Photos by Rima

My [Naman's] pictures

photo and reading assignments for Jan 30,

Do you see other people's photos and wonder how you can create something similar? Do you wonder what they are doing to create beautiful images that draw your eye in? Photography is personal. Through our lenses we record our lives for ourselves and for those we love. Developing your photographer’s eye helps you to see beauty in the everyday detail of your life. In a three part series, we'll explore how to develop your photographer's eye. Great photos begin with a story. Do you know what that includes?

TELL A VISUAL STORY

• Choose a strong subject
• Let the viewer know the story
• Eliminate the extra

Bring the three visual story elements together for stronger, more interesting photos.

CHOOSE A STRONG SUBJECT

What is your subject? Isolate it. Let it be known that THIS is what you are shooting. Make it obvious to someone who was not there when the moment occurred. Notice the background. Does changing your angle, eliminate background clutter?

LET THE VIEWER KNOW THE STORY

Do the elements in your frame tell the viewer what the moment was about? Does it create emotion in you and the viewer? Think about action. Think about light. Think about the moment and where the action is occurring. Focus there.

ELIMINATE THE EXTRAS

Every single element in your image has a purpose. Do you know why you’ve left it there? Did you look around the image before you pressed the shutter? Know why you are including it in the frame to tell a stronger visual story. Not everything needs to be there. In Photographically Speaking, David duChemin says, "when you include it in the frame -- whatever it is -- you are saying it matters."

ASSIGNMENT

Now go out and shoot with intention. Think of the three pieces of a visual story and create. The more you practice looking around your frame before you push the button, the faster and easier it will become!  

from This lesson taken from a series of photo classes


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After completing your own story and posting the photos to our class blog...

second part of the assignment:
Take a look at this photo. Grab a piece of paper and list everything that catches your attention about the photo. Don't read anything else until you've written at least 7 things (Click on it to see the larger image for even more detail.)

How many things did you list? Let's see if you noticed what I noticed.

Rule of Thirds

Imagine a tic-tac-toe grid across the photo. The boys are on one line, the horizon on another. Visually the photo has appeal because of the strength of the rule of thirds. More on the rule of thirds.

Leading Lines

Did you notice how your eye enters the photo and moves through the frame? Mine enters at the bottom of the frame and wanders down the road with the boys. The light color of the road draws our eye and the line helps us continue down the road.

The Horizon

The horizon creates a strong point of interest in your photos. Notice how a little less than one third of the frame is dedicated to the blue sky. Including more sky would distract from the subject of the photo. Less would leave the photo feeling chopped off and incomplete.  Think about placing the horizon on the top third line of that tic-tac-toe grid.

Layers

Did you notice how the photo doesn't look flat? There is a clear foreground, midground, and background.  Those layers allow the viewer to have more space to look into the photo.  Shooting with a narrow aperture keeps the layers in nice focus throughout the frame.

Tonal Contrast

Light in a photo attracts. Dark recedes. Notice how your eye goes to the berry bucket in the little boy's hand? That is tonal contrast working. The white area draws our eye right to it. It almost jumps out of the frame when you look at it a second time.

Color Contrast

Did you notice any particular colors when you looked at the photo? Color contrast adds to our composition. Notice how the green, blue, and brown work together through contrast? Notice the pop of red?

Shoot With Intent

Thinking about your composition as you pick up your camera you will create more appealing images. Of course, you don't need to use everything listed for this photo, but consider what you are trying to achieve when you frame your image.

 Writing assignment to be brought to class:

write your assessment of the photo above including three of the topics above. 

Assignment For This Week

 Here are my photos.

Here are my pictures

My photography from this week

Couldn't get any action shots but experimented with other angles around the barn!

a visit downtown--a day in the life assignment

 This week I went downtown for a little adventure...here a few of the images I captured

Photography is easy, photography is difficult... writing assignment #2

Read and write a three paragraph essay on how you see photography

Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult

It’s so easy it’s  ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to  start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button.  How hard is that?  And what’s more, in this  digital age, its free – doesn’t even cost you the price of film. It’s so simple and basic, it’s laughable.

It’s so difficult  because it’s everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It’s the  view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it’s an image of you reading now.  Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it’s right there, across the room – there… and there.  Then it’s gone.  You didn’t photograph it, because you didn’t  think it was worth it. And now it’s too late, that moment has evaporated. But  another one has arrived, instantly.  Now.  Because life is flowing through and around us, rushing onwards and outwards, in  every direction.

