Assignment 2: Elements of Design

Introduction

The brief for this assignment was to shoot a series of 10-15 thematically based images incorporating elements of image design.  For reasons of convenience and personal interest, I chose to shoot city scenes in Satwa, a residential area for South Asian and Philippine laborers.  The neighborhood is sandwiched between two tonier areas of town, Jumeirah Beach and Sheikh Zayed Road.

I spent three days shooting at different times, including late morning, mid-afternoon, and twilight.  In the Part Two course notes, author Michael Freeman suggests shooting (or processing) in black-and-white in order that color not distract from the elements to be practiced.  As I followed this suggestion with the exercises, I thought it best to complete the assignment as I began.  

All images were shot in auto mode on a Nikon D5100 with a Nikkor 18-55mm.  Post-processing was done in Lightroom.

Exercise 20: Pattern and Rhythm

Freeman's course notes are unclear regarding pattern and rhythm.  He writes:

The difference between them is that rhythm is to do with movement across a picture (or more properly, the movement of the eye through a picture) while pattern is essentially static and has to do with area.

Got it?  Me, either.

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 5: The City in Photography, 1997

Panorama de Constantinople Papier Salé James Robertson 1854

http://www.past-to-present.com/photos.cfm?reference=G19006

 “… there is no single traditional development by which we can map the photographic response [to the city].” 

So finishes Clarke in his chapter on “The City in Photography” after surveying the approaches of a number of photographers known for their work in what Clarke claims have been the principle loci for urban photography:  London, Paris and New York.  Basically, he’s saying that unlike landscape photography, which has demonstrated a fairly consistent outlook, there are so many approaches and views of the city that it’s difficult to classify urban photography.   

Exercise 19: Real and Implied Triangles

The brief here was quite simple:  create two sets of triangles, real and implied.  Freeman distinguishes the former from the later by the presence of "clearly visible edges," meaning an implied triangle has three points, rather than three intersecting edges.

For this exercise I went no further than my neighborhood, shooting in the streets bordering Sheikh Zayed Road, and afterwards in my kitchen and spare bedroom.

Back to work

Two weeks ago I posted three exercises to this blog.  Between then and last night I didn't touch my camera.  I wasn't deliberately avoiding it.  I just got busy with other projects and felt I didn't have time to devote to the next exercise, and so was waiting for a time when I did.  That happened yesterday afternoon, when I went on a walk looking for triangles in my neighborhood.   What struck me was how comfortable it felt to be  walking the street with the camera.  It's not clear why that might be, aside from the obvious idea of the pleasantry associated with habit.   Perhaps it is because with the camera in hand and assignment in mind, my walks are journeys with a purpose.  As I walk, I look more intently than I might otherwise, and in the process see things I might not otherwise.  Not that I have discovered anything terribly insightful, but clearly the process feels different - and not unpleasant.

#

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 4: Landscape in Photography, 1997

Clarke sees two major strands in the history of landscape photography, one on either side of the Atlantic.  Across both, photographers were agents of viewing, the privileged few who went out into the world and brought back images from their journeys.  

In England, they were tourists, wandering about the countryside composing the equivalent of picture postcards.  Their images were highly idealized versions of a rural utopia.  Clarke cites Roger Fenton’s work as typical of the picturesque, a genre reflecting “the leisurely assumptions of a class of people who looked upon landscape scenery in aesthetic and philosophical terms.”    That is, they didn’t live there and weren’t terribly concerned with the reality of those who did.  Their version of the English countryside was a “highly edited version … – exclusive and bound by mythology.”  Clarke doesn’t bother to explain why this might have been so.  In his introduction to the chapter he remarks on how the photograph emerged at a time when painters were interested in realism and when science was making quick advances in understanding the processes of the natural world.  Why, then, this regressive trend in landscape photography? 

Where does it end?

A 43-year old photographer said of his former award-winning photo:

'I added clouds because the sky was a bit boring.'

