I used to have a blog theme called #thursdaythoughts but like a lot of my other “day” themes such as #tuesdayvibes—I may have them reversed—they are on hiatus. I’ve made changes in my daily lineup mainly because I don’t want to duplicate content, although I understand some of that is inevitable.
Today’s topic may seem like “inside baseball” and I hope you find it interesting. For my international readers: In American slang, the term inside baseball refers to the minutiae and detailed inner workings of a system that are only interesting to, or appreciated by, experts, insiders, and aficionados
Some thoughts for today by Joe Farace
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I used to agonize over titles (and topics) for this blog’s posts, trying to balance a description of the contents with SEO (search engine optimization) requirements to make Google’s algorithm happy and assist people searching for a specific photographic topic. These days, I just write a title (and topic) that pops into my head. While creatively liberating, I’ve changed the title of some posts a few times. Is it my insecurity? Maybe but this post does contain something I want to say.
There’s an old expression in the automotive world that “You are what you drive” and I think that may be true for some people, especially for enthusiasts to whom a car is more than a transportation module. I extrapolated that thought into a post for my car photography website called “You are what you shoot” and I think there’s some truth in that post about photographers as well.
Seeing Photographically
In Andreas Feininger’s 1973 landmark book, Photographic Seeing, there’s a section entitled “The Different Forms of Seeing” in which the writer discusses how four well-known shooters of that era might photograph the same female subject. Feininger posits the theory that “differences in seeing would, of course, be reflected in their work.” So, starting out by naming names, Feininger proceeds to eviscerate each of their hypothetical images as “sterile,” “dull,” “unimaginative,” “stereotypical and rather cold.” Yikes! My friend Rick Sammon has a different and friendlier theory about seeing and puts it this way: “The camera looks both ways” and “that in picturing the subject, you are also picturing part of yourself.”
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.—Jonathan Swift
Here’s another theory
The late Richard Avedon once said,“ My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.” My interpretation of that — and I may be wrong about this—is that when creating a portrait, Avedon wanted to control as much of the environment. lighting and maybe even the subject to reflect his preconceived image of them, not necessarily how the subject might see themselves. Not that I would ever compare any of my photographs to Mr. Avedon’s, but perhaps some of this philosophy might apply to how I produce my studio work.
It could be that this kind of thinking is another form of what my doctor has called my “marginal OCD” and it could be that some photographers have this same affliction because their own images strive to restructure the world into how they imagine it should be. Or maybe I’m just blathering…
How I made this photo: Making photographs in shopping malls is a challenge if only because of their rigidly enforced “camera policies.” To capture this image made in a local mall, I placed an eight-megapixel Samsung Pro 815 on a ledge with its Schneider 28-420mm (equivalent) f/2.2 – 4.6 lens propped up on a bundled-up camera strap. The Pro 815’s 3.5-inch screen made this kind of surreptitious photography a little easier. The exposure was 1/15 sec at f/4.6 and ISO of 50 with a minus one and one-third stop exposure compensation. Originally shot in color, converted to monochrome for a more “street photography” look with Silver Efex,
Continued…
After reading that section of Feininger’s book and thinking about Avedon’s and Sammon’s concepts, instead of sleeping one night I was laying in bed thinking about what the portraits I make say about me. I don’t want to bother you with any of the Neo-Freudian ideas that ran through (what left of) my brain but all of this was fresh in my mind when waking this morning, hence this post.
For today’s featured image, I would have liked to have posted one of my glamour portraits but I have been trying to limit those kinds of images to two posts a week. If you want to see more of these kinds of topics and photographs, please click CONTACT and let me know about it.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.