Aesthetics: Framing vs. Pointing

[CXC]

Watching the movie Dogville on DVD, I was intrigued by some comments of director Lars Von Trier. He talks about the difference between framing an image, the typical approach of arranging stuff in a balanced, pretty, thoughtful way, and what he calls pointing, i.e. pointing the camera at what is important dramatically, to the story. Pointing of course tends to put the primary subject in the center of the image, while framing is more concerned with the arrangement of the background/secondary subjects around the edges. His idea is that in terms of telling a story, framing introduces an added level of artificiality that dilutes or obscures the story telling.

LVT of course is shooting a moving image, in real time, and using a nervous, panning, hand-held camera and constant focus pulls, so when he says "pointing" it means just that, pointing. And he is telling a 3 hour story. How relevant are these thoughts to the (relatively) static world of large format? In general, how much can we learn from film makers?

Is it possible to ignore framing when creating an LF image? Well, if you allow cropping, then no. Maybe the best that can be done is to develop an "anti-framing" approach to framing, to achieve that "pointed-at" look. Of course that would be only more artificial, but then again I don't care about artificiality, or truth, or story telling, in a still image.

Just the musings of a Monday morning...

[Jim Rhoades]

A few weeks ago "Zorba the Greek" was on TV. As a fan of B&W watching this movie is like a masters class in photography. Just about every scene was composed, framed and lit like an award winning still. Casablanca is another lesson in advanced photography.

I guess it's my bias but I can't think of any color movie that a still from it would reach the level called art.

[Ralph Barker]

From a film maker's perspective, I think the compositional choice is a matter of style, and how the choice of style is influenced by the nature of the film's subject matter. "Pointing" gives the film a sense of immediacy, I think, and may be more appropriate for stories with higher "grit" factors. In contrast, many of the films that are considered to be "classics" tend to follow more traditional composition styles, resulting in each frame of the film being a good, traditionally-composed still. With the former, sitting in the front row of the theater allows the film's viewer to get absorbed into the scene. With the latter, it works both on the screen and as a small print.

With still photography, the edges of the print create the frame, so I think frame-oriented composition makes more sense - whether one is trying to tell a story, or just capture a scene.

[paulr]

I think the concerns are similar in both film and photography. Still photographers who pointed include avedon, dianne arbus, and the bechers. in theatre, you could say that bertold brecht believed in pointing. his style was "presentational," as opposed to representational. instead of someone acting like an army general, for example, that person would stand centerstage and would in one way or another be presented as a general. in all cases, the idea is to remove any sense that we are witnessing an artifice, just as others have said. the 1960s street photographers who hated beautiful prints had similar beliefs--if the photograph is "real" then it won't look like "art." after all, how can anyone hold the camera steady while he's dodging bullets? how can anyone take the time to make a luxurious print when the world needs to know now?

I've always been interested in the ways these outer clues--presentation, context, surface esthetics, etc. can be used to illuminate what a particular work is supposed to be about.

[Gem Singer]

Jim Rhoades,

I certainly agree with your evaluation of the B&W films, "Casablanca" and Zorba the Greek".

I can think of two movies made with color film that (IMHO) reach a level of art, "Doctor Zhivago" and "Out of Africa". Those two films are a study in fine motion picture photography. Framing each image, similar to a still photograph. Of course, the outstanding ability of the actors added to the total effect.

[austin granger]

This is very interesting. I think I use both the 'framing' and 'pointing' styles, but of late tend more toward the latter. I often now find myself backing away from my subject (frequently centered) and in a sense, 'emptying' my frame. Of course, that's against 'the rules' (big quotes there) but I find it can be very effective in conveing a certain mood; that of dissonance and distance and strangeness and quietude and loneliness.

Anyway, I honestly didn't jump on this thread to shamelessly promote my own stuff, but I just put up a post about updating my website, and I think if you're interested in this topic, you might check it out. Specifically, I'm thinking of images like the one I made of a water heater in the 'Point Reyes II' gallery, along with alot of others in that vein.

www.austingranger.com (http://www.austingranger.com)

[Mark Sawyer]

The finest motion picture photography I've ever seen is by far, Woody Allen's "Manhatten." If you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself tospend a quiet night with it. And yes, it's in b/w.