It seems sad when we cannot be happy with what is.  Here nature manifests as a powerfully moving scene (that those of us who live in a desert can only image), with eyes and mind with which to view and appreciate it, and the technology with which to capture it.  

This is miracle enough!  

I understand the impulse to make something more interesting.  We have all that experience in whatever work we do.  But perhaps more important is the will and strength to let things be in their fullness as they present themselves, as they are, not as we wish them to be.  

For more on Mr Byrne's misfortune, see:

Photographer who won prestigious prize for striking image stripped of title and for over-use of Photoshop

--------------------

Addendum:

On the OCA Photography Forum, J Lloyd has provided a link to photos of the same scene from another photographer.  Have a look at another view.  

#

Exercise 18: Implied Lines

Two important things to bear in mind are that the eye follows a line, and that it also tries to construct a line from appropriate suggestions as a clear line provides a natural path for the eye, which moves along it.

Perhaps this is not the most elegant sentence Freeman has ever written, but the meaning seems clear.  The mind constructs meaning through pattern and uniformity, which it seeks and even builds when it can't be clearly found.  As producers of images, photographers can help viewers see by being aware of lines - explicit or implied - when composing.

Visual Language of American Electoral Politics

Obama. Romney.

They each spend a lot of money trying to convince you they are as different as north and south, oil and water, day and night.  Their policies and general understanding of the world are quite similar.  They both represent large political machines and dance to the music financed by corporate America.  Their "stories" are disseminated by journalists who, through documenting the election carnival, confer an air of seriousness to the idea of choice and public empowerment at the ballot box.

Exercise 17: Curves

Freeman notes that curves are a kind of diagonal.  They suggest movement and draw the eye into the image.  The photo above is a panorama (unfortunately the stitch is too obvious) of Khawr an Najd, a bay in Musandam, Oman, where Mutsumi and I spent a night camping this past weekend.  The image features several curves, including the circular body of water, and the mountains on either side rolling down into it.  (For more photos from this location, see Exercise 16: Diagonal Lines.)

For this exercise we were to shoot at least four images demonstrating curves or circles.  I think the photos speak for themselves.  

Exercise 16: Diagonal Lines

This past weekend Mutsumi and I went for a camping trip to Musandam, the tip of the peninsula sticking into the Strait of Hormuz.  Our timing was off.  Not only were daytime temperatures still uncomfortably hot, but the Sultan of Oman decided to have his own camping trip in the same area.  Consequently there were loads of uniformed security and many roads and access points were blocked.  It wasn't a total write off.  We spent one lovely night at Khawr an Najd and I was able to capture a few images for the next two exercises.

Exercise 15: Horizontal and Vertical Lines

Having practiced points, we move on to lines.  The brief is to produce four images each (horizontal and vertical) in which the predominant feature is line, or as Freeman says, in which the content is subordinate to the line.

Freeman asks that we mix it up and not take too many photos of the same kind.  The challenge for me was finding subjects that were not buildings.  Living in a city of high rises, these kinds of lines predominate.

Ulric Collette and what we pass on

Canadian photographer Ulric Collette, the story goes, was experimenting in Photoshop with images of himself and his son when he got the idea of a combined portrait.  He put it on Flickr and it was so  immediately popular that he began seeking out subjects for a series of blended portraits (which you can view at his website via the link below).

Undoubtedly what makes them popular is demonstrating that physical likeliness lives on in offspring.  People can, in some sense, outlive their four score.

I find them of interest for demonstrating how little difference there is between generations.  When we are young we think we're completely different from our parents. These photos say otherwise.

• The Province
• The Daily Mail
• Collette's website

#

Images: The world through a slit

Jay Mark Johnson is a photographer, architect and special effects designer who gets to play with some cool toys.  Recently he had a specialty camera, an $85,000 piece of equipment for taking high resolution panoramas.  As explained here, the camera's lens has a narrow slit and captures vertical bands of images that are stitched together into a large panorama.  Typically the camera is used on landscapes, but Johnson noticed some strange effects when something moved across the lens, so he stopped moving the lens and started taking timed exposures of moving objects.  As he normally would with landscapes, he then stitched all those photos together.

