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Thread: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

  1. #11

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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Quote Originally Posted by pdmoylan View Post
    Many Westin compositions are distinctive but not aesthetically appealing. I wouldn’t hang most of them on my walls.
    […]
    A distinctive Compositional signature is what many photo devotees are seeking it seems to me.
    Agree with that sentiment. All this stuff to me is dated, I get the same feeling when looking at Russian avant garde photographers like Rodchenko. I get an intellectual reaction, like “I see what you did there”, but not an emotional one.
    Best way I can explain it is that I don’t connect with the reasons they had to take the photographs?
    Weston had excellent reasons to photograph a parade of bell peppers, but am I ever in the mood for looking at pictures of bell peppers?

    Obviously if Weston’s peppers and Rodchenko’s weirdly cropped, tilted photographs resonate emotionally with you then you win.

    Even AA I struggle with. The idea that B&W is the best medium for landscape just doesn’t sit well with me. B&W is an abstraction, why chase the best possible reproduction with an abstract medium?
    I don’t like all of his pictures, but the ones I do like, I still think they’d look better in colour. And looking at his actual colour photos, you can tell he had an understanding of how to work with colour

    I think of composition as the drum part in a rock song (and the melody/lyrics would be subject matter, and the guitar lead would be the punctum). Many mediocre songs have a perfectly good drum part ; I don’t listen to those. Some promising songs have a poor drum part ; those are demos, they can’t be considered the finished product. And some good songs have an over the top drum part that is detrimental to the whole. But when a great song also happens to have a unique and striking drum part, that’s when things take off…
    "I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing." Duane Michals

  2. #12
    Vaughn's Avatar
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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Pictures of Peppers? I thought they were studies of form and light...I can look at those all day. It can be a trap to be so subject-orientated.
    "Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China

  3. #13

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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Light, Form-Shape, Composition are three foundational and fundamental language elements of any 2D image be it a Photograph, Painting, Print or similar. Subject is merely a means to utilize these three elements of visual language.


    Bernice

  4. #14
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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn View Post
    Pictures of Peppers? I thought they were studies of form and light...I can look at those all day. It can be a trap to be so subject-orientated.
    My feelings exactly.

  5. #15
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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Benjamin View Post
    The idea of a place, southern California, being an inspiration for a whole group of artists - not at all explored in the short doc as much as it title implies - is quite fascinating. Top of my head, I can't think of any other such example elsewhere in the world, at least as far as photography is concerned (I'm not counting cities like Paris or New York), but I'm certainly wrong...
    I don't think it was the place that inspired the group. Rather, the group was together in one place and inspired each other, a more modern incarnation of the Hudson River School, the French Impressionists, New York's Photo Secession...
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  6. #16

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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Texture of the peppers in Edward Westons photographs are similar to the texturing in Auguste Rodin's sculptures. It is much about how this texturing interacts with light-form/shape-composition. With an Auguste Rodin sculpture, sight change in viewers position can dramatically alter the way this texturing alters the lighting interacts with it's form/shape/texture.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Thinker_A. Rodin @ Cantor B&W.jpg 
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    This is one aspect of what makes Edward Weston's pepper photographs a visual treat.


    Bernice


    Quote Originally Posted by Vaughn View Post
    Pictures of Peppers? I thought they were studies of form and light...I can look at those all day. It can be a trap to be so subject-orientated.

  7. #17

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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    [QUOTE=Bernice Loui;1608860]Texture of the peppers in Edward Westons photographs are similar to the texturing in Auguste Rodin's sculptures. It is much about how this texturing interacts with light-form/shape-composition. With an Auguste Rodin sculpture, sight change in viewers position can dramatically alter the way this texturing alters the lighting interacts with it's form/shape/texture.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Thinker_A. Rodin @ Cantor B&W.jpg 
Views:	11 
Size:	46.4 KB 
ID:	218177

    This is one aspect of what makes Edward Weston's pepper photographs a visual treat.


    Conceptually the Cubists came closest to the simultaneous multiple-view of a 3D object. Unless you are saying the pepper image is a collage or a multiple exposure of various angles/views, I guess I don't follow. I can't recall any photo collages or multiple exposures which I found successful in visually expressing this idea. Taking it one step further, if one subscribes to string theory, how does one depict that in photos? I have seen merged files of multiple times of day (panoramic) of the same scene (cityscape), some of which are reasonably successful visually. But multiple angles (NSEW or increments), no.

    I am told that Santa Cruz remains an artists' "hub" even today (I have no way of knowing); yet it seems unlikely that DH Lawrence would hang with the F64 group, and Steinbeck with D. Lange? Why writers and photographers were drawn to Monterey likely has more to do with the climate, aesthetic environment/subjects, and perhaps a common temperament/acceptance among its inhabitants. The video I expect oversells this notion of a "collective". Was Monterey the Montmartre of its day?

    With fractured societies and global anxiety, other than in Leica store gatherings/workshops, or photographer led trips to Iceland and other exotics (zoom for those unwilling or unable to venture), where in the world can one find a "collective" of artists/photographers/authors intentionally at a location? Budapest perhaps? Certainly most large cities have a variety of artistic centers etc, but have we seen the last of what Monterey represented in the 20s and into the 90s? Perhaps the internet moots the point of living close to your LF companions?

  8. #18

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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Quote Originally Posted by Bernice Loui View Post
    Subject is merely a means to utilize these three elements of visual language.
    Strong disagree here.
    Place your sentence in any other context than photography and see how appealing it sounds?

    Will you come to my lecture? Subject to me is merely a means to experience the sound of my own voice.

    Ditto to Vaughn, it can be a trap to be so form-oriented.
    "I am a reflection photographing other reflections within a reflection. To photograph reality is to photograph nothing." Duane Michals

  9. #19
    Jim Jones's Avatar
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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Good composition is sometimes sometimes merely adhering to rules that seem to result in successful competitions among your peers, whether a small camera club or a huge national photographic organization. Perhaps more often it is the arrangement of light and subjects to best present the subject or the photographer's response to the subject. Most often it tells the viewer what you saw on vacation or how wonderful your children or pets are. Considering the well-established rules can be useful even for experienced photographers: when doubt, follow the rules. This is especially true when the photographs will be judged by the type of expert who also evaluates a glamour model with tape rule and bathroom scales instead of his (or her) eyes.

  10. #20
    Vaughn's Avatar
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    Re: “Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.”

    Quote Originally Posted by lenicolas View Post
    Strong disagree here....Ditto to Vaughn, it can be a trap to be so form-oriented.
    Thankfully painting is not a subject-oriented art-form. Otherwise it certainly would have died with the invention of photography. Who needs more paintings (or photos, really) of things?
    "Landscapes exist in the material world yet soar in the realms of the spirit..." Tsung Ping, 5th Century China

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