Doors on Perception

August Workshop. The Frame.

A hot afternoon, but still folks turned out to see what imagery the other students had produced in response to the assignment on the frame: to produce two images, the second being a crop of the first with the intention of producing a cropped image that 'told a different story'.

And an interesting set they were, with lots of material to discuss and learn from. The major thing we learned from this review was that while a cropped image looses context it can gain in impact. A wide beach scene tells us much about place, gives plenty of detail within which to understand the main subject. Reduce the frame to contain only one tightly cropped piece of detail however, and what we have is a subject which lacks context but is more dramatic in its impact. We also began to understand that cropping from an original image is similar in effect to zooming in for a tighter shot or simply walking closer to take a detailed shot. In fact I would bet that most of us do that as a matter of course once we have established that first contextual broader image.

While for this exercise it was important to find a major difference between first shot and the 'cropped' version we can see that the middle ground is usually preferable: somewhere in between having the main subject surrounded by context to the point where we are unsure what is the subject, and having the subject so tightly presented that we are at a loss to understand what it is all about. Ah, the middle way!

We also thought about frame shapes, how landscape and portrait modes are very limiting once one begins to sample alternate frame shapes, like square, or long and narrow rectangles. Each frame shape brings with it another way of thinking about framing.

As usual in this seminar series, it turns out that what was once thought of as simply synonymous with the viewfinder has layers of interesting possibilities and that in photography, once one glides past the mechanical and various compositional 'rules', things become less clear cut, more mysterious and much more interesting.

Something to experiment with over the next month might be various framing shapes. Remember the 'extas' blog post last month on Klimt and his square cardboard framing devise? While listening to a lecture or reading might be somewhat interesting, it is in practicing it yourself that information can be incorporated into one's own visual 'bag of tricks' and then show itself in your own individual photography.

Next month's preview: Time.

Shutter speed! That must be what this next section will be all about! How to avoid the blurry photo, how to freeze the fast action before us. Great!

Szarkowski does look at the history behind the fact that there is 'no such thing as the instantaneous photograph'. How early cameras had slow exposures and the race was on to speed things up - faster emulsions, faster lenses and shutters. How Muybridge did it. How even today the photograph captures a discrete slice of time.

He goes on to say that this world of blurred movement or snatched thin slices of time were fascinating in its own right, beautiful and interesting, a view into something our own eyes cannot capture but the camera does.

Working with time is not complicated. Like most things we can learn much by simply experimenting with shutter speed, fast and slow, or seeing what will happen when we use a flash to freeze motion. In daylight, in darkness, by moving our camera, panning, or zooming our lens, by photographing moving water or using a tripod for a long exposure... so much thoughtful play which can be much more individually productive that learning it from someone else's viewpoint.


Extra 1
Simon says, that the article I posted  a couple of weeks ago on my Dragongate main blog might be of general interest to the seminar series students. It wanders through the idea that manual operation of the camera has much to offer. I just added another blog post today on making images creatively in camera  and that we might all benefit from a balance between earnest study and playful experimentation.

Find the link to Dragongate over at the top of the right hand column. And to Simon's website also.

Extra 2 
 Here are some of my own images taken to illustrate aspects of framing.

The usual use of cropping is to make slight adjustments, to exclude certain distracting parts and to focus the viewers gaze on the important parts. Notice the change in frame shape and how well the composition works within it.

Cropping as per the assignment. The first contains plenty of contextual detail but what exactly is the 'story' here; the music stand, the window, the spinner? The second crops severely but still contains music and spinner; perhaps the photographer is making a link, a relationship, between the two? The third makes a strong graphic statement, but without the two previous images we might miss what it is a photograph of, it is a mystery.

Summer rain makes an interesting pattern on the sea's surface. I visualize this frame as square, use my regular viewfinder to capture the image and then crop off the unnecessary piece at the bottom, leaving just enough rock and weed to provide scale, weight and context. It is the rain on water, not the general beach scene that I am calling your attention to.

Neither of these images were cropped in the normal sense, but we can see that I got very close. Here the points of interest are very small and only work within a design because of context. And the context is only interesting because of the important detail.

Extra 3

We write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion.

                                             Robin Williams in 'Dead Poet Society.'

On Sunday I quoted Andre Gide, “When you think you have gone far enough, go farther.” in the context of cropping. My point being that cropping concentrates our message, sharpens it up and makes it more obvious. What I did not say perhaps was that more photographs fall short of good communication because they pull their punch than because they are not technically 'good' photographs. Gide was writing about play or screen writing, how one really needed to underline the theme, to make it hard to miss, but this transfers well to making photographs as well. As Robin Williams ( who died today) said in his teacher character, we make poetry ( or any other work of art) because we are passionate creatures and we need to feel it first if we are to communicate it.

         "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."