The result is images in which slowly moving objects appear stretched  and where quick moving objects are compressed, or only partially visible.  Fixed objects are dots of color that when combined become horizontal streams.

Perhaps the same effects could be recreated with a typical SLR by creating a mask for the lens.  The troublesome bit would be stitching all the photos together.

Perhaps when I have a spare month or two to experiment.  Or when Johnson lets me borrow the camera for the weekend.

Johnson's website is here.

#

Exercise 14: Multiple Points

One of the basic skills of still-life photography, Michael Freeman writes, "is to be able to group objects together in such a way that they are linked attractively, in a relationship that is active rather than obvious and static. This is essentially a problem of placing several points."

This exercise calls for taking a series of images documenting the creation of a still life.  "The idea," Freeman says, "is to control the composition by rearrangement, not by changing the framing with the camera."

Chris Buck's Presence

Chris Buck:  Presence:  David Lynch

I never heard of Chris Buck until I ran across this interview in which he discusses his latest project, a series of celebrity photographs called Presence.  Apparently, Mr Buck is a genuine Hollywood celebrity photographer, which immediately puts him outside the range of my interest, either as a photographer or as a consumer of images.

What makes this particular project noteworthy is the absence of what it claims to present.  The example above, from Buck's website, is a portrait of David Lynch.  According to the interview, it was shot at Lynch's home and in all of the series photographs the subject is somewhere hidden from view.

Exercise 13: Positioning a Point

"The point," Michael Freeman writes, "is the most fundamental design element.  In a photograph  for a subject to qualify as a point it has to be small in the frame, and contrast, in some way, with its surroundings.  The most obvious kind of scene in which you can find and use a single point is where the setting, or background, is plain and even, and from which you are at sufficient distance for an object to occupy just a fraction of the space."

This exercise required taking three photos demonstrating points in three classes of position:  center, off-center, close to the edge.  

Social Engagement and Art

Recently I've begun to think that grand ideas and beautiful images are wasteful.  The world is suffering from hunger, disease, and war, and yet those fortunate enough to experience none of this first-hand spend their days dreaming up projects to titillate their countrymen, to indulge their fantasies, to help them pass a moment or two without having to consider that their fellow beings are perishing from physical impoverishment.

Camille Paglia wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week about the detachment of modern artists from the concerns of the "real" world:

What do contemporary artists have to say, and to whom are they saying it? Unfortunately, too many artists have lost touch with the general audience and have retreated to an airless echo chamber. The art world, like humanities faculties, suffers from a monolithic political orthodoxy—an upper-middle-class liberalism far from the fiery antiestablishment leftism of the 1960s.

Yesterday I wrote about Jean-François Rauzie, who makes enormous, hyper detailed photographs.  The hours he puts in are equally enormous.  And for what?  All those hours, how might they have benefited someone without an education, without food, who lives in threat of physical harm?

This morning I was flipping through Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, which I received only yesterday, and found in Suzanne Lacy's article a quote from Robert Thurman's Nagarjuna's Guidelines for Buddhist Social Activism that was so good it sent me looking for a copy.  As Google Books presents in images, rather than text, here is a jpg extract:

Jean-François Rauzie's Hyperphoto

French photographer Jean-François Rauzie makes enormous photographs - 20 meters wide and at 10,000 times the resolution of a normal print.   These are quite obviously composites of hundreds of individual photos.  The article linked here doesn't mention what kind of camera he uses, but the amount of effort that goes into these must be as outsized as the photos themselves.

I suppose to be properly appreciated you have to view one of these gigantic prints, not scroll through one on the internet.  I respect the tremendous effort and hours committed to these images, but have to wonder - why?  In relation to the amount of work, is there a return of equal value?

Article at Slate

Jean-François Rauzie's website

#

Assignment One: Contrasts

The brief for the Assignment is to create eight pairs of images demonstrating contrast, plus one additional image demonstrating internal contrast.   The subject is not specified, but specific contrasts are.

