A comment on one of my pictures

by Posted in Landscapes, Thoughts Leave a comment
commentphoto-1

My wife recently posted one of my pictures (the one above) to Facebook. One of her friend’s commented: “Beautiful!! … Eirah, tell Howard that when he gets tired of his camera or makes an upgrade I’ll be happy to take it off his hands.” I know that she meant well, but I have a couple of problems with this comment.

First, I don’t really think that this picture is all that “beautiful”. I’ve never displayed it anywhere as I don’t really like it that much. It’s mostly just a large splash of color. Many would say that a picture should say something. I’m not sure that I agree with this. After all Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ doesn’t say much, but it’s a beautiful creation. Yes, it has color – but it also has more: lines, focal points, space, etc. This photograph doesn’t have a clear focus. The grass leads off into nowhere. The brightly colored leaves obscure what might have been a focal point (i.e. the house). If I’d gotten down lower I might have made the house more visible. Even if I had chosen the house as a focal point I shouldn’t have placed it so much in the center. The exposure around the house is also off – way too dark. So if it’s so bad, why did I take the picture? Well, “it seemed like a good idea at the time your honour”. I suspect I may seen something (I don’t know what), but then failed totally in realizing it. If I had it to do again I think I could do better, but as it is I’m just left with a splash of color.

Second, if the picture did have merit I’d like to think that the photographer would have had something to do with it. I learned a long time ago that the camera doesn’t make the picture. Yes, an expensive camera can make some photographic tasks easier, faster etc. but the overall vision has to come from the photographer. That’s where I mostly failed with this picture: I didn’t think enough about what I was trying to achieve. I’ve seen many, many mediocre to lousy pictures taken with flashy equipment. Many of mine fall into this category. I’ve also seen great pictures (not so many) taken with inexpensive gear. To me a truly great photographer (and I certainly don’t put myself in that category) can take a great picture with virtually any camera.

So much as I appreciate the kind words in the comment I can’t take them all that seriously.

The Power of Selection

by Posted in Thoughts Leave a comment

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, speaks on the front of the stage while the back seats remain empty at an event sponsored by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance and the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Mic Smith)

You often read about the dishonest manipulation of photographs using Photoshop and other such tools. However, it’s quite easy to change the meaning of the photograph just by your choice of framing. Without altering the photograph at all you completely change the impression created. Witness the two photographs in this post.

The one above seems to show Donald Trump speaking to a half empty room while the one below, more tightly framed, seems to show a packed house. They’re both taken by the same photographer at the same event, but the feeling conveyed is quite different. Mr. Trump was angry about what he considered to be a dishonest depiction saying in the Daily Mail:

‘The photographer is a f***ing thief,’ an exasperated Trump boomed in a telephone interview, referring to the Associated Press photojournalist who shot the initial picture.
‘Tell them they’re a fraud, whoever took it. I just got killed on that thing, and it was just really unfair. It’s godd**n unfair.’

‘The point is that everybody from the back rushed to the front. And the people who put out the pictures knew it.,’ Trump charged.

‘And they said, “Oh, look! The back 25 per cent [is empty]”.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3248214/It-s-godd-n-unfair-Trump-says-photos-half-South-Carolina-ballroom-look-like-schmuck-audience-crowded-podium-near-him.html#ixzz3mrx9K2u1

When I first read Mr. Trump’s comments I thought it was just “The Donald” trying to put a positive spin on a negative situation. However, even though I’m not a HUGE fan of Mr. Trump I think he may have a point here. In the second picture you clearly see a large number of people between those seated and the podium. They must have come from somewhere. Are there enough of them to fill all those empty seats – I don’t know? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump, speaks at an event sponsored by the Greater Charleston Business Alliance and the South Carolina African American Chamber of Commerce at the Charleston Area Convention Center in North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Mic Smith).

On the subject of clichés

by Posted in Thoughts Leave a comment

Cliché

The Online Photographer has recently had an interesting discussion on clichés:

The Worst Clichés

So I’ve got a question for you. What would you say are the worst subject-matter clichés in photography? I’m trying to come up with a list.

via The Online Photographer: The Worst Clichés.

The Cliché Exercise

Three Good Ways to Avoid Clichés

Has Everything Already Been Photographed?