Many of my compositions are "pointed," with the suject in the middle; I often prefer the simplicity and directness of it. Two days ago it took me aout twenty minutes to point my 8x10 at something just right. (Can't wait to develop the negatives and see how much dust was in the filmholder...)

[Bruce Watson]

A couple of excellent motion pictures of the "framed" variety are Citizen Kane and The Third Man, both by Orson Wells. Kane has some breath taking framing, while The Third Man has one of the best entrances in all of film.

As to my work, I find myself very much drawn toward framing. I seldom, if ever, point now that I'm not hand holding.

[paulr]

another point worth bringing up about pointing ...
it's the vernacular style of picture taking. even the term "taking" a picture implies pointing.
most of the world's snapshots are the products of pointing.
the implication of this picture structure is that there's a discreet subject, distinct from everything else.
the pendulum periodically swings toward and away from this way of structuring a picture.
It's not suprising that few people here identify with pointing ... it's not a way of seeing that would typically attract someone to a large format camera (although there are always exceptions).

[Dominique Labrosse]

I think the idea of "pointing" the way it has been discussed in the original post is a dangerous one. By necessity, photography (motion & still) must impose a frame on the world in front of it. We all make choices either implicitly or explicitly about what to include or exclude, how to expose etc. every time we make an exposure. Ultimately these decisions affect how the image is "decoded" by the viewer.

Some people shoot from the hip and others take a more calulated approach. However, we must realize that when we view someone elses images we are seeing a representation of the world and not a document of Truth. That representation (photograph or moving picture) has been influenced by numerous factors including the views and beliefs of the person holding the camera as well as technical considerations and choices made by the same.

My argument contends that "pointing" is a largely an aesthetic frame. It's a style we often see in newspapers and TV news. However, it is no less "documentary" than other means, and more often than not it is being used to further an agenda, or at least has been coloured by the person(s) creating the images.

[Jim Rhoades]

What a wonderful thread. Eugene, Thanks for reminding me about Doctor Zhivago, you are of course right. Out of Africa struck me more as a magazine article on how to take sunrise & sunset photos. That is of course my bias showing. Paulr, about dodging bullets. W. Eugene Smith dodged alot of bullets in WWII before being blown up on Okinawa . Every scene in Zorba looks like a Smith photo essay from the Spanish Village.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Another master at composition and framing in the cinema was Kurosawa. Especially his "Seventh Samarai". I really like some of his interior scenes of the locals. He would start with an unbalanced composition and then someone would plunk down in front of the camera completing a perfect composition. It's also interesting to watch Kubrick's films too. He started off as a still photographer which helps explain his strong compositional eye. By the way, I love Citizen Kane. I use bits and pieces of this film as a basis to filmmaking for my students (I teach high school).
Teaching about composition to teenagers is a real challenge. But once I show them good composition vs. bad composition, they quickly see the power!

[Benno Jones]

BTW - "The Third Man", one of my favorite movies of all time, was directed by Carol Reed. Wells co-starred and is responsible for the famous 'Cukoo Clock' speech, but had nothing at all to do with the direction, cinematography and the rest of the script. By all accounts he was a pain in the neck to work with on the movie and refused to shoot in the Vienna sewers - they had to go back to England and build sewer sets for the final scenes. See the very good Criterion DVD release and the bonus documentaries.

The final shot of Joseph Cotton waiting as Valli walks towards and past him is my favorite shot of all time. I would love to shoot a photograph that echoed that shot.

Benno Jones
Seattle, WA

[fred arnold]

An example of a framed movie I like is, "Dr. Strangelove". There are some static shots, especially during the speech by Gen. Ripper on communists, where you can see how Kubrik's time as a still photographer influenced his filmmaking. The scene in "Spartacus", where the discussion of matters of taste between Crassus and Antoninus, is a wonderful use of color to accentuate the light and shadow, which enhances the uncomfortable discussion.

[Ken Lee]

It's best not to limit ourselves with theories.



Each subject deserves its own framing - or lack thereof. Some subjects demand sparse framing (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/hockbarn.htm" target="_blank), while others (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/barn11sqr5.htm" target="_blank) demand a lot.

