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.