Transcript Photography What is Photography: At its most basic level, photography offers a means for making a facsimile of whatever the camera is pointed at.

Photography
What is Photography:
At its most basic level,
photography offers a means for
making a facsimile of whatever
the camera is pointed at. It is the
medium for producing an
accurate record for posterity.
This is technically accurate record,
nothing more, although it has been
photographed under appropriate
lighting to create a sense of form,
shape and texture of the flower itself.
Photography
What is Photography:
Record photography at a more personal level is to be found in albums of the holiday
snap type of photograph. And there is nothing wrong with these type of photographs
as they can be well composed and well executed. The holiday snaps fulfils its purpose
if it shows us, or reminds us, of a moment in time at a specific and identifiable point
on the planet.
The holiday snap offers us a visual reminder------yes this was me five years ago, this
was our class group snap, etc etc. A visual memoir.
Photography
Photography
What is Photography:
At Taj Mahal Agra, hundreds of thousands of frames of films are exposed to this
identical shot. You stand at the very end of its lawn and point the camera towards the
Taj and press the button.
Photography
What is Photography:
Almost as many as thousands of photographers have captured their loved ones in front
of Taj. This is simple recording of a moment in front of this beautiful piece of
architecture. Record is the operative word, by no stretch of the imagination are these
creative images or expressive images. They are records, as impersonal as the cameras
used to take them. They have no relationship to the photographer, any photographer
could have taken them, and millions probably have. As records of a moment in the
photographer’s life, they perform their limited function well.
Photography
What is Photography:
Of course photography offers us much
more than that. It offers us a vehicle
for introducing personal
interpretation, and personal expression
into those visual memories, extending
well beyond the limits of mere
memory triggers.
To achieve any of these more
ambitious aspirations for the
photograph, the active participation of
the photographer is essential. Good
photography is considered
photography, with the photographer
taking time to think through the
purpose of the intended photograph,
and then devising a visual strategy for
achieving that purpose.
Photography
Photography
What is Photography:
Photography allows us to isolate
objects from their surroundings,
or to isolate a small area of nature
from the whole, and explore its
visual potential.
We can enjoy the simple forms,
texture and patterns of selected
elements from a wider object or
landscape.
Good photography does not
necessarily depend on good or
expensive equipment. Although a
relatively high quality lens on the
camera is an advantage in
ensuring that the well observed
photograph is at least reproduced
sharp.
Photography
Photography
Photography
What is Photography:
Good photography depends
exclusively upon the
photographer, and the
photographer’s ability to do two
simple things:
Firstly, the ability to see what you
are looking at is essential. To
recognize the potential of a
subject or location in visual
terms, to recognize the visual
appeal of isolating particular
elements, and viewing them from
a specific viewpoint or camera
angle.
Child with a hand granade in central park N.Y.C 1962
Diane Arbus
Photography
A young Brooklyn family
going for a Sunday outing,
N.Y.C.
Diane Arbus 1966
Photography
Triplets in their
bedroom, N.J.
1963
Photography
What is Photography:
Secondly , and by far the most
important, good photography
depends upon the
photographer’s ability to
understand light, its subtleties,
its colors and contrasts, and to
bring that understanding to
inform the picture-making
process.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
Look at this picture. See how
the use of oblique bright
sunlight accentuates the
shadows, creating an
exaggeration of the third
dimension.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
Light is predictable if nothing
else. By understanding how it
works, and limiting our
photography to only those times
when ‘appropriate’ lighting
conditions prevail, we can
control the visual impact of our
pictures. Appropriate for one
picture however maybe wholly
inappropriate for another. It is
the ability to recognize the
appropriate and the
inappropriate which defines the
line between the good
photographer and the
snapshooter.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
The warmth of sunshine giving
the picture a warmth which will
totally lack in a photograph
taken on a overcast day. Filtered
through several hundred feet of
cloud, light becomes very cold
and unwelcoming. This can be
useful device in provoking
particular viewer reaction.
