a big heavy body, but I love it. Many of my favourite shots were taken with the D200, but I don’t miss it.

Most of the club shots are with on-camera (or hand-held) SB800 flash with the Nikon-standard diffuser. That’s powered from an old Quantum Turbo 1+ battery pack, so I don’t have to worry about the flash dying or slowing down over a night of work. I occasionally use an SB600 for fill, triggered from the SB800 using Nikon’s CLS pre-flash triggering. I kind of hate raw, on-camera flash, and usually try to work with — rather than against — the ambient lighting, which is so integral to the mood of a venue/event. Recently i’ve been playing a lot with slow sync, camera movement and tweaked lighting ratios.

The stage work is without exception by available light.

My usual three lenses are a Nikon 18-70mm zoom (for general use), with a Nikon 50mm f1.4 and Sigma 30mm f1.4 for the available light work. The fast Nikon prime is on paper a better lens than the Sigma (and certainly better built, with faster AF), but my best shots always seem to be with the Sigma: if I had to choose between them, I’d keep the Sigma.

I shoot 14-bit RAW AdobeRGB. with Adobe Bridge/Photoshop CS3 for processing. All my workflow is 16-bit, AdobeRGB — I only downsample to 8-bit and convert to sRGB for web uploads. I keep my Macs colour-acccurate with a Spyder 2 calibrator. Esssential software add-ons are Alien Skin’s rather fabulous Exposure 2 ‘film stock emulator’, and Imagenomic’s NoiseWare Pro. Almost all of my photos get fed through Exposure — for me, the ‘feel’ of the colour processing is a crucial dimension of post-production. NoiseWare is there to help rescue those few shots where there simply wasn’t enough light, and I’ve had to shoot at unfeasibly high ISOs.

That’s the nuts and bolts. I’ve just purchased some lights and am planning more studio shoots. I will update this list to include all that when I’ve decided what works best for me.

Questions? Ask them in the comments box below…

On til November 6. Go see.

Watch the film and make up your own minds. For UK readers, your best bet is probably to buy the NTSC Region 1 DVD via Amazon, or hunt the film down on Bit Torrent. But watch it.

Also went to check out the rest of the Barbican’s This is War show. For me the highlight wasn’t the Capa and Taro work, but An-My Lê’’s magnificent large-format works, Events Ashore. Go see for her work, if nothing else.

Unposed doesn’t imply unframed. I’m a formalist at heart: composition matters. Framing and capturing charged moments takes speed and tactics. It’s hard to be discreet with a full-size DSLR and flash, so getting those images often means shooting from the hip. For me that works best using a 28mm prime that on my small-sensor D300 has an angle-of-view similar to my eyes. I’m familiar enough with that setup that I have a good idea what’s going to be in frame without needing to check the viewfinder. After that, it’s down to timing and luck. Sometimes it works. Some of my favourites, here.

My photography isn’t solely about that gaze. There are other stories to tell, and other gazes, in other moments. But I’m most happy when I manage to capture that moment of contact: as if the perfect kiss, stolen before the first thought.

We inherit the archetypes of the Photo-Journalist and their Work from the profession’s Golden Age: that of Time and Life magazines, and of early Magnum; the searing inscription of truth burnt into 36 frames of Ilford FP4. Photo-journalists as Heroes of the Modern Age.

Times change. When we now read about the Magnum photographers who, upon hearing the breaking news while at a meeting in New York, early morning 9/11 2001, grabbed their Nikons and ran to the streets to get the story, we feel respect for their courage, but also a little bemusement. Like some half-forgotten, fallen league of superheroes striding into action: Magnum? They still do that stuff? Huh? Post-Modern, aren’t we, each and every one of us, citizen journalists, with cellphone and blog, our story to the world? No more Heroes.

But: a photo-journalist is one not only witness to events, but one able to bear witness to their meaning, with objectivity, truth-in-haste, for an audience often culturally and physically remote from those directly affected. How? Training, access, technology, narrative skill, cross-cultural literacy. We may view heroes with suspicion, but there’s value yet in the craft skills of the journalistic professional.

So: can’t a good journalist with access to citizen stringers achieve as much, bearing witness on behalf of those whose images serve as record of witness? Why not split the word photo-journalist at the hyphen and be done with it — bury the whole idea with the other redundant heroisms of the Modern age.

No. Documentary evidence is increasingly easy to fake in post-production or presentation, and jaded audiences are conditioned to the contingency of all ‘truths’: in a cloudsourced, ever-more-diffusely-mediated future, the existence of individuals who both offer themselves to be and are able to bear witness is imperative. We need those whose can say, resolutely, and incontrovertibly, “I was there. These are my images. This my testimony”.

In London, you can find A Magazine at Art Words.