This is a subject that is close to my heart. I’ve often thought that my photographs, while not too bad technically, leave a lot to be desired in terms of overall interest. You probably wouldn’t look twice at my pictures. A fairly well-known photographer who was very kind to me (he spent time with me and gave me useful advice) once told me that I had a good eye, but that I relied too much on “photographic clichés”. What I failed to clarify at the time was whether he meant “cliché subjects” or clichés in terms of slavishly following photographic “rules” (e.g. sticking to rule of thirds; not tilting the camera etc.). Maybe even both.

The above posts tend to focus on “cliché subjects” so let’s go with that. I’m starting to be of the opinion that since the advent of cell phones everything has been photographed as nauseam and effectively just about everything is now a cliché. So the word cliché has very little meaning – in terms of photographic subjects at least. So it’s not so much what you photograph as how well you photograph it. There are great photos; good photos; mediocre photos (almost all of mine fall into this category); and bad photos. You can very easily take a bad photo of a non-clichéd subject. It’s not as easy to take a good picture of a clichéd subject.

So I’ll continue to take pictures of dogs, flowers, sunsets and all the other subjects on the list mentioned in the OP articles. Partly because I like many of these subjects and I’ll take pictures of anything that catches my attention – and partly because if I paid any attention to this list I’d never photograph anything: “Oh that looks interesting – Oops! Can’t take the picture because it’s a flower”. “How about that one? Oh no! Taboo – it’s a dog”. “What a gorgeous sunset. Pity it’s a cliché”. I wonder if anyone ever said to Michelangelo: “You know Mike, I’m really not sure about that Madonna. You know Madonna’s have been done to death right? You don’t want to be seen as focusing too much on clichés do you” (not that I’m trying to compare myself with Michelangelo).

I’ll keep photographing whatever takes my fancy. Who knows I might come up with something unique and interesting one day.

Maybe a good definition of cliché in this context would be “All photographs are “clichéd” unless taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson (insert your favorite photographer here) in which case they’re not.”

Cellphones Galore

by Posted in Black & White, People, Thoughts Leave a comment
cellphones-1

This was taken in the Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. So many beautiful things to look at yet many of the people were just sitting there attending to their cellphones. Although I’m a compulsive internet user myself, I find the way these devices intrude into every aspect of our life to be disturbing. It’s virtually impossible to escape them and unfortunately there’s no going back – the genie is out of the bottle. Maybe I’m just a luddite. When I was a child I knew an older guy who steadfastly maintained that it was impossible for a man to be on the moon – and this even after the first moon landings. Am I like that: refusing to accept that times have changed and unable to adapt?

60th Anniverary of “The Americans”

by Posted in Photographers, Photography, Thoughts Leave a comment

“Trolly – New Orleans”, 1955. The photo, part of Frank’s groundbreaking volume “The Americans”, was taken our days after an encounter with the police in Arkansas that darkened this artistic viewpoint. From the New York Times, July 5 2015

Sixty years ago, at the height of his powers, Frank left New York in a secondhand Ford and began the epic yearlong road trip that would become ‘‘The Americans,’’ a photographic survey of the inner life of the country that Peter Schjeldahl, art critic at The New Yorker, considers ‘‘one of the basic American masterpieces of any medium.’’ Frank hoped to express the emotional rhythms of the United States, to portray underlying realities and misgivings — how it felt to be wealthy, to be poor, to be in love, to be alone, to be young or old, to be black or white, to live along a country road or to walk a crowded sidewalk, to be overworked or sleeping in parks, to be a swaggering Southern couple or to be young and gay in New York, to be politicking or at prayer.

via The Man Who Saw America – The New York Times.

Interesting and fairly long (12 page) article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine of 5 July 2015. I’ve blogged about Frank before:

Robert Frank Collection Guide.
Robert Frank is 90 years old.
Robert Frank and Bert Hardy.

I find it hard to understand the almost ‘godlike’ status that Frank has. I guess that so much time has elapsed since “The Americans” came out that it’s difficult to see how significant it was at the time. I imagine that most photography of the time presented the US in almost idyllic terms (I’m thinking here of magazines such as ‘Life’) so when Frank came along and presented the “seamier” side of US life and culture it was jarring. Since then however, and particularly in the Vietnam and post Vietnam period) this has now almost been “done to death”. Maybe if Frank had gone on to many more great works…..But he didn’t. His fame seems to rest mostly on “The Americans” and a number of not particularly well-know movies. Just the same they are impressive photographs, which I like very much. I admire Frank for his photography, but as someone documenting US life and culture I much prefer Walker Evans. I guess it’s hard to be a pioneer.