[Paddy Quinn]

Szarkowski says some interesting and pertinent things about pointing, gesture and framing in part of his introduction to the four volume series on Atget:

"Atget, Pointing"

"As a way of beginning, one might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. All of us, even the best-mannered of us, occasionally point, and it must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others. It is not difficult to imagine a person-a mute Virgil of the corporeal world-who might elevate the act of pointing to a creative plane, a person who would lead us through the fields and streets and indicate a sequence of phenomena and aspects that would be beautiful, humorous, morally instructive, cleverly ordered, mysterious, or stonishing, once brought to our attention, but that had been unseen before, or seen dumbly, without comprehension. This talented practitioner of the new discipline (the discipline a cross, perhaps, between theater and criticism) would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we woud be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much of our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from the pattern created by the pointer.

To note the similarity between photography and pointing seems to me useful. Surely the best of photographers have been first of all pointers-men and women whose work says: I call your attention to this pyramid, face, battlefield, pattern of nature, ephemeral juxtaposition.

But it is also clear that the simile has flaws, which become obvious if we consider the different ways in which the photographer and the hypothetical pointer work. The formal nature of pointing (if the notion is admissible) deals with the center of an undefined field. The finger points to (of course) a point, or to a spot not much larger: to the eyes of the accused, or a cloud in the sky, or a finial or cartouche on a curious building, or to the running pickpocket-without describing the context in which the spot should be considered. An art of pointing would be a conceptual art, for the subject of the work would be defined in intellectual or psychic terms, not by an objective physical record. The pointing finger identifies that conceptual center on which the mind's eye focuses-a clear patch of the visual field that one might cover with a silver dollar held at arm's length-outside of which a progressive vagueness extends to the periphery of our vision.

The photographer's procedure (and problem) is different, for whether he means to or not he will make a picture of sorts: a discrete object with categorical edges.

Eugene Atget was a commercial photographer who worked in and aroud Paris for more than thirty years. When he died in 1927, his work was known in part to a few archivists and artists who shared his interest in the visible record of French culture. Little is known about is life, and less about his intentions, except as they can be inferred from his work. In his lifetime Atget made perhaps ten thousand photographs; almost all of these describe the historic character of French life, as indicated by its architecture, its landscape, its work, and its unconsidered, vernacular gestures...."

[Benoit Vollmer]

Hello,



Reading your intervention, I thought about a third possibility. One can off course choose to point or frame his picture, and you explain this very well.

But I see something else possible. We can also try to compose our picture, which means a really different approach to me. I believe that there is a very strong notion of exclusion in framing a picture. You intentionnaly limit the field, take a small part of the world and shoot. While composing, the approach is much more to include things in the image. Maybe closing a bit more the image, so that it is something more complete, sufficient to itself.

In my mind, framing refers more to an instinctive, fast shoot. A crop of reality. I think about reportage and war photographers, James Nachtwey is a perfect exemple to me. And composing should be more like, er... So much photographers I like: Weston, Adams...

Don't know if you understand what I mean, as you've probably guessed i'm not American or English, just a frenchie, and this is my first post on this forum. Seems I didn't take the easiewt, huh?

And also, about a very "photographic-sight" movie, in color and more recently, what do you think of The Straight Story, by D. Lynch. Or maybe, in black and white, Dead Man, from Jim Jarmusch. Those two are my favourite, definitely.



Benoît

[paulr]

"My argument contends that "pointing" is a largely an aesthetic frame. It's a style we often see in newspapers and TV news. However, it is no less "documentary" than other means, and more often than not it is being used to further an agenda, or at least has been coloured by the person(s) creating the images."

Sure ... this idea of pointing does not mean that you are seeing reality untouched. it means you are seeing some kind of illusion of reality being untouched. or at least that the artist is expressing the IDEAL of presenting reality untouched. In fact, the artist (and the medium, and the ideas brought to the picture by the viewer) have touched reality in a million different ways, just like with any other image-making medium or style. And yes, there's usually an agenda implied--in this case the agenda is typically something like "i want you to see and to think about what i saw, not to see or think about me."

On Atget:
I strongly suspect Szarkowski is using the term pointing in a different sense in this passage. He refers to pointing in the conceptual sense of drawing our attention to something worthwhile, but I don't think he's suggesting atget used pointing as an esthetic means (in the same way that his other pet photographer, Dianne Arbus did).

