On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Bob W <[email protected]> wrote: > A week or 2 ago there was a brief discussion in which someone - sorry, can't > remember who - suggested the idea of telling a story in 4 photos. > > By coincidence I ordered a few weeks ago a book called Serial Photography, > which arrived yesterday. It's by Harald Mante, a photographer whose books > I've mentioned before - Photo Design (my particular favourite) and Colour > Design. This new book is about displaying similar pictures in multiples - > the strapline of the book is 'Using themed images to improve your > photographic skills'. It's full of very interesting ideas and well worth > looking at if you get the chance, with numerous ideas for photographic > practising, like doing your scales on the piano. > > I like Harald Mante's books. His pictures are very good but not great - they > are about form more than they are about subject matter, but they can make > you think; they are deceptively simple. But his greatness is as a teacher of > photographic composition. > > The great photographers of subject matter, such as HCB, are masters of form > and composition, which they use as tools to show the subject matter in the > most effective way possible, so I think it's very important that > photographers try to understand & master these techniques, even if it's only > to reject them, just as painters like Van Gogh and Picasso were trained in > the academic method and went on to reject it. > > Where this book differs from the story essay is that the traditional story > essay is narrative, whereas these photographs are not - their effect comes > from the juxtaposition of photographs which are similar, but different > enough not to be repetitive. It would, of course, be possible to construct a > narrative using this technique, for example by some sort of sequence or time > lapse. > > <http://www.harald-mante.de/> > > Bob > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. >
Thanks for the suggestion, Bob... I couldn't resist amazon-ing myself a copy. Looking forward to checking it out. :) -c -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
