General Photography Questions Megathread v4 - Don't Listen to Any of These Freaks

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Corla Plankun: May 8, 2007; improve the lives of everyone

huhu posted:

Does anyone know of a photo photo stat app? Like it could answer questions like "what's my most used focal length over time"? I found an app from 2013 but it's dead and only works on mac.

If you know any programming at all this could be a fun little python script to write assuming your photos are all local.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 00:55

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 19, 2024 19:10

eggsovereasy: May 6, 2011

Corla Plankun posted:

If you know any programming at all this could be a fun little python script to write assuming your photos are all local.

you can use image magick to read the exif

code:

magick identify -format '%[EXIF:*]' ./*.JPG | sed -n -e 's/^.*exif:FocalLengthIn35mmFilm=//p' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr

that will pull the 35mm equivalent off a bunch of jpgs then put them in a list like

code:

{count} {focal_length}

# ? Jan 3, 2023 02:08

huhu: Feb 24, 2006

Corla Plankun posted:

If you know any programming at all this could be a fun little python script to write assuming your photos are all local.

😅 was actually going to build one myself if nothing was shared here.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 02:28

Thoren: May 28, 2008

Can someone recommend some mainstream helpful textbooks about photography and maybe visual art in general?

I can't seem to take any good photos.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 15:46

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Thoren posted:

Can someone recommend some mainstream helpful textbooks about photography and maybe visual art in general?

I can't seem to take any good photos.

The Photographer�s Eye really helped me and I still return to it occasionally. Not that I can take any good photos but vOv

My mom was a reporter for awhile and she had a bunch of old photography books that I�ve got now and they�re less complete than The Photographer�s Eye but I believe they�ve all been helpful in their own way. I�d recommend looking through a list of books on the genre you�re trying out and just dive into one book that looks cool to you.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 15:50

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

The Art of Photography is insanely good too (from Bruce Barmbaum, not the youtuber Ted Forbes).

It gets into post-processing stuff which is kinda dated and not relevant, but the first half of the book is super useful for composition and thinking about light.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 15:53

Thoren: May 28, 2008

Thanks guys. Hopefully I can take a few good photos this year.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 15:58

bellows lugosi: Aug 9, 2003

Thoren posted:

Can someone recommend some mainstream helpful textbooks about photography and maybe visual art in general?

I can't seem to take any good photos.

you should look at photo books instead

# ? Jan 3, 2023 16:54

Wild EEPROM: Jul 29, 2011; oh, my, god. Becky, look at her bitrate.

Get the correct photographers eye book, the one by szarkowski and not michael freeman

# ? Jan 3, 2023 19:00

Thoren: May 28, 2008

Wild EEPROM posted:

Get the correct photographers eye book, the one by szarkowski and not michael freeman

If you hadn't told me this I would have never known. Thanks.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 21:39

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

I didn�t like the reviews for The Art of Photography so I went with Creative Nature & Outdoor Photography instead.

# ? Jan 3, 2023 21:48

bellows lugosi: Aug 9, 2003

absolutely stunning portfolio from the author of that one

# ? Jan 3, 2023 22:35

Hadlock: Nov 9, 2004

huhu posted:

Does anyone know of a photo photo stat app? Like it could answer questions like "what's my most used focal length over time"? I found an app from 2013 but it's dead and only works on mac.

There is a "write me a tiny app" thread, someone might take you up on this challenge. Maybe structure it in the form of "how can I extract and dump all the exif data for all the photos in a directory to csv format?" And then dissect the data manually in excel or Google sheets later

# ? Jan 3, 2023 23:00

bellows lugosi: Aug 9, 2003

Hadlock posted:

There is a "write me a tiny app" thread, someone might take you up on this challenge. Maybe structure it in the form of "how can I extract and dump all the exif data for all the photos in a directory to csv format?" And then dissect the data manually in excel or Google sheets later

exiftool has csv support, 90% of the way there

# ? Jan 3, 2023 23:11

bobmarleysghost: Mar 7, 2006

bellows lugosi posted:

absolutely stunning portfolio from the author of that one

Lmao these are super terrible

# ? Jan 3, 2023 23:59

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Well if one wants that empty nest photographer aesthetic might as well learn from the best.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 00:07

Lily Catts: Oct 17, 2012; Show me the way to you
(Heavy Metal)

Thoren posted:

Can someone recommend some mainstream helpful textbooks about photography and maybe visual art in general?