And on the thought that "It's best not to limit ourselves with theories."
Who would argue? I like discussions like this because they can open up new possibilities for understanding work. These ideas (like any critical idea or theory) are dead weight unless we use them for the purposes of illumination. I wouldn't want anyone to walk away from this thinking "ok, I'm a pointer." or "ok, I'm a framer." This kind of thought is limiting. The goal is to have more tools at your disposal for understanding your work or other peoples'.

[CXC]

Thinking constructively, about how these ideas can help one with one's own photography, maybe it boils down to "the right tool for the right job".

I see in my own stuff two major trends, one towards "abstraction", and one towards "portraiture", with a fair amount of overlap. I'm comfortable with my methods for obtaining an abstract shot, that is, a pretty arrangement of darks and lights over the entire surface of the print.

My portraiture is less sure (perhaps it would be better called "pointrature", since subjects are buildings or trees, not poeple, with arrangement and lighting out of my control).

Let's take a concrete example. I am looking right now at my photo of the Chrysler building. This is clearly a portrait, with the building centered and dominating the image. But after the shooting and printing, with the matte knife, I fussed tremendously about the exact framing, about how much of each of the surrounding buildings to include, what angle to cut them off, how much sky, etc., to the point that the final image isn't a true rectangle, tapering towards the top.

It's a nice enough photo, but I'm not convinced those post-process framing efforts were what it took for it to be the best it could be. In theory, I believe that post-camera cropping of a portrait shouldn't "change" the image in any way. The gesture has been made, it is complete. Maybe chop off the useless parking lot in the forground, or some of the blank sky on top, but maintain an arbitrariness, or at least a sense of arbitrariness, completely.

It's probably impossible for me to ignore the background, given the stately pace of large format photography. This means I need to develop a separate approach for portrait framing, basically to keep the background in the back, as it were.

Yes, this all sounds very artificial. As I mentioned before, issues of truth vs. artificiality, and (accurate) story telling, do not interest me; my only goal is to put someting up on the wall that is worth looking at.

[paulr]

Another way ideas like this can help you is by giving some clarity to your work when you try to understand it.
I'm never thinking analytically while i photograph ... to such a degree that when I'm looking at my work, it's often a wide open question as to what it is I'm up to. My work is exploratory in nature, and a lot of the understanding of what was explored, and why, comes after the fact. Often it's been observations from people on the outside (similar to this pointing vs. framing one) that have helped me see more deeply into my own process.

[Steve J Murray]

This is a great topic. I was made more aware of the "unframed" or " pointing" approach to photography after reading an interview with William Eggleston, a "pioneer" in color fine art photograpy. His images to me are disturbing for their lack of reference to any frame. He says in the interview that in 1976 he stopped looking through the viewfinder altogether. Of course, he is not a LF photographer. Yet, he has influenced a generation of artists and photographers. I have been wondering how many other current photographers feel about this anti-frame approach. Its so antithetical to my own intensely compositional approach that I use whether I'm using a LF camera or a small camera. I compose automatically, without thinking. I can't imagine not. In order to not frame I'd have to not use the viewfinder nor look into the ground glass. Someone else would have to focus the camera for me. I still have a hard time understanding the appeal of such unframed photographs. To me they look random, like a 4 year old took them without knowing what he or she was doing. Still, according to the experts this is art! [scratching my head in bewilderment]

Here's the Eggleston interview: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1266665,00.html

[paulr]

Based on his discription of his working methods, Eggleston might look very much like someone who "points," but I think esthetically his pictures strongly suggest otherwise. His idea of photographing "democratically" applied not only to his choice of subject matter (anything around him being fair game) but to his formal arrangement of that subject matter. Most of his images are democratically composed, in that they follow the late-modern practice of obscuring what is "subject" and what isn't. It's all important ... or all mundane, depending on your point of view. In fact, in the afterword of The Democratic Forest ... the piece which he ends by declaring that he's "at war with the obvious," he expresses disdain for the pointing esthetic ... specifically toward people who can't understand an image unless it's composed as a subject centered in a rectangle. However shoot-from-the-hip his style may be, I think Eggleston's images to be meticulous and subtle examples of framing (if we're using the vocabulary brought up by the original poster).

