10.24.2008

10.23.2008

Week Six Review: The Picture Story & Photo Essay




This week, we took everything we've talked about in the last few sessions and applied it to picture packages of two or more photos in picture stories and photographic essays. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a picture story generally refers to a story using a narrative with a beginning, middle and end, while a photographic essay is a related group of pictures that combined are more powerful than each picture individually. We concentrated entirely on one person, W. Eugene Smith, who is the definitive photographer in this genre and was a transformative figure in documentary photography. A comprehensive slideshow with musical accompaniment can be seen on YouTube.

We wrapped up looking at my personal projects-as in family pictures-to see how photographing everyday subjects like births, children, vacations or celebrations can be done in a essay form. Throughout our weeks together we have already looked at several projects, photo essays and picture stories from many of the photographers that we've looked at. Many exhibits, books and magazine stories are a form of photo essay. There are super resources online with wonderful photo projects.

Here's Smith's career and ill-fated life in three minutes.

10.22.2008

Annie Liebovitz: Imagine



Annie Liebovitz: Imagine Part Two


Annie Liebovitz: Imagine Part Three


Annie Liebovitz: Imagine Part Four


Annie Liebovitz: Imagine Part Five


Annie Liebovitz: Imagine Part Six


Annie Liebovitz is one of the most recognized names in photography, but despite her incredible productions that define much of her work these days, she is really a photojournalist at heart and names Cartier-Bresson as one of her chief influences. This BBC documentary provides a great portrait of her. Also here is an interview with Mary Ellen Mark, a harder-edged contemporary of Liebovitz.

Week Five Review: Action, Reaction, Moments, and Portraits

Diane Arbus
Sebastião Salgado
Mary Ellen Mark

We started off looking at a number of examples of slice of life feature pictures recording the peak action or reaction in day-to-day life as well as more serious pictures capturing moments from with high emotion of our humanity. The main idea was that candid photographs that show authentic real life moments far outshine the posed snapshots that we typically find in a family photo album. Being a fly on the wall and recording life unfolding can bring more storytelling and interesting pictures. In documentary photography, one of the biggest hurdles is gaining intimate access into a subjects life, and in photographing friends and family that obstacle is more than likely removed.

One of photography's great powers is that it transcends language and cultural barriers. By using capturing human emotions and our commonality through our day to day activities (eating, drinking, laughing, crying, working, playing, etc.) we can engage the viewers of our photography with more gripping pictures. We also discussed portraiture and how capturing real moments could be applied to making a better portrait.

Most of the photographers that we looked at this week have already appeared in past classes such as Steve McCurry, Mary Ellen Mark and Sebastião Salgado, but we also looked at Diane Arbus. Most of the feature photographs, however, were from a variety of American newspaper photographers that can be found here.

10.10.2008

Steve McCurry

The Tibetans

Cultural Expressions (Documentary Interview) part one

Cultural Expressions (Documentary Interview) part two

Interview: Arts & Minds

These short videos along with the David Alan Harvey clips below might answer a lot of the questions that you have about these individual photographers, their pictures (McCurry's Afghan Girl for example) and how they work. In regards to some of our conversations about equipment take a look at how simple they both keep it. The camera is just a machine, it's the person taking the picture that really makes it.

David Alan Harvey

On Assignment: Cuba

National Geographic True Original:

Yes, that's a flash.

10.09.2008

Week Four Review: The Right Light




This week was all about light, natural and unnatural. We looked at artists like Baroque painter Michelangelo Caresi da Caravaggio (top), and Dutch masters Rembrandt van Rijn and Johannes Vermeer as examples of how light can be used to great effect to add impact, drama, dimension and aesthetic beauty to a picture. We can use light similarly in our photographs. We talked about "good light" and "golden time," or the first two and last two hours of daylight as the most ideal times to photograph exteriors, a rule that automobile advertising industry is in touch with. Although we focused on natural light, we also talked briefly about flash.

Photographers overlapped this week with more work from David Alan Harvey(second from top), Alex Webb and, from week one, Steve McCurry who was our main point of focus. Others were Paolo Pellegrin and Trent Parke and Arthur Fellig, or Weegee.

The photography websites that I've selected with links to some of the subjects we talked about are general photography advice forums that have a lot of other articles and advice that you might find helpful or interesting.:

A Better Photo blog gives some pointers about shooting in open shade.

Total image.com has especially nice and easy-to-understand tutorials, outdoor shooting tips and a lot of other general advice.

Several good lighting tips and as well as more general helpful hints can be found at Photo.Blorge.com. This site stands out with especially simple, easy-to-understand tutorials.

Flash tips from All Things Photography.com, and if you're really serious about learning more about flash, see The Strobist blog which is free and a great resource with lots of tutorials, articles, and how to videos:


Shooting lighting and fireworks is very similar technically, but the advantage in fireworks is the safety factor (not having nagging paranoia that you'll be struck by lighting) and that it is much easier to anticipate where the action will be and which way to aim your camera. There are a lot of good places to go, but here are a couple of places to start. For fireworks, photographer Garry Black has some simple tips clearly explained on his blog. The New York Institute of Photography also keeps it simple and has a great archive of articles and links.

Photographing lightning is hit or miss so to speak. First, be safe, then aim at where the lightnings is coming from, shoot a long exposure with high aperture, use slow film and hope for the best. It's difficult and takes a lot of patience and tries. Again, don't risk your safety for a picture. Here are two sites to check out: Planetneil.com and Apogeephoto.com. For a how-to on photographing the night sky, try wikihow.com.

10.06.2008

Cartier-Bresson Redux

Here are excellent online films about Henri Cartier-Bresson:

Episode Three, Part One of BBC's Genius of Photography which introduces Cartier-Bresson as the "godfather of photojournalism" and describes his "decisive moment" as well as his most famous photo Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare
LINK

Charlie Rose Cartier-Bresson Interview
An intimate 1-hour interview for American public television (2000).
LINK

Just Plain Love (Documentary)
A shortened version of L’amour tout court (2001) Directed by Rafael O’Byrne.
LINK

The Impassioned Eye part one
A 2003 retrospective documentary by director Heinz Bütler with several interviews about Cartier-Bresson by fellow Magnum photographers and artists such as Henry Miller.

10.02.2008

Week Three Review



Composition was our chief topic this week. We discussed the basic rules of composition and looked at examples of each, but French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson was looked at in-depth. Other photographers who we talked about or looked at were David Alan Harvey, Susan Meiselas, Alex Webb, Sam Abell, and Alfred Stieglitz.

Cartier-Bresson's best known book where the phrase "decisive moment" was coined is available here as an e-book: Images a la Sauvette.




As I said the composition can get quite complex and some sources get awfully detailed. Here are a few places online that simplify it into easy-to-understand ways.

Rule of Thirds
Leading Lines
Simplicity
Framing
Balance
Avoid Mergers
Point of View

Kodak keeps it incredibly simple as well with a list of six basic rules: link.

This website is aimed at flower photography, but the rules are essentially the same and can be applied to other genres of photography. It's simplified and in PDF form for easy printout: link.

Here is another good list of rules on PDF for easy print out: link.

For more detailed look at the elements of composition, Arnold John Kaplan goes in deeper.

This one by Theresa Husarik is simple an fun: link. Another on the same site by Peter Saw is aimed at painting but fun in a simple, yet detailed, slideshow form: (Incidentally, there is a great selection of articles on composition on photoinf.com.

Wikipedia can be sketchy but it has its strong points. They have a good detail of rules of composition that apply broadly to photography and visual arts: link

Photo Composition-mania



Photo Composition Tutorial