I can't seem to take any good photos.

Understanding Exposure is pretty good because it's laser-focused on making you take correctly-exposed photos (a common thing newbies and even intermediate photographers struggle with). It's made for digital photography in mind and while imaging tech has vastly improved over the years it's still aged very well

# ? Jan 4, 2023 01:40

Splinter: Jul 4, 2003; Cowabunga!

Wild EEPROM posted:

Get the correct photographers eye book, the one by szarkowski and not michael freeman

Wow I suppose this explains why I was a bit underwhelmed by this book after seeing all the praise for it online

# ? Jan 4, 2023 01:43

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

Interaction of color by Josef albers. The book that most modern artists learned color theory from. Read it.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 02:26

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

bobmarleysghost posted:

Lmao these are super terrible

# ? Jan 4, 2023 02:27

JAY ZERO SUM GAME: Oct 18, 2005; Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.

Lily Catts posted:

Understanding Exposure is pretty good because it's laser-focused on making you take correctly-exposed photos (a common thing newbies and even intermediate photographers struggle with). It's made for digital photography in mind and while imaging tech has vastly improved over the years it's still aged very well

I�d argue that adams� book 2 �the negative� is equally worthwhile. The zone system perfectly applies to digital photography, only highlights are the challenge, not shadows.

Really adams� three books (the camera, the negative, the print) are all valuable.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 02:30

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

bellows lugosi posted:

absolutely stunning portfolio from the author of that one

Thank you for saying the punchline

# ? Jan 4, 2023 04:00

Megabound: Oct 20, 2012

bellows lugosi posted:

absolutely stunning portfolio from the author of that one

Windows log in screen rear end photos

# ? Jan 4, 2023 05:25

Ineptitude: Mar 2, 2010; Heed my words and become a master of the Heart _{(of Thorns)}.

tuyop posted:

The Photographer�s Eye really helped me and I still return to it occasionally. Not that I can take any good photos but vOv

There are 2 books called this iirc, make sure to get the correct (good) one.

I don't remember which one i have but i do remember it was the wrong one.

EDIT: I see someone already gave this info

# ? Jan 4, 2023 13:00

eggsovereasy: May 6, 2011

Wild EEPROM posted:

Get the correct photographers eye book, the one by szarkowski and not michael freeman

i bought the wrong one like 15 years ago and just now found out

# ? Jan 4, 2023 13:31

tuyop: Sep 15, 2006; Every second that we're not growing BASIL is a second wasted; Fun Shoe

Ineptitude posted:

There are 2 books called this iirc, make sure to get the correct (good) one.

I don't remember which one i have but i do remember it was the wrong one.

EDIT: I see someone already gave this info

Yeah I wonder which one I have, it�s been in a box cause I�m moving forever.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 14:49

alkanphel: Mar 24, 2004

Thoren posted:

Can someone recommend some mainstream helpful textbooks about photography and maybe visual art in general?

I can't seem to take any good photos.

The Nature of Photographs: A Primer
The Photographer's Eye
Robert Adams: Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews
Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors, and the Nude: The Photography Workshop Series
Larry Fink on Composition and Improvisation: The Photography Workshop Series
Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs
On Being a Photographer: A Practical Guide

How to Read a Photograph: Lessons from Master Photographers
Tod Papageorge: Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography
John Berger: Understanding a Photograph
The Gerry Badger: Pleasures of Good Photographs
Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans: Expanded Edition
New Topographics
The Painted Word (critical look at the "art world")

# ? Jan 4, 2023 14:52

Thoren: May 28, 2008

Thanks ya'll.

I'm going to start studying profusely.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 15:23

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

Don't forget to just look at photos too. Pouring over the work of your favorites or critiquing ones you don't like is a great way to inform your style while out on a walk.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 15:35

waffle enthusiast: Nov 16, 2007

I really enjoyed Understanding Exposure (the flash chapter notwithstanding), which helped with being more confident in manual mode and general theory around a �correct� exposure vs just yoloing dials until the camera says you�re good.

Speakinawhich:

Any #lifehacks on quickly getting the right custom white balance indoors? This year I�m endeavoring to ween myself from AWB. I have all lights which are technically �warm white� at (iirc) 2700-3000k, but when I either plug a specific value in that range into my X-T* or select the �Fluorescent Light - 2� setting I usually get a pretty wonky result from the LCD; sometimes too warm, sometimes too cold. In fact, AWB tends to give the most consistently close result.