As I noted in a post on my Learning Log, my intention was to focus on one subject.  I wanted to create a set of consistent looking images, and as my technical skills are still underdeveloped, limiting subject matter is one way of achieving such. 

I spent three days shooting at the Dubai Fruit and Vegetable Market.  Two visits were in the morning, one in the late afternoon.  During my first visit I shot almost entirely based on whatever presented itself.  My second and third visits consisted of shooting for specific images to fit the contrasts specified in the assignment.  I shot approximately 200 photos, far more than the 17 required of the assignment. 

All images were shot on a Nikon D5100 with a Nikkor 18-55mm.  Most images were taken using Aperture Priority mode.  Post-processing was done in Lightroom.

Shooting for assignment

I've been out shooting for assignment one.  This calls for 8 pairs of photos demonstrating contrast, plus one additional photo demonstrating internal contrast.  A list of 21 contrasts has been provided, such as dark/light, curved/straight, sweet/sour, etc.  There is no restriction on subject, but my aim has been to shoot only one.  It seems too easy to find subjects to fit the contrasting adjectives and end up with a hodgepodge of rather pedestrian, trite images.

At first I thought I would shoot in some abandoned homes I found in a neighborhood not too far from here.  I took some preliminary shots and after reviewing them realized it might be too difficult to find a suitable number of usable images.

Images: More awesome than awesome

10 years worth of photographs combined into one image showing 5500 individual galaxies.

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/09/25/this-is-the-most-zoomed-in-photograph-ever-created-by-mankind/

#

Images: Siberian Summer

A Siberian Summer

SEP 25, 2012

Reuters photographer Ilya Naymushin is based in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, the the third largest city in Siberia. He frequently takes photographs of daily life in and around Krasnoyarsk, capturing expansive landscapes, colorful festivals, and intimate moments with equal skill. Below, I've gathered some of my favorite images taken by Ilya over this past Siberian summer.

43 more photos here:  http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2012/09/a-siberian-summer/100375/

"Al Rams" Antonie Robertson

Photo:  Antonie Robertson

As readers of this blog may be aware, I have recently relocated to Dubai after three years living in Ras Al Khaimah, a small city in a rural area about 100km to the north.  Out my back window was a tree filled with birds in the mornings, and beyond that sand and bushes.  The morning drive to work took 10 minutes and I passed no more than a dozen cars.  The mountains were a 15 minute drive from work or from home. Life was unhurried and the place sparsely populated.  Here in Dubai, its all quite the opposite.  Six weeks later I'm still adjusting to my new environment.

Yesterday I opened The National for a bit of local news and discovered a collection of photographs of a small community near Ras Al Khaimah, a place called Al Rams.  The 15 images in this collection seem so redolent of place - deep shadows, cinder block, vivid building colors,  dusty streets, ramshackle shops.  Experiencing these images from a distance, a wistful longing arose for a place I once inhabited and which features in so many good memories.  

I took quite a lot of photos during my three years in RAK, but none quite as good as the 15 images in Antonie Robertson's collection.  I sent the photographer a personal thank you through his website, which you can visit here.

Enjoy.  

#

Exercise 11: Vertical and Horizontal Frames, Part 2

I never expected to spend so much time on this exercise.  It seemed straightforward enough.  Find a place to photograph to which you could return.  Shoot the subject in vertical, examine the photos, then return and shoot in horizontal.   The purpose here was to examine shooting habits, to see whether shooting vertical might be equally as rewarding, and to discover how frame orientation may influence shooting choices.

An initial post on the exercise with a bit of background on the subject matter that can be found here.

Images: Equine Portraiture

Daily Mail Online

By ROB PREECE

PUBLISHED: 10:50 GMT, 13 September 2012

Strong and muscular but graceful when they move, horses have inspired artists and writers for centuries.

But these pictures show the animals as you've probably never imagined them before - posing for portraits in a professional photographer's studio.

