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.

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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

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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.  

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