Search this site
ITF Corner!
Hello from your friendly local ITF!New series of posts: Tips on embedding powerpoints and prezis on the blog, and embedding essays within prezis. Read more...
Before that: So you want to make a podcast? A powerpoint presentation. Read more...
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Sarah S on Times Square
- John Scanlon on A Losing Bet
- tejjybear on Is Technology Destroying our Culture?
- tejjybear on A Dried Herring, Please
- tejjybear on Too Much Diversity
Login
Real Is the New Perfect
Each author in “Reflections on the Medium: What it Means to Photograph” emphasized the value of photography. Alexander Rodchenko, as an example, highly stressed the different perspectives that photography can capture. For hundreds of years, painters created work at the “belly button level or from eye level”. Rodchenko argued that in a world where everything is changing so rapidly, documenting an object from one perspective is not sufficient in portraying it vividly and realistically. He believed that photography, instead of being a substitute for paintings, should be more experimental. It is wrong to take photographs of people posing or a landscape from eye-level because it does not provide a new perspective for something already known. He described his experience with the Eiffel Tower to compare what photography is to what it should be. Seeing it from a distance, he was not amused. But standing below it and looking up, he saw a completely different scene.
Bernice Abbott, in her piece titled “Photography at the Crossroads”, shared a similar perspective to that of Rodchenko. In its early stages, photography did not seek to imitate other mediums of art. It captured the candid, everyday happenings. By the mid 19th century, “artificial props with phony settings began to be used”. Photographers leaped back to the time when perfect was the standard. Retouching, brushwork, props, and backdrops began to be used to create a more surreal imagine. It was all an attempt to correct the real and natural. Abbott believed that a photographer should have a motive for capturing a moment in time. The photograph’s message should be clear and powerful.
Both photographers took their work to be more than an art form: it was also a means of educating. They did not seek to perfect the subjects and landscapes that they photographed, but instead wanted to show them from different, more realistic perspectives. Looking at the misuse of photography from a sociological standpoint, they wondered how photos could change the way people viewed the world.
Photography Terms:
- Bracketing: Taking several photographs of the same scene at different exposure settings to ensure a well-exposed photograph.
- Grainy: description of an image that looks speckled because the particles of silver on the sensitized paper are clumping together.
- Aperture: the opening of a lens that controls the amount of light that enters the camera.
- Emulsion: Light-sensitive coating on film or paper (on which photograph will be produced).
- Reticulation: Cracking, scratching, or damaging the emulsion of a photograph during the developing process.
Funny Photo
Ouch
Perspective and Selectivity
The technology for photography has transcended in the 21st century with color photos and the extraordinary ease of taking them, capturing reality as photographers see it ever more vividly. The tradition of formal family photographs is long gone, or at least the majority of the time a camera is not used to take formal family photographs anymore. Instead, we are more concentrated in taking photographs of ourselves, our families, and our surroundings. Personally for me, that’s true. I do not take photography as seriously and take pictures of things that only interest me. The depths of those photographs, however, can be questioned. I think, if there are any definite aspects, what sets apart a great photograph from a typical one lies in its selectivity and unique perspective, taking the two terms as defined by Berenice Abbott and Alexander Rodchenko, respectively.
Although Ken Light and Larry Sultan’s writings speak well of photography, I find Abbott’s and Rodchenko’s to be more revealing of what photography is. In Rodchenko’s views, a photograph is supposed to capture daily life as we see it in a variety of perspectives, not just “from the belly button.” Everything would be boring if we all look at the same object in the same way. And therefore, Rodchenko proposes, “We who are accustomed to seeing the usual, the accepted, must reveal the world of sight. We must revolutionize our visual reasoning” (Rodchenko). In a sense, that’s what fills our lives with colors. We may participate in the same activity but we can have different takes on it, and that’s what a picture is set out to show – the different perspectives. For example, a regular floor lamp photo might look plain taken from a person looking at it a few feet away, but it would or might look very unique from top or bottom view.
As for Abbott, she stresses the importance of selectivity and draws attention to photographers as an artist, differing from those who paints, sings, or plays an instrument. To Abbott, “A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term–selectivity … it should be focused on the kind of subject matter which hits you hard with its impact and excites your imagination to the extent that you are forced to take it” (Abbott). In other words, a photograph is not a fashion statement; it should be something that the photographer is hooked by. A photograph is hollow if the photographer is not “forced” to capture it.
Both photographers show great passion in their occupation and is reflected clearly through their writing. Perspectives, together with selectivity, seem to be the highlight of a great photograph. It shows the creativity of the photographer and its ingenious freshness that it brings to the viewers. What these two emphasize might just be what separates a regular photograph to an amazing one.
Five Terms:
Auxiliary Lens: An add-on optical device that changes the focal length of the prime lens for zooming in and out of focus, and other special effects in photography. It usually comes in +1, +2, and +3 powers; the higher the number the greater the magnification.
Darkroom: Although not used much anymore, it was once the work space for developing and printing photographic film and making prints. Digital cameras, computers and printing replaced that.
Exposure: The amount of light that enters the lens and strikes the film or sensor. Exposures are broken down into aperture (the diameter of the opening of the lens) and shutter speed (the amount of time the light strikes the film). Thus, exposure is a combination of the intensity and duration of light.
Frame: The outer borders of a picture, or its ratio of the height to width (now). Before when rolls for cameras were still in used, it is the individual image on a roll of film.
Tripod: A three-legged device with a platform or head for attaching the camera. It is used to steady the camera when taking a photo. (Note: It is most useful for exposures longer than 1/30 second, or when a constant framing must be maintained throughout a series of shots)
Funny Photo:
Textbooks… make me sleepy… zzz…