I will sometimes use a gray card, but find it annoying to have to locate and set the balance every time I pull out the camera. I can fix it in post, but hoping there�s a speedier way to get �close enough� in camera.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 16:15

big scary monsters: Sep 2, 2011; -~Ｓｋｕｌｌｗａｖｅ~-

Can you shoot and process RAW? Then you can worry about white balance entirely in post - correct it once and apply to all photos in that lighting. Put a grey card in one picture of a shoot if you care to, or just adjust by eye.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 16:42

xzzy: Mar 5, 2009

My camera is permanently on cloudy white balance because of that. It's a 2 second fix in LR.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 17:07

adnam: Aug 28, 2006; Christmas Whale fully subsidized by ThatsMyBoye

Thoren posted:

Thanks ya'll.

I'm going to start studying profusely.

For a completely different note, I actually like this guy's guide on reddit, which is quite comprehensive: Finding Great Photography without Instagram which helps you with free inspiration for better technique and inspiration. I started collecting photobooks after this from some of my heroes like Robert Frank and found that to be a great way to learn by copying. Some of the ad agencies online release full collections of high-res photos from recent projects and they're both free and great. I hope it helps, of course nothing replaces instruction but I have the attention of a gnat and no free time to enroll properly

# ? Jan 4, 2023 17:19

dakana: Aug 28, 2006; So I packed up my Salvador Dali print of two blindfolded dental hygienists trying to make a circle on an Etch-a-Sketch and headed for California.

The other thing about white balance is that sometimes there's no objectively "correct" setting. You'll frequently have light sources with different color temperatures falling in your photo, and you'll also have lights catching color casts from things they're shining through or bouncing off of. Generally, if I'm photographing people, I aim to make skin tones look right, and let the other parts of the image fall where they may. Or, I might use a mask to correct different parts separately, too. Sometimes you'll also get multiple colors of light on the same person, and you just have to find a setting that looks "right".

# ? Jan 4, 2023 18:26

waffle enthusiast: Nov 16, 2007

big scary monsters posted:

Can you shoot and process RAW? Then you can worry about white balance entirely in post - correct it once and apply to all photos in that lighting. Put a grey card in one picture of a shoot if you care to, or just adjust by eye.

Yeah. I shoot raw+jpeg and frequently adjust in Lr. But my goal is to get as close to �correct� out of the camera as I can get with reasonable efficiency.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 19:36

bobmarleysghost: Mar 7, 2006

quote:

The Photographer�s Eye
John Szarkowski, Introduction to the Catalog of the Exhibition

This book is an investigation of what photographs look like, and of why they lookthat way. It is concerned with photographic style and with photographic tradition:with the sense of possibilities that a photographer today takes to his work.The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process�aprocess based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one.Paintings were made �constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes andskills and attitudes�but photographs, as the man on the street put it, were taken.The difference raised a creative issue of a new order: how could this mechanicaland mindless process be made to produce pictures meaningful in human terms�pictures with clarity and coherence and a point of view? It was soon demonstratedthat an answer would not be found by those who loved too much the old forms, forin large part the photographer was bereft of the old artistic traditions. Speaking ofphotography Baudelaire said: �This industry, by invading the territories of art, hasbecome art�s most mortal enemy.�1 And in his own terms of reference Baudelairewas half right; certainly the new medium could not satisfy old standards. Thephotographer must find new ways to make his meaning clear.