And this isn't any ordinary studio - it's a 3,000 square foot backdrop and stage which the photographer, Lindsay Robertson, takes to stables in the back of his Transit van.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2202488/Photographer-creates-3-000-square-foot-backdrop-capture-stunning-pictures-horses.html#ixzz27XkercEI

#

Exercise 11: Vertical and Horizontal Frames

It's been too long since I last posted any photos.  I've been shooting and images have been accumulating while trying to sort out how to use Lightroom, as well as iPad.  You can read about the latter here.

I returned to the UAE in late August and began a new life in Dubai.  Previously I lived in a rural area about 100km north.  As I'm in new surroundings, one of my photographic projects has been to record images of my surroundings for friends and relatives in far away places.  That fit in nicely with the most recent exercise.

Lightroom Follow-up

This post follows on from the previous, looking at set-up issues in Lightroom.  Since arriving back in Dubai a couple weeks ago I've spent most of my photography time playing around with the software, first with Adobe's training manual, and then on a little project.

Organizing in Lightroom

I’m just starting with Lightroom 4 and am a bit puzzled regarding organization.  

I'm posting my question here as proof of my engagement with photography technology, which my tutor may be reviewing in the not too distant future.  Since this blog has a tiny readership, I'll be adding links to this post to a few forums to elicit advice.  Please feel free to add a comment here, or in the forum topic that brought you here - or both.  

Here we go.

Review: Atta Kim ON AIR

Atta Kim - ON AIR

The Buddhist understanding of the world is that it is not a place full of things, a place of people and animals, cars and buildings, continents and oceans.  It is rather a world of processes, of coming into and out of being, arising and passing, waves and vibration.  It is a world of cause and effect, each effect becoming a cause, each cause an effect, the whole of the world interconnected and interpenetrated.

We have a similar understanding of the world from modern science, but the Buddha first taught these ideas 2500 years ago.  His insights came from meditation.  What he understood is that we are fooled into believing things are real because we process sensory data at a far slower rate than it occurs.  So it appears to us that something remains stable and fixed when it is actually in rapid flux.  A classic example within the tradition is the candle flame.  In the morning it appears the same as the one that was first lit the previous evening.  In reality, that flame is not the same as it was an hour ago, a minute ago, even one second ago.  The flame arises and passes away far faster than the eye can see.

And so it is the same for what we call human beings.  We image ourselves as somehow solid and fixed, but we are changing not just day to day, but not just hour to hour or minute to minute, but micro-moment to micro-moment.    

Attention to detail

Inspired by Lucy and Jonesy's comments, I purchased a copy of Lightroom and have begun working through Adobe's training guide.  Within the first hour I have been amazed and delighted to discover the many wonderful ways this software enables photographers.  What has prompted me to make this post is a small part of one exercise that impressed me with it's attention to detail, a thing so small I wouldn't have noticed it if the guide writer hadn't drawn my attention to it.

Here are before and after photos.  Can you see what has been changed?  Click on the photos to see enlarged views.  

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 3: Photography and the Nineteenth Century, 1997

Writing over Romania

I first read this chapter about a month ago but never got around to writing it up after being sidetracked by Peter Henry Emerson.   I'll write more on him later, but for now I will review Clarke's presentation of the nineteenth century, a period when some of the issues photographers and critics contend with today were first set out.

Theoretically, photography was conceived as an extension of painting and therefore subject to the same conventions in subject and presentation.  This was exemplified by composite photographers such as Robinson and Rejlander, whose classical subject matter sought to convey ethical or moral intent, to "instruct, purify and enoble."1   At the same time, photographers were enthralled with science and engineering.  The world seemed a place where discovering the laws of nature made possible rapid social and economic development, where the real could be uncovered.  And what better example of capturing reality than the new invention of the camera, a machine capable of reproducing the seen, and reproducing it in detail never before possible with the brush.  

Exercise 10: Positioning the Horizon

As Freeman remarks in the course notes, every photo has an implied division.  One of the most basic divisions is along the horizontal plane – where to place the horizon.  This exercise asks the student to take a series of photos of a landscape with an uncluttered horizon in order to consider how horizon affects framing.

