mdarnton
Well-known
It's so rare that someone is so humble as to offer an accurate self opinion, that I'd like to offer this famous Ruth Orkin photograph to support you: http://girlinflorence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ruthorkin.jpg
Brutally honest critique thread
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It's so rare that someone is so humble as to offer an accurate self opinion, that I'd like to offer this famous Ruth Orkin photograph to support you: http://girlinflorence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/ruthorkin.jpg
Ranchu
Veteran
An opinion can have a negative value.
fireblade
Vincenzo.
Wasn't meant to be.
One thing that photography does better than any other medium is to elevate the mundane and the everyday - making us look at things that we typically ignore, ordinarily couldn't care less about or otherwise pass by. But a lot of photographs of the mundane are, well, mundane themselves. The photographer needs to make me open my eyes, they need to elevate the ordinary and make it seem extraordinary - this requires a skill that a great many photographers lack. If they can't do this, well, why would I want to look at boring photograph of something uninteresting? This particular skill goes deeper than being able to compose and being technically proficient - it's easy to take an appealing photograph of an interesting and picturesque subject, but not of the mundane.
The oft-derided William Eggleston has this kind of eye, as he shows us in one my all-time favourite photographs: Untitled, Black Bayou Plantation, near Glendora, Mississippi, ca. 1970. It's just a photograph of some abandoned containers - yet Eggleston somehow makes us care about this scene and what's in it. It seems deeply significant, portentful, yet it's just a few lost bottles...
i like this image, mundane it may be for some, but Eggleston knew what he wanted when he took this image...i'll go as far as saying he staged it.
Looking at this image my eye was drawn to three useless objects, the cut off barn, the cut off box and the empty box....then the bottles, and finally that tree.
[
RichC
Well-known
Or he knew where to plant his feet and point his camera!
As this is the brutally honest critique thread, here's an observation on a huge number of photographs I see on RFF. Why is it that so many people who are into supposedly into looking fail to observe what's in their viewfinder before firing the shutter?
So many images where the subject is awkwardly cut off, someone is "standing" on the subject's head, there's a honking great big white something in the background, or some other jarring juxtaposition...
I get that shots may need to be grabbed and the composition not perfect (personally I'd toss these!), but there are still loads of images where the photographer had plenty of time but still failed to check what was in their viewfinder.
I'm not talking about esoteric composition here but simply the basic "tree growing out of the head" fault, which should be obvious to everyone and is often easily corrected by shuffling over a few feet.
bobbyrab
Well-known
Is it ok to have trees growing out of the head when it's done by Eggleston?
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/whats-in-a-number/#slideshow-1
bobbyrab
Well-known
I'm not knocking Eggleston, I love a lot of his work, it's just for me a photograph doesn't work without decent content, and if the content has strong composition then great, but if it's all composition and no content then that's worse in my book. I found a few Egglestons which have the content but the composition I don't think is always that uppermost in his mind. Just my opinion of course.
RichC
Well-known
Better if he hadn't - note my caveat about grabbed shots.
I definitely don't like this photo - even if it is by Eggleston! That said, the composition is saved by being in colour - the girls in their strident colour dominate the picture to the extent that the trees growing out of their heads aren't a problem. If converted to B&W the image has problems (you may think it doesn't need converting to B&W to fail..! <grin>)
And, yes, I agree with you about Eggleston and composition: he is more interested in content. But he is aware of picture-making - none of the images he releases have bad composition, just that some are on the edge of failure. Provided they do hang together, presumably that's sufficient for him if the content is right...
bobbyrab
Well-known
I think my difficulty is some of the posts here crediteing him with so much compositional sophistication in the previous example, including the aesthetic importance of the tilted horizon, but in this example he throws all that out the window for a grab shot.
He still chose this image as being an example of his work that he wanted out there, hence my opinion that he's not overly concerned by rules of composition and it's the content that's important.
He still chose this image as being an example of his work that he wanted out there, hence my opinion that he's not overly concerned by rules of composition and it's the content that's important.
Hsg
who dares wins
Is that a story telling shot? That is an event; a story is a series of events.
If you take a photo of someone eating food, is that a story telling shot? Someone is eating food, that is an event. Girl is being teased on the street, that is an event. A story is a series of events.
Sparrow
Veteran
... but, however one approaches it, one arrives at the point of trying on those existential new clothes and this idea that the whole can be greater that the parts ... I've always suspected that to be a contrivance myself, to me the opposite seems to be the case
Dan Daniel
Well-known
A couple of books you might find worth reading are by John Berger. 'About Looking,' especially 'Uses of Photography.' And 'Another Way of Telling.' Berger would probably agree with you on the simple answer, photos don't tell stories.
But he'd probably go on to say that people looking at photos *do* tell stories about what is depicted in the photo. The stories may be fiction, may be very self-serving, may be informed with situational facts (newspaper captions and accompanying articles, etc.), historical knowledge, notes on the back of a snapshot, museum catalogs, etc.