These new ways might be found by men who could abandon their allegiance totraditional pictorial standards�or by the artistically ignorant, who had no oldallegiances to break. There have been many of the latter sort. Since its earliestdays, photography has been practiced by thousands who shared no commontradition or training, who were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, whoconsidered their medium variously as a science, an art, a trade, or an entertainment,and who were often unaware of each other�s work. Those who inventedphotography were scientists and painters, but its professional practitioners were avery different lot. Hawthorne�s daguerreotypist hero Holgrave in the house of theseven gables was perhaps not far from typical:�Though now but twenty-two years old, he had already been a countryschoolmaster; salesman in a country store; and the political editor of a countrynewspaper. He had subsequently travelled as a peddler of cologne water and otheressences. He had studied and practiced dentistry. Still more recently he had been apublic lecturer on mesmerism, for which science he had very remarkableendowments. His present phase as a daguerreotypist was of no more importance inhis own view, nor likely to be more permanent, than any of the preceding ones.�2The enormous popularity of the new medium produced professionals by thethousands�converted silversmiths, tinkers, druggists, blacksmiths and printers. Ifphotography was a new artistic problem, such men had the advantage of havingnothing to unlearn. Among them they produced a flood of images. In 1853 the newyork daily tribune estimated that three million daguerreotypes were being producedthat year.3 Some of these pictures were the product of knowledge and skill andsensibility and invention; many were the product of accident, improvisation,misunderstanding, and empirical experiment. But whether produced by art or byluck, each picture was part of a massive assault on our traditional habits of seeing.By the latter decades of the nineteenth century the professionals and the seriousamateurs were joined by an even larger host of casual snapshooters. By the earlyeighties the dry plate, which could be purchased ready-to-use, had replaced therefractory and messy wet plate process, which demanded that the plate be preparedjust before exposure and processed before its emulsion had dried. The dry platespawned the hand camera and the snapshot. Photography had become easy. In 1893an English writer complained that the new situation had �created an army ofphotographers who run rampant over the globe, photographing objects of all sorts,sizes and shapes, under almost every condition, without ever pausing to askthemselves, is this or that artistic? �They spy a view, it seems to please, thecamera is focused, the shot taken! There is no pause, why should there be? For artmay err but nature cannot miss, says the poet, and they listen to the dictum. Tothem, composition, light, shade, form and texture are so many catch phrases��4These pictures, taken by the thousands by journeyman worker and Sundayhobbyist, were unlike any pictures before them. The variety of their imagery wasprodigious. Each subtle variation in viewpoint or light, each passing moment, eachchange in the tonality of the print, created a new picture. The trained artist coulddraw a head or a hand from a dozen perspectives. The photographer discoveredthat the gestures of a hand were infinitely various, and that the wall of a building inthe sun was never twice the same.
Most of this deluge of pictures seemed formless and accidental, but some achievedcoherence, even in their strangeness. Some of the new images were memorable,and seemed significant beyond their limited intention. These remembered picturesenlarged one�s sense of possibilities as he looked again at the real world. Whilethey were remembered they survived, like organisms, to reproduce and evolve.But it was not only the way that photography described things that was new; it wasalso the things it chose to describe. Photographers shot ��objects of all sorts, sizesand shapes� without ever pausing to ask themselves, is this or that artistic?�Painting was difficult, expensive, and precious, and it recorded what was known tobe important. Photography was easy, cheap and ubiquitous, and it recordedanything: shop windows and sod houses and family pets and steam engines andunimportant people. And once made objective and permanent, immortalized in apicture, these trivial things took on importance. By the end of the century, for thefirst time in history, even the poor man knew what his ancestors had looked like.The photographer learned in two ways: first, from a worker�s intimateunderstanding of his tools and materials (if his plate would not record the clouds,he could point his camera down and eliminate the sky); and second he learnedfrom other photographs, which presented themselves in an unending stream.Whether his concern was commercial or artistic, his tradition was formed by all thephotographs that had impressed themselves upon his consciousness.The pictures reproduced in this book were made over almost a century and aquarter. They were made for various reasons, by men of different concerns andvarying talent. They have in fact little in common except their success, and ashared vocabulary: these pictures are unmistakably photographs. The vision theyshare belongs to no school or aesthetic theory, but to photography itself. Thecharacter of this vision was discovered by photographers at work, as theirawareness of photography�s potentials grew.If this is true, it should be possible to consider the history of the medium in termsof photographers� progressive awareness of characteristics and problems that haveseemed inherent in the medium. Five such issues are considered below.These issues do not define discrete categories of work; on the contrary they shouldbe regarded as interdependent aspects of a single problem� as section viewsthrough the body of photographic tradition. As such, it is hoped that they maycontribute to the formulation of a vocabulary and a critical perspective more fullyresponsive to the unique phenomena of photography.

The Thing Itself
The first thing that the photographer learned was that photography dealt with theactual; he had not only to accept this fact, but to treasure it; unless he did,photography would defeat him. He learned that the world itself is an artist ofincomparable inventiveness, and that to recognize its best works and moments, toanticipate them, to clarify them and make them permanent, requires intelligenceboth acute and supple.