But if it’s everywhere  and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? which pictures  matter?  Is it the hard won photograph, knowing, controlled, previsualised?  Yes.  Or are those contrived, dry and belabored?  Sometimes.  Is it the offhand snapshot made on a  whim.  For sure.  Or is that just a lucky observation, some random moment caught by chance?  Maybe.  Is it an intuitive expression of liquid intelligence?  Exactly.  Or the distillation of years of looking seeing thinking photography.  Definitely.

“Life’s single lesson: that there is more  accident to it than a man can admit to in a lifetime, and stay sane“   – Thomas Pynchon, V

Ok, so how do I make  sense of that never ending flow, the fog that covers life here and now.  How do I see through that, how do I cross that  boundary?  Do I walk down the street and  make pictures of strangers, do I make a drama-tableaux with my friends, do I only photograph my beloved, my family, myself?  Or maybe I should just photograph the land,  the rocks and trees – they don’t move or complain or push back.  The old houses?  The new houses?  Do I go to a war zone on the other side of the  world, or just to the corner store, or not leave my room at all?

Yes and yes and yes.  That’s the choice you are spoiled for, just don’t let it stop you. Be aware of it, but don’t get stuck – relax, it’s  everything and everywhere.  You will find  it, and it will find you, just start, somehow, anyhow, but: start.

Okay, but shouldn’t I  have a clear coherent theme, surely I have to know what I’m doing first?  That would be nice, but I doubt Robert Frank knew what it all meant when he started, or for that matter Cindy Sherman or Robert Mapplethorpe or Atget or…  so you  shouldn’t expect it.  The more preplanned  it is the less room for surprise, for the world to talk back, for the idea to find itself, allowing ambivalence and ambiguity to seep in, and sometimes those are more important than certainty and clarity.  The work often says more than the artist intended.

But my photography doesn’t always fit into neat, coherent series, so maybe I need to roll freeform  around this world, unfettered, able to photograph whatever and whenever: the sky, my feet, the coffee in my cup, the flowers I just noticed, my friends and lovers, and, because it’s all my life, surely it will make sense?  Perhaps.  Sometimes that works, sometimes it’s indulgent, but really it’s your choice, because you are also free to not make ‘sense’.

“so finally even this story is absurd,  which is an important part of the point, if any, since that it should have none whatsoever seems part of the point too” -  Malcolm Lowry, Ghostkeeper.

Ok, so I need time to think about this.  To allow myself  that freedom for a short time.  A couple of years.  Maybe I won’t find my answer, but I will be around others who understand this question, who have reached a similar point.  Maybe I’ll start on the wrong road, or for the wrong reasons – because I liked cameras, because I thought photography was an easy option, but if I’m forced to try, then perhaps  I’ll stumble on some little thing, that makes a piece of sense to me, or simply just feels right.  If I concentrate on that, then maybe it grows, and in its modest ineffable way, begins to matter.  Like photographing Arab-Americans in the USA as human beings with lives and hopes, families and feelings, straight, gay, young, old, with all the humanity that Hollywood never grants them.  Or the black community of New Haven, doing inexplicable joyous, ridiculous theatrical-charades that explode my preconceptions into a thousand pieces.  Or funny-disturbing-sad echoes of a snapshot of my old boyfriend.  Or the anonymous  suburban landscape of upstate in a way that defies the spectacular images we’re  addicted to.  Or… how we women use our bodies to display who we believe we should be,  Or…

“A Novel? No, I don’t have the endurance  any more. To write a novel, you have to be like Atlas, holding up the whole world on your shoulders, and supporting it there for months and years, while its affairs work themselves out…”   – J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad  Year.

And hopefully I will  carry on, and develop it, because it is worthwhile.  Carry on because it matters when other things don’t seem to matter so much: the money job, the editorial assignment, the fashion shoot.  Then one day it will be complete  enough to believe it is finished.  Made.  Existing.  Done.  And  in its own way: a contribution, and all that effort and frustration and time and money will fall away.  It was worth it, because it is something real, that didn’t exist before you made it exist: a sentient work of art and power and sensitivity, that speaks of this world and your fellow human beings place within it.  Isn’t that beautiful?

Yale  MFA Photography Graduation, February 2009.

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