Thoughts on composition, learning from Ansel Adams

[scheinfluger_77]

...

Views of Snow Gums, number 3

Gelatin-silver photograph on Freestyle Private Reserve VC FB photographic paper, image size 19.6cm X 24.5cm, from a 8x10 Fomapan 200 negative
exposed in a Tachihara 810HD triple extension field view camera fitted with a Fujinon-W 300mm f5.6 lens.

This photo is one of the reasons I anticipate seeing your images. It seems like you never miss. This one has two sets of three running at a diagonal... 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. Running left to right and bottom to top. I know of no compositional “rule” that dictates this layout. But it works!

[scheinfluger_77]

Mind you, photographers using a view camera compose upside down.

I think this is actually an advantage. Once you free yourself from the dissonance of an upside down image, an appropriate composition almost creates itself. (Not that I am always successful this way.)

[Daniel Casper Lohenstein]

Daniel,
I agree with you that Dorothea Lange's photos are very powerful in portraying the degrading disposition of the internment camps.

All I wanted to imply is that the importance and meaning of taking "pretty pictures" is a lot of times misunderstood and disparaged.

Another quote from near the end of his life-

"What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which might be for every mental worker, be he businessman or writer, like an appeasing influence, like a mental soother, something like a good armchair in which to rest from physical fatigue". "Henri Matisse"

Dear Thad,

I agree completely with you.

The problem I have is the "reply to thread" function in this forum - I always forget to delete the quote / citations when answering to the thread generally and not to a certain person ... I think I am "adigital".

You mentioned Matisse and the physical fatigue. "Fatigue" was the most important "topos" in the early 20th century, when people suffered of "exactification", what means industrialisation of work, life, culture and war. Think of all these trembling men in the trenches. - Today we speak of "burnout". So Matisse's credo still has timeliness.

Perhaps what Henri Matisse dreamed of depends on our aesthetic education, our literacy, formed in schools and vivid museums. But there are artists and aestheticians, too, who believe that art has to break some rules to function. They think there should be some perceptible spikes troubling our perception to see new aspects of the things or their circumstances of whom we believed they were sure and easily comprehendable.This implies mental work and real psychical and physical fatigue. It's like sports. But it's recreating, too.

[Daniel Casper Lohenstein]

Hallo Daniel, vielen Dank für Ihren Kommentaren.

A point that occurs to me after reading Daniel's comments, regards the differences between arranged compositions and temporal or transient ones. I find arranged compositions more flowing for me, compared with transient ones which require more conscious effort.

Yes, I agree with that. I am always unsure how much consciousness takes a hand in a photograph of transient compositions. And photographers exclude much thinking in developing a method of photographing, e.g. by working with a quadratical Rolleiflex ("Rolleigraphy") or with a defined depth of field ... But perhaps this method means in reality an increasement of anticipative thinking.

Viele Grüsse

Daniel

[Tin Can]

Early this morning in a hotel, I watched a Documentary on a Andy Warhol owner of a yellow Brillo Box.

The silk screened cardboard box went from $1000 in 1969 to $3 Million in 2010.

Is it Art and why?

[Steven Ruttenberg]

I thought it was advertising. Worhol always creeped me out.

[Alan Klein]

Daniel, I think Adams' are more balanced while Lange's are edgy due to the imbalance, also more extemporaneous. I notice about my pictures that I am overly balanced oriented. It's like I cannot allow the photo to tilt. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. What do you think?

[Vaughn]

...A point that occurs to me after reading Daniel's comments, regards the differences between arranged compositions and temporal or transient ones. I find arranged compositions more flowing for me, compared with transient ones which require more conscious effort.

For me, photographing under the redwoods becomes a cross between the arranged and the transient. Exposure times are long, so the transient feeling is often stilled, and since I do not crop, burn or dodge, I tend to treat the scene in front of me like an arranged still-life -- a found arrangement of light. Got to get an early start tomorrow...I got the 8x10 and 11x14 holders loaded up!

[Vaughn]

...This was Weston's reply-
"It seems so utterly naive that landscape- not that of the pictorial school- is not considered of "social significance" when it has far more bearing on the human race of any given locale than excrescences called cities. By landscape, I mean every physical aspect of a region- weather, soil, wildflowers, mountain peaks- and its effect on the human psyche and physical appearance of the people. "Edward Weston" 1938

So true yet today!

Thus my signature line below...

[chassis]

For me, photographing under the redwoods becomes a cross between the arranged and the transient. Exposure times are long, so the transient feeling is often stilled, and since I do not crop, burn or dodge, I tend to treat the scene in front of me like an arranged still-life -- a found arrangement of light. Got to get an early start tomorrow...I got the 8x10 and 11x14 holders loaded up!

Yes, this is similar to my approach, Vaughn. Nature has done the arranging, the photographer arranges camera position, exposure, and is on location when the light is right.