Photography

Don’t Cut the Horizon in Two

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The first time I attempted to take pictures professionally was when I was ten years old.  It was on a trip to Florida with some friends of the family.  I fell in love with Florida’s lush vegetation and spacious ocean views.  I was convinced that I could capture everything on film just the way I saw it.  Imagine my dismay when I got my film back and it looked nothing like what I had seen!  I thought I could point the camera at a scene and the shot would be exactly rendered the way I had seen it.

The biggest mistake I’ve seen casual photographers make is cutting the horizon in two.  I think it’s because it seems like a logical thing to get an even amount of foreground and background.  But all this will do is make your photo look static.  Although a photograph is an instant in space and time, it needs to look like there is a certain amount of movement going on in the picture.

That is also why if you place an object dead center in a picture it also looks as if there is no movement going on.  Another common mistake.

An object needs space to breath.

Imagine the sailboat in this picture sliding along the edge of the horizon until it had got to the center of the photograph.  And then I had taken the picture.  Can you imagine it?  It wouldn’t look very good would it?  It would look stuck.  It would look static.

What I have been talking about is commonly referred to as the rule of thirds in photography.  If you break objects up into thirds in your photographs they will appear visually interesting and filled with life.  Kai Virihaur has a nice description on his blog, a1 Photo Tips, if you would care to learn more about this topic.

In this picture I shot Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains off center so the horizon wouldn’t be split in two.  That is approximately one third of the picture. The other two thirds of the picture is interesting layers of clouds.

After awhile these kind of composition techniques will come second nature to you and you will instantly know how to compose and frame a picture before you shoot it.  Just remember you can’t swing your camera at a scene and snap! – expect everything to appear as you see it.

Give a little thought to your composition, and you will be extremely pleased with the results.

Note:  Because I have some pressing projects I need to attend to, I will not be able to update my blog after today until next week.  Thanks for stopping by everyone and I will speak with you soon!

Photocredit: © Ellen Wilson

Ethics in Photography

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Recently in Montreal, I was about to shoot a picture of a homeless man sleeping, and my friend jumped in front of the camera.

“You can’t do that!” she said.

“Why not?”

“It’s an invasion of that person’s privacy.”  she replied.

What commenced was a long drawn out conversation about privacy and ethics in photography.

As a photographer I have this ethical dilemna.  While I believe as a photographer I am a witness – I want to photograph the good and bad of humanity, and awhile ago I wrote a piece for Brave New Traveler exploring the ethical dilemna that war photographers go through.

Often times I write to get to the bottom of how I think and feel.

So while I was contemplating my friend’s problem with me taking pictures of a homeless man, I came across a strip club.  No one had problems of me taking pictures of a strip club.  Snap!  I wondered why there was such a large amount photographic content concerning women in compromising positions.  Snap! Snap! 

But this is standard fare.  Women are used as commodities to sell things – as Vered so succinctly pointed out in her blog.

And how far will we go to sell things?

Then I had to go back and reexamine my thinking about the post featuring Annie Leibovitz, and her photograph of Giselle Bundchen and Lebron James.  Okay, I reasoned.  Giselle and Lebron are okay with it, so therefore…it’s okay.  But is it okay?

Often people in denial, those that lead the unexamined life, think things are okay.  Child molesters think that what what they do is okay.

In advertising there is such a thing called subliminal seduction.  The seduction part of this type of photography is that it plays on our fears, our desires, and our unconcious feelings toward stereotypes.  We buy into it because it’s unconscious.  Because it’s below the surface – like our attitudes towards women and the fact that Pamela Anderson can suck on a cherry in the most provocative of ways while the headline beside her screams Getting Intimate With John McCain.  Yes, that’s right. In the same color as the cherry.

I believe photography in its highest form is there to tell a story.  It is there to tell the truth.  Because if you can show people the up front and center truth, as photographers did during the Vietnam War, maybe people will get angry.  Maybe things can change and wars can end.

And while I’m taking a photograph of a homeless man, showing the reality of his life, advertisers are marketing the newest sexy thing to my eight-year-old daughter.  And believe me, sexual marketing is aimed at younger and younger age groups these days.  What was once aimed at your average sixteen year old is now aimed at the average six year old.

So I have to ask you, is it wrong for photographers to to document human despair and suffering?  Or is it wrong for advertisers to play on peoples’ fear and ignorance in order to make a lot of money?

Or do I have it all wrong?  Have I framed the debate the wrong way?

It’s up to you.  You decide.  What is your lens of perception?

Photocredit: © Ellen Wilson

Interpreting Art

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Montreal Latin Quarter Art Exhibit, copyright Ellen Wilson

And what do you think?

No, no.  What do you think? 

I think it’s strange.  Great.  Abominable.  I love it! 

Throughout our knuckle dragging history we have always been fascinated with portraying the world around us.  From the caves of Lacaux, France, to the most modern of the modern embodied by the pope of pop, Andy Warhol, we have always sought as a species to render reality by what what we thought of it.

And what do we think of it?

Art can be classified into many different forms and types.  But who cares about that.  I’m not an art history major.  The question is, what does it do to us? Do for us?

Art has always:

Informed

Provoked

Challenged

Amused

Inspired

and Irritated

I can think of many instances where art has been banned.  Or many people wanted it to be.  But why?

Because it causes uncomfortable feelings.

I am one of those non-purists who think that photography is art.  Witness the great landscapes of Ansel Adams or the studio portraiture of Annie Leibovitz.  While Adam’s photos tend to inspire through the start beauty of his black and white landscapes, Leibovitz’s photos run the emotional gamut from what they are able to accomplish.  Just in the last couple of years Leibovitz has managed to:

Irritate the Queen of England when she asked her to take off her crown for a photoshoot

Challenge our view of social and racial stereotypes with the photo of Giselle Bundchen and LeBron James gracing the the cover of Vogue

And Amuse us with the public relations campaign to withdraw a celebrity protrait that was supposedly unacceptable of Miley Cyrus

Let us keep these things in mind as we take pictures.

Do you simply point and snap hoping to capture a great image?  Or are you alert – always looking for possibilities inherent in a situation?  Obviously the last question separates good from great photos.

If you want to photograph art, you must think like an artist.  While it is fairly easy to teach people camera techniques and tricks, it is much harder teaching people point of view and composition.  Point of view is colored by your philosophy of life, and composition is portraying that point of view.

Next time you take a picture see if you can’t capture your subject’s point of view or your point of view own reflected by your subject.

Photocredit: © Ellen Wilson