By the way, thanks for posting that link, Steve. Really interesting interview. Didn't know most of that stuff about the old hellraiser.

[Kirk Gittings]

Exploring dichotomies as a means of aesthetic discernment is ultimately a frustrating exercise in cramming ill fitting pegs into oddly shaped holes.

Whew! That was a mouthful.

Nevertheless dichotomies are a useful tool to get the brain cells moving.

Szarkowski's Mirriors and Windows from the early seventies is one such approach that I am fond of. In M&W he breaks photography down into two camps, the self-referential or auto-biographical "mirror" and the outward looking or voyeristic "window". I haven't read this book in awhile, but I remember dissagreeing with him on how some art falls into each of these groups. Weston's pepper comes to mind now. It is a "found object" but it is also "arranged" by the artist for the sake of making art. Is it about the pepper or about the artists? He points and carefully frames, but is he pointing at the object or to the subconscious suggestions that the sensuous forms of the pepper suggests?

It strikes me that sometimes the act of pointing is actually autobiographical.

I am mixing my dichotomies here. It is very dangerous ground.

[paulr]

I think you made a trichotomy.
let's see if it catches on.

It does seem like in a lot of people's eyes that show wasn't Szarkowski's finest hour. The dichotomy is a nice one, and he writes about it beautifully, but he may have tried to extend it too far and to cram too many things too neatly into it. As you mentioned, so much work seems equally mirror and window. And fitting pegs into odd-sized holes is of little utility.

As you said, use the dichotomy to get some brain cells moving ... and even to shed some light on the world. but try not to define all the cosmos with it. no single turn of phrase sheds enough light for that.

[Steve J Murray]

To Paulr, following up on the Eggleston comments. I don't buy the idea that Eggleston was framing, especially if he wasn't even using the viewfinder. He was definitely pointing. The resulting images can look arranged, but that is because the human brain finds order in disorder by itself. The viewer, such as yourself, "sees" some kind of order and thinks Eggleston did it on purpose.

[Kirk Gittings]

"The viewer, such as yourself, "sees" some kind of order and thinks Eggleston did it on purpose."

Eggleston's most conceptually silly and least successful work was his "unmanned probe" work where he truely did not compose or look thru the viewfinder. The work was banal and pointless, conceptually and aesthetically. If you compare that work with the more popular work you know for sure that his successful work is very carefully and cleverly framed with precise points of view and orgainzation of objects and color blocks.

Two summers ago I saw a retrospective show of his at the Museum of Cont. Photography in Chicago. I wasn'y prepared for what I saw. His images are very formal in a disarmingly casual kind of way.

Eggleston did do it on purpose. He does "order" his images. Otherwise a chimpanzee could do it. I think you fell for it.

[paulr]

I'm mostly familiar with his democratic forest work from the '70s. Without making assumptions about what Eggleston was trying to do (always dubious) I can say that the organization of those images, whether done deliberately or not, bears no relationship to the way "pointing" type images are organized. There's no clear subject placed against a separate background. The pictures are all about the the interrelationships of the different elements, with very little sense of heirrarchy. Contrast these to the work some classic "pointing" photographers: Avedon, Arbus, the Bechers, etc. There's no comparison.

I haven't seen the "unmanned probe" work, but that sounds like neither framing nor pointing (more like pointing, only nobody's there to point at anything). Anyway, I'm sure that the work was banal, but not entirely pointless. It's an interesting exercise that can serve to put to rest a lot of long-lived questions and assumptions about the medium .. like what exactly is the influence of the photographer vs. the influence of the equipment? The way to know for sure is to remove the photographer completely, and see what happens. This kind of work isn't about making beautiful pictures (or even ones that are interesting out of context of the idea) .. it's really just about exploring an idea. Once you've done it, you've done it, and it's time to move on. Which it seems like he did.

[Steve J Murray]

Hey paulr and Kirk,

I haven't seen a lot of Eggleston's stuff, so I'm just commenting on things I've seen. Interesting subject though: pointing vs random vs composing. I do think the viewer always adds some internal organization to anything that is looked at. We're definitely a far cry from the "sunset on the ocean" type of photography that is popular. Just go to photo.net. Personally, I enjoy the most photos that stimulate my brain in some sort of sensual/sensate manner, even landscapes. Eggleston's work, at least what I've seen on the net doesn't have that property for me. I'm rambling, so I'll stop now. Good discussion.

