Mike Johnston wrote: quoting Mark (Roberts? yes?)
> > More rules to follow and to deliberately break: > > http://website.lineone.net/~peter.saw/ctutor/cmpsitn.htm > > Mark, > Much as I respect you and like your work, I think we'll just have to agree > to disagree (which, by the bye, I really don't mind doing). I think that > site is just dreadful, its suggestions possibly among the worst things I > could imagine for a photographer to clutter his or her mind with. annsan writes: I'm jumping into this late - forgive me if what I am going to say has been said multiple times recently in some fashion or another - I've been overly and crazily busy for a few weeks and you guys are really getting especially chatty these days! anyway..... Mike, didn't Mark say right up front they were rules to (perhaps) be broken? I never took a photography class myself, but I did take art classes back in the 60's and then read and read and read more about photography, and looked and looked more at works of accomplished photographers. My 2 cents on the subject follows: No one is even going to teach someone who has no vision at all to produce photos that are much beyond a document, I certainly agree with that opinion, Mike. But I think photography is way beyond the process of "recognition and reaction" when it is at its best. Photography can do a lot of things a painting cannot do. It can put a brush in the hands of someone that does not have the mechanical aptitude (dare I say "digital"?:)) to make a statement, point out something beautiful, recreate a moment, etc. And, of course, to capture instantly that "decisive moment". But you can't break the rules (if you need to) without learning them first. There are some who follow many of them without having learned them from someone else or even from books. But there are few accomplished photographers, I wager, who do not understand things like "leading the eye". I think to learn the craft aspects of photography and art it would be a good exercise to examine side by side a truly terrible photo and a great one and break it down using those rules as a check list. One might also select a wonderful image (yeah, it is subjective, of course) and find where it breaks the composition rules and why it works anyway. The thing about the rules is that they are elements of composition, not really rules. bad word, rules. I hate rules. They have, I believe, been developed from observations of art and a bit of science. The leading the eye thing is a phenomenon of nature. MIke J wrote... > It may work--may work--for watercolor paintings, but photographing is a > process of > recognition and reaction, isn't it? Ann got into that above... > One might build or plan paintings, but I > can't imagine having the time and control to tick off item after item on the > "composition checklist." You never planned a photograph? Ever? Didn't ever wait somewhere for the light to change, or a person to appear, or a baby to smile or whatever? Never previsualized? Like the "if you have to ask, you don't know" comment regarding jazz, if you had to consciously go through the check list you might not be a photographer. Or an artist. > That site makes me want to go spend an hour at a Mark Rothko exhibit. <s> > > --Mike The only thing that scares me about the site is that there are undoubtedly people who think they can learn to be an artist from it, rather than breaking down what it is in art they see and like that makes it work. Rothko is not to my taste, but like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland others who explored color in the 50's and later, I bet he knew how to draw :) Am I gonna regret getting into this??? annsan
