Photography's Unbreakable Core

I Am,
you are right and that is a great piece. Sort of similar to what Meyerowitz is getting at in this trailer for a great documentary. If you haven't seen it, do...

Says poster not available. Just push the play button.
http://www.traileraddi​ct.com/everybody-street/trailer

mark48 wrote in post #17035249
Thank you very much for sharing your site, Dave. I enjoyed reading every bit of it and have it bookmarked so I can go back time and again. Everything you wrote made absolute sense to me not to mention the great images!

-Mark

Thanks. Glad you liked my articles. You'll find a lot more stuff available when you poke around my blog.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #17035283
Dave a couple of things I took a bit of exception to. Many of Winogrand's images lived near the edges of the frame. Face moving out of the frame cut in half by the frame and what could be the other half of the same face coming into the frame on the other side. So don't fear the edge use it as Garry did.

I also think like Gibson in this quote and I believe this is what separates great images from those you quickly read and can move on from. Great images keep pulling you back because they are not fast reads. The more you look the more you see and the more fluent you become with the language the more you understand. I think to many play to the simple instead of the more complex and compelling.

Gibson's quote....
"A good photograph, like a good painting, speaks with a loud voice and demands time and attention if it is to be fully perceived. An art lover is perfectly willing to hang a painting on a wall for years on end, but ask him to study a single photograph for ten unbroken minutes and he’ll think it’s a waste of time. Staying power is difficult to build into a photograph. Mostly, it takes content. A good photograph can penetrate the subconscious – but only if it is allowed to speak for however much time it needs to get there." - Ralph Gibson

Also composition is and should be as Weston points out here part of a personal way of seeing.
"When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches." - Edward Weston

"so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing." - Edward Weston

I'm not sure if you are disagreeing with me or if you didn't actually read the articles. My essay about the frame says "don't fear the edge of the frame." There's an entire paragraph or two saying you should experiment with clipping your subject on the frame's edge.

Also, I wrote an entire article about adding more details to your photos to hold the viewers attention. Yes, I agree that your photos shouldn't be "fast reads".

As for composition, that's not even covered in these essays. Composition is a book length subject and I just don't have the time.

Sorry Dave I agree with using the edges and disagreeing with the beginners approach was it?

A great photographer once told me the only thing you really need to know is either everything in the frame is helping your photograph and if those things aren't helping it then they are hurting it.

To many people try to follow rules when it comes to composition. Here are some more words from some of the greats about that subject.
"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." - Ansel Adams

"Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!" - Bill Brandt

"There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants." - Arnold Newman

"And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you're either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs." - Duane Michals

"...there are no external or abstract or preconceived rules of design that can apply to still photographs."-Garry Winogrand

Dave have you ever spent any time at the Weston Gallery in Carmel?

When I look at art history, I see a very different picture.

And renascence has an alternative spelling, which is more common.

Some historians say that impressionism was a result of photography. The first photograph 1827 and photography was getting really popular by the mid to late 1800s. Impressionism started gaining momentum in the late 1860s You suddenly had a camera that could record accurately artists were now free to paint how they felt about things instead of trying to make accurate representations.

Honesty. Photography's core is honesty.

That can be broken, of course, but honesty is a big part of photography.

Let me explain with a couple examples:

1. Almost anyone who speaks any European language knows the name Jesus Christ. Also, almost anyone who speaks a European knows the name Adolf Hitler. But which of these two historical figures can you think of and say, "I know what that dude looked like."?

The same goes for Barack Obama and George Washington.

You may think you know what George Washington looked like, but you will never, ever really know, because he was painted. The person doing the painting could have been the most skillful artist in the world, but he might also want to get hired again. Therefore, that mole with the hair growing out of it? Nah, we'll ignore that. He isn't very fit? Well, we can adjust that a bit. And perhaps we will choose which wrinkles make him distinguished and which do not.

Yes, the same argument can be made for photography (we can photoshop wrinkles and use the healing brush to remove a pimple), but the difference is that we know we CAN get a 100% honest photograph.

So we will never know what Julius Caesar looked like, or King Henry the 8th, or Moses.

But we will always know what Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler, and David Lee Roth looked like.

That is photography's core.

EOS-Mike wrote in post #17036671
Honesty. Photography's core is honesty.