Exercise 9: Balance

This is an analytical exercise based on previously taken photographs.  We are to investigate how the elements of the photo achieve balance.  

The bane of copyright

Over at the OCA Photography forum students and tutors are discussing the legality of posting copyright photos to student blogs such as this.  At least one participant has staked out a rather extreme position, that any such work may not be posted without permission.  Intuitively this seems ridiculous.  The intent of the bloggers is not to infringe, but to illustrate and document the process of learning.  The audience for the blogs seem to be limited to a handful of classmates, perhaps a family member or two, and the tutor.  

Exercise 8: Focal Lengths and Different Viewpoints

This morning some of the family went out to visit dad in the nursing home.  On the way back some of them wanted to stop in the town of Senoia for a little shopping.  I took the opportunity to shoot some photos and to complete the next exercise.

Exercise 7: Focal Lengths

Because I’m visiting a semi-rural area with no transportation of my own, I’ve been relegated to shooting what’s available:  the homes, yards, streets, and people of the neighborhood.   Not a bad project, really, as it forces you to search and look a little deeper.  I set out yesterday morning with two goals in mind:  images of the area’s signage and completing the latest exercise.

Exercise 6: A Sequence of Composition

The last couple of weeks it doesn’t seem there was much time for photographing.  My father was admitted to a nursing home and I’ve been spending time with mom getting everything sorted out.  I did do some shooting around the neighborhood, but there was nothing in my schedule to fulfill the requirements for this exercise.

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 2: How Do We Read a Photograph, 1997

In How Do We Read a Photograph Clarke claims that we don't just look at photographs, we read them.  He introduces French literary critic Roland Barthes, who in the early 80’s published what has become an iconic text in photography studies, Camera Lucida.  Barthes argues for a two-layered conception of the reading process, one that begins with what he calls the studium, our first impression of the image.  This might be more akin to looking, to acquiring a general impression.  Should we take time to linger, we may notice a small detail, something that draws us into the photo, something that when followed leads to exploration and new discoveries.  This Barthes calls the punctum - the puncture, the hole down which we fall into the image.  I’ve had this experience for perhaps as long as I have read photos, but I never conceptualized it, never named it.  It happened to me most recently when reading one of the images in this chapter, Arbus’ Identical Twins.  What drew me in were the eyes.  One set heavy, the other wide.  And from there I began to notice other differences that suggested these twins were not so identical.

Exercise 5: Subject in Different Positions in the Frame

Yesterday my wife and I were out for a bit of shopping and as we followed the directions suggested by my mother, we passed down a two-lane road rolling through some beautifully manicured countryside, including a couple of horse farms.  We stopped at one where the animals were out near the road to look and to take a few photos.

Exercise 4: Fitting the Frame to the Subject

I wasn’t planning to shoot this assignment at a hospital, but since arriving in the US three days ago there hasn’t been much time for work.   My father had to be admitted to the ER yesterday for a non-fatal condition.  Several family members were in attendance and while we waited for the doctor and for tests I slipped out with my camera for a walk and found a lovely park on the hospital grounds.

Review: Ragnar Axelsson and Last Days of the Arctic

British Airways boasts over 100 hours of on-demand television programs and movies.  Even so, on this week’s Dubai-London-Atlanta flights there wasn’t much on offer.  In fact the only thing worth watching was a one hour documentary on the people of the Arctic as seen through the work of news photographer Ragnar Axelsson.  

Exercise 3: Focus at Different Apertures

This exercise is similar to the last in exploring how aperture affects focus.  I haven't yet been able to figure out the physics, but the result is this - the smaller the aperture (the larger the f-stop), the more clearly in focus will be objects at near and far depths.

I set out to demonstrate this yesterday evening in a walk around my neighborhood. I was planning to shoot a row of cars.  In fact I did shoot a row of cars.  But I also found something unusual that demonstrates the effect better than the car photos, bands of neon tubing wrapped around a column, which I shot with my body against the column, camera point up.

