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