On Dec 5, 2011, at 11:17 PM, Bob W wrote: > What you're talking about there are the types of photos shown as examples in > books about photo composition, in which people 'obey the rules' and come out > with something competent but dull. Pictorial, essentially, in that the > subject matter is not important, just the formal properties. To get beyond > that you have to take more interest in the subject matter, and use visual > grammar as your servant, not as an end in itself.
That isn't what I thought I was saying, but it's an excellent point. I wonder if there is a common stage in a photographer's development where they concentrate so much on technical mastery, that their photos become a little sterile. According to all of the rules, their photos are excellent... > > Since very few of us are Henri Cartier-Bresson it helps to steal ideas from > great photographers and artists (which HCB did too, of course). To steal > this way you have to study the pictures you are stealing, and so you come to > understand more about how they work, and you can start to build on that to > develop a style of your own. Excellent point, and a good point also for the discussion of photographic critique. If I ever have the time to start an online photo critique club, I can see that it would also be worthwhile to also mix in photos from the likes of HCB, Weston, Cunningham, Adams and discuss both what did, and did not, work about the photo. > > B -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- 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.