Aspiration

http://www.whattheduck.net/

Review: Colberg, Photography After Photography?, 2012

Painting erupted once its burden of depiction was lifted. Maybe as photographers we can do our own lifting, realizing what it means, for example, to say that every photograph has already been taken. Seen in that sense, photography could maybe be the first medium to move forward because it has made itself obsolete, at least to some extent. 

Now that we’ve done all that stuff that you can see in history-of-photography books, now that we’ve become obsessed with re-creating that past over and over again - how can we turn around, to look at and move into the future? 

Joerg Colberg
Photography After Photography?

This is a question that comes back to me from time to time – what do my photographs mean in a world where there are trillions of images, with millions more being taken each day?  If everyone has a camera, what does it mean to be a photographer?   Colberg seems to be concerned primarily with discovering a new technique, but I think the way forward, if there is such a thing, and the answer to my own question, is intention.  Why make photos?   Colberg sees digital techniques replicating old forms as hopelessly nostalgic for the very reason that the intention behind such photos is sentimental.  There’s no real need to communicate anything except – look what I can do!

His analogy to jazz may point to a related problem.  That particular form of music has for the past few decades been open to only a very small circle of musicians and listeners.  It is now irrelevant to the vast majority of human beings, as well as the vast majority of humans who listen to music regularly.  There are a number of reasons for this, but part of the problem is the musicians themselves, many of whom seem unable to meet the general public halfway.  They want to play jazz as they like it.  And that’s fine.  But what then does finding a way forward mean?  A way forward for whom?  For what purpose?  What if you invent a new form, but no one’s there to listen? 

#

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, 1997

At the OCA forums, more than a few students complained about the academic density of this text.  Even some of the reviews at Amazon complained about the opacity of the language.   I was expecting the worst.  But having just finished the first chapter I can say that the reviewers are right – and wrong. 

Exercise 2: Focus with a set aperture

Wherever we turn the attention of our eye we find objects in focus.   While you are looking at these words, try bringing your attention to things on either side of the screen.  You are aware of their presence, maybe their shapes and colors, but they are not in focus.  Now look at something across the room and notice that the things close to you fall out of focus.

In this respect, your camera functions much the same as your eye when set at low apertures.  It tends to focus on objects at one distance, but not more than one.  (At high apertures you can achieve with your camera something you cannot with your eye, focusing on everything within the frame.)  The object of this assignment is to demonstrate the camera's focusing ability, to note how to change the area of focus with a fixed aperture, and to investigate the relative area of focus. 

Exercise 1: Focal Length and Angle of View

The assignment was to set up the camera, mark the spot from which photos would be taken, and to then shoot three photos of the same scene (if using a lens with adjustable focal length, as I am):  one at either extreme (for me, 18mm and 55mm), and the other at whichever length best replicated the image seen with the naked eye.  

Then have the three photos printed, return with prints in hand to the spot marked, hold up the photos, and notice how close or how far they have to be held from the eye in order that the photo represents the size of the objects viewed with the naked eye. 

I didn’t understand this exercise until I saw this student’s blog.  

Then I got it:  how does the lens affect what you are seeing? 

The Exposure Triangle: Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO

Course author Michael Freeman reminds us that “right from the start” we should familiarize ourselves with the following basic concepts.  This shouldn’t be hard to do, as all three photography classes I’ve taken spent a great deal of time talking about just these things.

Getting to Know Your Camera 2: Sensor, lens, and focal length

Before getting to the exercises in the coursebook, there is a section called Getting to Know Your Camera, in which course author Michael Freeman suggests sitting down with camera and manual and reviewing all your features and functions.  This seems like a reasonable idea, except that many of the features and functions of the camera can't be explored until you get out and use them.  Having a look through the manual, though, is useful insofar as you then know where to look when you encounter a problem. (Speaking of manuals, I've got three:  Nikon's, Thom Hogan's, and the Blue Crane reference card.)

The exercise I included in my previous post seems like a more reasonable approach to familiarizing yourself with your tech.  I want to extend that here to include the issue of focal length, which Freeman addresses separately.