But we will always know what Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler, and David Lee Roth looked like.

That is photography's core.

Photography is not honest. It CAN be used to document things, but as a whole it lies, hides and distorts all the time.

Sometimes accidents take things very far. Sometimes critical moments transform... sometimes visual tricks are created intentionally.

How honest do you think Leibovitz is about portraying the crown?

There's a good chance jesus didn't exist as a person, but we have a very good idea of what Nefertiti looked like.

Documentation is boring. A cop pushes a button and a mugshot is made. That's not Photography, that's a side effect of having cameras as technology.

DocFrankenstein wrote in post #17036602
When I look at art history, I see a very different picture.

And renascence has an alternative spelling, which is more common.

Doc,
I wish I could find the piece you quoted. I did not see any way to click on that post to see who wrote it. Anyway . . .

Like you, I do not agree with that quote. Details are not any more important to photography than they are to other forms of art.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17037498
Doc,
I wish I could find the piece you quoted. I did not see any way to click on that post to see who wrote it. Anyway . . .

Like you, I do not agree with that quote. Details are not any more important to photography than they are to other forms of art.

Quote is from one of the essays
http://www.photos4u2c.​net/2013/08/06/big/

What ever the core of photography is, it certainly has little to do with sharpness, blurriness, or anything in-between, at least on a comprehensive level.

DocFrankenstein wrote in post #17036734
Photography is not honest. It CAN be used to document things, but as a whole it lies, hides and distorts all the time.


Documentation is boring. A cop pushes a button and a mugshot is made. That's not Photography, that's a side effect of having cameras as technology.

You didn't really make a valid argument against my position.

I understand what you're saying, however. Yes, photography can lie, but "all the time"?

No. You even mentioned a cop taking a mug shot as an example, but called it "not photography."

It is actually the writing of light (photos graphos).

My actual point is that photography CAN be honest. But I submit that it's impossible to recreate light accurately with a paintbrush or pencil.

The core of photography is the true capture of light, and nothing else comes close.

EOS-Mike wrote in post #17038612
My actual point is that photography CAN be honest.

I don't know what your actual point is, I can only respond to the things you type in.

Let me quote you again:

EOS-Mike wrote in post #17036671
Honesty. Photography's core is honesty.

That can be broken, of course, but honesty is a big part of photography.

That is photography's core.

If you post a thread with a title: "Politicians ARE honest", then get blasted, would you come back and say:

And yes. They can. Sometimes they are... etc.

EOS-Mike wins by default simply because he found a way to work David Lee Roth into his original post. Way to go my man! FYI: Eddie was seen at the mastering studio last week. Fingers crossed for another great album.

As for the rest of you nonbelievers... Do you really think details aren't an important aspect of photography? Haven't you ever taken a picture because you wanted to preserve a detailed memory? As a dad of two young kids, half of the pictures I'm taking these days are simply to preserve the details of a moment. With photography anyone can render a highly detailed scene in 1/250 of a second. That's one of photography's key ingredients. I'm not saying that photography is only about details, but details are one of the main building blocks.

And a word about honesty... Yes photography can be dishonest. Almost everyone knows that they can be fooled by photography. However, I believe most people subconsciously believe photos are honest/real at first glance. They don't see the trick until they turn their cognitive powers towards the photo. Isn't that why photography is used so often in advertising? People subconsciously believe photos are real. With all the photo-realistic, manipulated images we're subjected to each day, I think that at some point the general public is going to become immune to this subconscious belief that photos are real, but we aren't there yet. Here's a piece I wrote on this subject: http://www.photos4u2c.​net/2013/03/24/time-divorce/

An interesting thought by John Szarkowski.
"What the photographer taking the picture and the historian viewing it must understand is that while the camera deals with recording factual things and events that form the subject of the photograph, it only produces a perceived reality that is remembered after the thing or event has passed. While people believe that photographs do not lie, this is an illusion caused by the mistaken belief that the subject and the picture of the subject is the same thing."- John Szarkowski

and
"Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another. Today's technological advances in digital manipulation of images that the public sees regularly in photographs and films now only makes it easier to understand what has always been true."- John Szarkowski

A little something from Winogrand and gets to it about 1:40 or there about's in...
http://www.youtube.com​/watch?v=Tl4f-QFCUek

Actually it gets to the lie about 2:28 in....