[Kirk Gittings]

Eggleston is no chimpanzee.

http://www.mocp.org/mocp062500/vieweggleston.htm

Look at the image on the right. This is maybe about the people and the cultural mileau in which they surround themselves. Yet the obvious visual selection process displayed by the point of view and the carefully arranged mosaic of cultural landscape artifacts that form the backdrop suggests that this artist is no chimpanzee but a visually literate person who has studied the tenets of modern art. Eggleston was not naive. His affection for formalists like Klee and Kandinsky are well documented in his biographies and I think well absorbed in his aesthetic formal senses. I share this affection so I understand the influence. This image is so carefully framed the edges are almost collapsing under the tension. What was revolutionary about his color work was the unapologetic way in which he brought a color painting aesthetic into a photography world that was trying to discern its uniqueness from other art mediums.

Look at the image on the left. It is a kind of dead tech, post-industrial, pop art influenced pointing (yeah I went to art school).

Having said all this blah blah, while I am fond of much of his imagery, his own original prints are so casually produced that some of them are embarrasing. We usually see them in reproduction where they are tiny and usually have boosted contrast and saturation or prints done by labs who know how to print. In real life his prints are quite dull. That may be part of the shtick. I jsut don't think he took his prints seriously.

[Steve J Murray]

OK Kirk, I admit I am an artistic Philistine. Those images to me look like the snapshots you see in virtually anyone's file box when you are going through their closet. I would not be inspired to pursue photography after looking at these images. I think you just may be adding in your own knowledge of art as you evaluate these photos. Perhaps. At any rate, I enjoyed this discussion. I invite you to look at my own "body of work" on photonet under Steve J Murray. Having not studied art, I'm way more "naive" than Eggleston!

[j.e.simmons]

I don't believe that modern film-makers can frame their shots any longer - making pointing a necessity. Why? A film-maker can no longer know what aspect ration the viewer will see the fim in - whether on a standard movie screen, a 4:3 aspect ratio traditional television, one of the various wide-screen DVD formats, or HDTV. The film-maker simply cannot know where the edges and corners will be. The only thing imporant becomes the center, which will be in the center in all formats, so pointing is necessary.

We don't have that problem with large format photography - we know (if we care to know) where the edges of the print will be at the time of exposure.

[paulr]

"Those images to me look like the snapshots you see in virtually anyone's file box when you are going through their closet. "

Well, if that were true it would certainlymake looking at people's snapshots a lot more interesting.

But seriously, if you get a chance, take a good look at "The Democratic Forest" ... possibly his best known book. Most of the images are less austere than the ones in those links, so it should be less of a stretch to see what's really going on in them. You might get a sense what Szarkowski meant with his wild claim that Eggleston "invented color photography."

[paulr]

" A film-maker can no longer know what aspect ration the viewer will see the fim in - whether on a standard movie screen, a 4:3 aspect ratio traditional television, one of the various wide-screen DVD formats, or HDTV"

I wonder how many film maker's really take this into account. I suspect that most shoot for one format, resigned to knowing that most people watching on t.v. will see a wrecked version.

And I think that the "pointing" esthetic is not the same thing as the "framing" esthetic wrecked or done sloppily. It's more about a theory of how to put an image together ... one that serves certain ideas about how to look at a picture and understand it. It's less about the limitations of a particular medium, or even the working style of the artist. A pointing style image may actually be meticulously composed and structured ... but it will very deliberately not draw attention to this aspect of itself. Like someone else said, it's an alternate esthetic frame, not truly the lack of one.

[Steve J Murray]

Good points, Paul, and I will definitely check out The Democratic Forest to see what you guys are talking about.

[paulr]

Steve, I just found some nice links, on the Eggleston Trust site ...

here are some of my favorite images of his ... some from the dem. forest:
http://www.egglestontrust.com/df_c.html

and here are some more pointerly ones (if i can use this thread as an excuse to make up a terrible word ...):
http://www.egglestontrust.com/guide_a.html