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

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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.

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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

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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.