Well, just a suggestions on exploring this aspect of photography.
Edit- found some of Berger's essays from On Looking here. Scroll down to 'Uses of Photography' essay-
http://www.uni.edu/fabos/seminar/readings/berger.pdf
The central paragraph on page 51 forward might interest you.
Hsg
who dares wins
Thanks for the suggestion.
One of the early documentary photographers, Lewis Hine, photographed child laborers and his photos did not tell a story but it asked a question, should children be working in factories?
His photo did not tell the sad story of children and how they lived, it went beyond all that and got to the point, should children be working in factories?
Photography is direct and to the point, and usually great photography asks questions.
Again that is my view and perhaps I like that kind of photography that asks questions, because if I wanted stories I'd a pick more powerful medium like books or movies.
Pherdinand
the snow must go on
i like this image, mundane it may be for some, but Eggleston knew what he wanted when he took this image...i'll go as far as saying he staged it.
Looking at this image my eye was drawn to three useless objects, the cut off barn, the cut off box and the empty box....then the bottles, and finally that tree.
[
you must be kidding.
That's trying really, really hard to make it look positive what in non-eggleston plain Joe shots would be pointed out as failure/mistake/uninteresting/error/waste.
Come on.
A cut off barn corner and a cut off box corner together with another box, form a triangle. Randomly spread jerrycans form (kind of) a triangle. A taller tree and two shrubs form a triangle.
So the shot is great and possibly it's so greatly composed that it could even be pre-arranged?
EVERY 3 points in space form a damn triangle!
I can take almost any shot of a boring scape (land, city or other -scape) and draw a few triangles on it.
I mean seriously.
This shot has zero subject, zero message, zero content, and it has compositional faults by the most basic book, everything else is hyping the shot through the photographer or hyping the shot through its context.
Stop kidding ourselves.
Dan Daniel
Well-known
But Hines photographs were mean to be seen, and were shown, in the context of a campaign to stop child labor. They were not meant to be seen floating free of narrative and context. Without these surrounding stories, I'd suggest that your comment, 'His photo did not tell the sad story of children and how they lived, it went beyond all that and got to the point, should children be working in factories?'is mistaken- his photos say nothing to the question of should children be working in factories. You seeing it that way is simply another example of external context providing a story.
By the way, we may have some serious confusion as we use words like 'story' and 'question' and 'context' and such in shifting meanings.
Pherdinand
the snow must go on
You're generalizing.
Which landscape of Ansel Adams asks any questions? Does that mean that none of those shots are great?
Sure, some other shots do ask questions (or better said, do make the VIEWER ask questions or think harder)and that makes them strong(er), but that's not a criteria.
Also, story telling photo is not meant as a story like in a book, or in a movie, or by drunk Jim in the bar. Don't take it that literally.
Story telling is ment more like, there's something happening in the frame, it's not just a landscape or a static still life or somebody standing and smiling to the camera, but there's interaction between the elements that add some kind of timeframe. Meaning, by looking at that instant depicted by one image, we KNOW there was something happening there that started before the shutter opened, ended after the shutter opened, and, in the best case, culminated exactly when the shutter was open. It doesnt mean we KNOW how exactly the happening started or how exactly it ended, but we know that something is there happening!
That's how the mentioned shot is storytelling.
Pherdinand
the snow must go on
exactly. And to cut objects in half or tilt horizons etc etc
Hsg
who dares wins
I'm looking forward to a separate thread about photography and story telling, because I like to learn more and read more arguments on both sides. I'm aware that my own views are limited on this subject.
Pherdinand
the snow must go on
Dan Daniel
Well-known
i like this image, mundane it may be for some, but Eggleston knew what he wanted when he took this image...i'll go as far as saying he staged it.
Looking at this image my eye was drawn to three useless objects, the cut off barn, the cut off box and the empty box....then the bottles, and finally that tree.
Eggleston is like Scotch or anchovies or Mentos- you either like him or you don't. You either take the time to look and find yourself settling into the visual/emotional landscape of languid humid days of an idle Southern dilettante moving through his life, or you look and look and don't find anything of interest.
Trying to drag people to enjoy Eggleston is a losing battle. Even people who 'appreciate' his work often don't enjoy it. It's like Karsh for me- I know I 'should' like his photos, but they simply don't do it for me. We all have our tastes. I don't get bothered by tilted horizons, for example- it's a possibility that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't- but obviously for some it's a line that cannot be crossed.
Sparrow
Veteran
... I had decided not to comment on that analysis myself as I was looking to be a bit reactionary as it was.
I recall reading a article on Alfrid Hitchcock a few years ago that analysed his films with regards to his use of mirrors, and the significance of the mirror as metaphor in art and religion ... it's all too easy to pile up conjecture upon supposition like this at some point one has to question the product in isolation