Full Frame 35mm, and Nikon D5100 sensor size in red.  
Photo:  KenRockwell.com

Getting to Know Your Camera 1: Nikon D5100 Features Inventory

When I did my Better Photo course a couple of months ago, the first assignment, and a very useful one, was sitting down with the camera and manual and finding out exactly what I have on hand.  The check  list below was suggested by the instructor (Peter Burian).

Photo:  whitegadget.com

My History of Photography

The first thing I remember about cameras is that my father had one.   In fact he had several during his life, including what I believe was an 8mm movie camera.  He shot family holidays or church and school events.   Other people around me had cameras, but I wasn’t curious.  

In fact, I didn’t have my own camera until I was 27 years old.  I bought a point-and-shoot Vivitar before leaving for Japan in the summer of 1988.   Once there I took the equivalent of my father’s snapshots and made prints to send back home to illustrate letters about my life in Japan.  Otherwise, I wasn’t really interested in playing with the camera.  I gave that Vivitar to a student in the early 00’s after I went digital.  That purchase changed my relationship to the camera.  I could take as many photos as I wanted without regard to developing costs, and share as many as I wanted without regard to printing. 

Another turning point came on a trip to Sri Lanka.  On a sunset walk along the Lanka seashore, I managed to take the Galle fort in silhouette against the evening sky.  I did this using the camera’s preset features for capturing images in low light.  When I saw the result on my computer a week later, I had my first inkling of the possibility of capturing arresting images, and confirmation that by fiddling with the controls I could produce more interesting results.

The Box

The box, as I have seen it referred to at OCA forums, arrived yesterday. Nice paper packaging, as you can see, and well designed materials, as befits a college of arts.  If this represents the extra ₤150 for overseas students, then OCA is gouging. 

#

Ways of Seeing

I was 11 years old when this documentary series aired in 1972.  I never even heard of it until today, when I ran across a mention of it from a fellow student posting at the OCA forums.  For those that might want some background, have a look here.  Much of what Berger discusses doesn't seem particularly new, though it may have been when the series was produced.  Still, he makes valuable points about how we view art.  Perhaps his most fundamental assumption is that images are like words, which can be used in different ways to elicit different feelings or behaviors.  Advertisers and promoters are widely aware of this.  (See Adam Curtis' documentaries for more powerful evidence of this.)  Consumers typically are not, and Berger's ambition with this project seems to be raising awareness, in particular with regards to what he sees as the pseudo religious air surrounding high art.  He performs a number of interesting experiments, including juxtaposing clips of a painting with clips of dancing girls and a firing squad execution to illustrate how context shapes meaning.   He finishes the first episode with a reading from an art critic whose work seems to be struggling to justify itself, followed by a visit with school children who respond without affectation.  I think Berger would agree with Suzuki: In beginner's mind we have many possibilities, but in expert mind there is not much possibility.

The Beginning

This blog is a record of my journey as a photographer.  It is a place to play with ideas, a place to post experiments, reflections, reviews, and anything else I might find, create, or edit.  It's a scrapbook, a notebook, a journal, a diary.  It's a place to play and a place to reflect;  a place to collect and recollect.  It's also part of a requirement for a course I have begun.  I hope my tutor is not the only visitor.

This photo was taken in a lot behind a strip mall off one of the main roads of Ras Al Khaimah, a dusty scrap yard in the northern tip of the UAE.  There isn't a lot here but rocky mountains.  Even the desert areas are rocky, not the picturesque orange dunes.  It's said that when Sheikh Zayed, the founder of the country, watched the American landing in 1969, he remarked on how the landscape of the moon looked similar to that of Ras Al Khaimah.  Also like the moon, not a lot of people come to visit. It's a quiet corner of the world, which seems to be why those who like it stay.  No one's planning to take your job or develop your land or put a megamall next to your house.

RAK has been a good place to lay low for the last three years.  From the fall, I'll be in the urban throng in Dubai.

#