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Thread: Feeling in Pictures

  1. #11

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    Here is a sinister tree of my own. It has no emotive value to me.

    By the paint by numbers aproach, I mean that we take a scene and make it conform to an established pattern in our head, compositionally, like a Nikon slr does with matrix light metering. That is different to taking the same picture over and over untill it feels just right.

    Ken, to me your photograph feels of dignity. Heroique's polaroid makes me feel slightly uneasy, almost hunted, so their examples are better than anything I can offer.

    Also I think that what we are talking about here has no relationship with propoganda whatsoever, but rather truth. The truth hurts, it is an emotive thing and I think people with some common ancestral culture have a similar reaction to what could be considered 'universal truth'. Some emotion that we have felt, in common.

    Thank you for your replies.

    David
    Last edited by mdm; 22-May-2010 at 14:31. Reason: Addition

  2. #12

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Lee View Post
    According to Merg Ross in this recent thread,

    "Edward Weston... would shuffle through a group of prints separating them into two piles. All of this was in silence. At the conclusion, he would point to one pile and utter, 'these I like'."

    Feeling comes in all sizes and depths.


    I dont want to be controvertial here, but I do not see Edward Weston as a feeling photographer, rather as a seeing photographer. For example, take a Weston nude spread eagled in the sand, perhaps that is just me, but she could just as easily have been a lump of wood, or a pepper or a shell, in which case he would have done a better job of it too. Don't get me wrong, I have bought into the whole romance of Weston making contacts with a bare lightbulb in a dingy hotel room, but there is a differnece between a beautiful picture and something felt. On flikr you see people say 'great capture'. Here sometimes it is 'well seen', even 'Bravo Maesto' but what about 'well felt'? That hard to know soft thing is what I hope to find one day.

    Avedon wrote that portraiture is performance, by the subject and the photographer. The photographer is performing, even if there is no one in the frame, which is probably why Gandolfi for example claims to struggle with landscapes and not with nudes.

    A photograph has something special when it is performed with feeling, like great actor playing McBeth to perfection or an outstanding cellist playing Elgar. That is what I am trying to say. Those are performances made many times, but it is the emotive input of the performer, over technical ability, that makes an unforgettable performance.

    Take a look at the most famous portrait of my generation, taken by a documentary photographer, the afghan girl by Steve McCurry. The whole western world feels the the ? in that look between the subject and the photographer.

  3. #13

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    When I take a photo, I try to express my feelings about the scene in front of me at that time. Once in a while, I manage to do that. But sometimes, when I see the photo on the monitor or the print, I have completely different feelings about it. So, if my own feelings can change, how can I expect someone else to feel the same as me? I'm happy to simply evoke some emotion in the viewer.

    Kumar

  4. #14

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    On flikr you see people say 'great capture'. Here sometimes it is 'well seen', even 'Bravo Maesto' but what about 'well felt'? That hard to know soft thing is what I hope to find one day.

    Bravo Maestro

  5. #15
    Lascassas, TN
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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    I agree with Brian. I try to capture what I see and feel. Sometime I am sucessful. I am always amazed when someone asks me for a print.
    Bill Kumpf

  6. #16

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    "One day I hope to make a photograph that feels like it was."

    We like to divide the world into discrete objects: me, the subject, the photograph, my feelings, your feelings, etc. When we look closely however, we find that none of them exist independently, and are changing all the time. They can't be pinned down or fully captured. This is especially true of feelings.

    Even when we photograph the same subjects over and over, our work evolves. We continue to... see things.
    Last edited by Ken Lee; 23-May-2010 at 05:53.

  7. #17
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    Photography can be so many things, and each one so well. A photograph can be strong because of the emotions it elicits, but it might also be strong because it conveys an intellectual thought or spiritual philosophy, or a political/social statement, or as a document of something meaningful. Sometimes a photograph finds its strength in a sense of nostalgia, a recognition of something we once knew but hadn't thought of in a long time. Or it may just be a thing of beauty in its own right, whether because of technique, lighting, composition, an odd lens, a particular alternative process...

    I think the best work combines several of these things at once.

    But emotional reactions are particularly strong, and I suppose I'm especially drawn to photographs that capture or suggest an emotion successfully. Then again, photographs never fall so flatly and painfully on their face as when they feel like smarmy, overly-sentimental exploitations of emotions.

    I sometimes wonder why 90% of poems are love poems, and 90% of pop songs are love songs, but we seldom see the equivalent in photography, or really, any of the visual arts.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  8. #18
    Richard M. Coda
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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    Feelings are over-rated. Is it a good photograph? Is it something that would look equally great in another art form (painting/drawing)? The same rules apply. That's all that really matters to me.
    Photographs by Richard M. Coda
    my blog
    Primordial: 2010 - Photographs of the Arizona Monsoon
    "Speak softly and carry an 8x10"
    "I shoot a HYBRID - Arca/Canham 11x14"

  9. #19
    kevin4x5
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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    I took this pictue and had mixed feelings about it How we discard thing from days gone by. But also thought how nice it was that Mike (his farm) saved it so I could take a photograph of it to show the world things "from days gone by"
    Kevin
    Last edited by kevin4x5; 23-May-2010 at 15:24. Reason: spelling

  10. #20

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    Re: Feeling in Pictures

    That's nice. I can smell hay and bird shit, and the light is nostalgic. I like that it seems to be a scan of a print, rather than a negative. Thanks for posting.

    David

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