Warm light draws a different
reaction to that elicited by a
cold light.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
Photography is accessible at so
many levels that it offers
anyone, almost regardless of
skill levels, the opportunity to
use this medium for the visual
communication of ideas,
emotions and opinions.
Diane Arbus
A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y. 1970 .
Photography
What is Photography:
To exploit the potential of
photography we have to be
careful in our selection of
subject matter, the selection of
the camera position, choice of
lens, choice of exposure and
above all selection of lighting.
Exercising these few controls
offers limitless opportunities for
the investigation of color, form,
texture, movement, and a host
of other themes.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
Despite the fact that outdoors
our subjects are lit by that
single large light source, the
sun, either direct or diffused as
weather conditions dictate, we
have immense control over
lighting. If the lighting is
appropriate we can effectively
control and direct that lighting
by changing our camera
positions. Move around the
subject and the lighting
effectively changes.
Ansal Adams .
Photography
Ansal Adams .
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Ansal Adams .
Photography
Ansal Adams .
Photography
What is Photography:
By developing the skills of
composition and appropriate
selection of lighting, the skilled
photographer can provoke the
viewer into accepting a very
subjective interpretation of
reality as an object record of
reality
Diane Arbus
Masked woman in a wheelchair, Pa.
1970
Photography
Diane Arbus
Untitled (7)
1970-71
Photography
Diane Arbus
Identical twins, Roselle, N.J.
1967
Photography
Diane Arbus
Untitled (1)
1970-71
Photography
What is Photography:
A good photograph has three
distinct jobs to do:
1.
It must attract attention
2.
It must hold the attention
while the viewer “reads”
it.
3.
It must transmit
information, ideas,
emotions or whatever
other purpose has been
‘designed’ into it.
Diane Arbus
Teenage couple on Hudson Street, N.Y.C.
1963
Photography
What is Photography:
Only if it does those three things
effectively, is the photograph
going to success as a piece of
visual communication..
Diane Arbus
King and Queen of a Senior Citizens Dance, N.Y.C.
1970
Photography
The influential photographer and
photo-journalist Arthur Rothstein
defined the photograph when he wrote
that:
“Under the direction of a skilled
photographer, the visual language may
be used to draw comparisons, to
distort, to emphasise, and to document
social conditions. The photograph not
only presents facts, it registers ideas
and emotions as well. Because
powerful photographic images are
fixed in the mind more readily than
words, the photograph needs no
interpreter’’.
Walker Evans
Citizen in downtown Havana 1933
Photography
While that may be a rather broad
generalization of the power of
photography, it does highlight the
potential of the medium as a means of
introducing other to the ideas,
opinions, likes, dislikes and other
emotions and reactions which make
each one of us individual. Our
photography can be a powerful
extension of our brains, giving visual
form and substance to everything from
abstract thoughts to political and
cultural opinions.
Walker Evans
Main Street, Saratoga Springs, New York.1931
Photography
Walker Evans
Main Street in Pennsylvania Town 1935
Photography
Walker Evans
Negro Church, South Carolina 1936
Photography
Walker Evans
. Penny Picture Display, Birmingham
1936
Photography
Walker Evans
Garage in Southern City Outskirts
1936
Photography
Walker Evans
[Burroughs Family Cabin, Hale
County, Alabama] 1936
Photography
Walker Evans
Hale County, Alabama 1936
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Walker Evans
42nd St.
1929
Photography
Walker Evans
The Breakfast Room, Belle Grove Plantation,
White Chapel, Louisiana
1935
Photography
Walker Evans
City Lunch Counter
1929
Photography
Walker Evans
Girl in Fulton Street
New York, 1929
Photography
Walker Evans
Graveyard, Houses, and Steel Mill, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 1935
Photography
Walker Evans
Houses and Billboards in Atlanta, Georgia 1936
Photography
Walker Evans
Maine Pump
1933
Photography
Walker Evans
Parked Car, Small Town, Main Street, 1932
Ossining, New York
Photography
Walker Evans
Stamped Tin Relic
1929
Photography
Walker Evans
Torn Movie Poster
1931
Photography
Walker Evans
Grave
1931