But he learned also that the factuality of his pictures, no matter how convincingand unarguable, was a different thing than the reality itself. Much of the reality wasfiltered out in the static little black and white image, and some of it was exhibitedwith an unnatural clarity, an exaggerated importance. The subject and the picturewere not the same thing, although they would afterwards seem so. It was thephotographer�s problem to see not simply the reality before him but the stillinvisible picture, and to make his choices in terms of the latter.This was an artistic problem, not a scientific one, but the public believed that thephotograph could not lie, and it was easier for the photographer if he believed ittoo, or pretended to. Thus he was likely to claim that what our eyes saw was anillusion, and what the camera saw was the truth. Hawthorne�s Holgrave, speakingof a difficult portrait subject said: �We give [heaven�s broad and simple sunshine]credit only for depicting the merest surface, but it actually brings out the secretcharacter with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could hedetect it� the remarkable point is that the original wears, to the world�s eye� anexceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, openness of heart,sunny good humor, and other praiseworthy qualities of that cast. The sun, as yousee, tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed out of it, after half a dozenpatient attempts on my part. Here we have a man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, andwithal, cold as ice�5

In a sense Holgrave was right in giving more credence to the camera image than tohis own eyes, for the image would survive the subject, and become theremembered reality. William M. Ivins, Jr. said �at any given moment the acceptedreport of an event is of greater importance than the event, for what we think aboutand act upon is the symbolic report and not the concrete event itself.�6 He alsosaid: �The nineteenth century began by believing that what was reasonable wastrue and it would end up by believing that what it saw a photograph of was true.�7

The Detail
The photographer was tied to the facts of things, and it was his problem to forcethe facts to tell the truth. He could not, outside the studio, pose the truth, he couldonly record it as he found it, and it was found in nature in a fragmented andunexplained form�not as a story, but as scattered and suggestive clues. Thephotographer could not assemble these clues into a coherent narrative, he couldonly isolate the fragment, document it, and by so doing claim for it some specialsignificance, a meaning which went beyond simple description. The compellingclarity with which a photograph recorded the trivial suggested that the subject hadnever before been properly seen, that it was in fact perhaps not trivial, but filledwith undiscovered meaning. If photographs could not be read as stories, they couldbe read as symbols.

The decline of narrative painting in the past century has been ascribed in large partto the rise of photography, which �relieved� the painter of the necessity of storytelling. This is curious, since photography has never been successful at narrative. Ithas in fact seldom attempted it. The elaborate nineteenth century montages ofRobinson and Rejlander, laboriously pieced together from several posed negatives,attempted to tell stories, but these works were recognized in their own time aspretentious failures In the early days of the picture magazines the attempt wasmade to achieve narrative through photographic sequences, but the superficialcoherence of these stories was generally achieved at the expense of photographicdiscovery. The heroic documentation of the American Civil War by the Bradygroup, and the incomparably larger photographic record of the Second World War,have this in common: neither explained, without extensive captioning, what washappening. The function of these pictures was not to make the story clear, it was tomake it real. The great war photographer Robert Capa expressed both the narrativepoverty and the symbolic power of photography when he said, �If your picturesaren�t good enough you�re not close enough.�

The Frame
Since the photographer�s picture was not conceived but selected, his subject wasnever truly discrete, never wholly self-contained. The edges of his film demarcatedwhat he thought most important, but the subject he had shot was something else; ithad extended in four directions. If the photographer�s frame surrounded twofigures, isolating them from the crowd in which they stood, it created a relationshipbetween those two figures that had not existed before.The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces aconcentration on the picture edge�the line that separates in from out�and on theshapes that are created by it.
During the first half-century of photography�s lifetime, photographs were printedthe same size as the exposed plate. Since enlarging was generally impractical thephotographer could not change his mind in the darkroom, and decide to use only afragment of his picture, without reducing its size accordingly. If he had purchasedan eight by ten inch plate (or worse, prepared it), had carried it as part of his backbendingload, and had processed it, he was not likely to settle for a picture half thatsize. A sense of simple economy was enough to make the photographer try to fillthe picture to its edges.

The edges of the picture were seldom neat. Parts of figures or buildings or featuresof landscape were truncated, leaving a shape belonging not to the subject, but (ifthe picture was a good one) to the balance, the propriety, of the image. Thephotographer looked at the world as though it were a scroll painting, unrolled fromhand to hand, exhibiting an infinite number of croppings �of compositions�asthe frame moved onwards.

The sense of the picture�s edge as a cropping device is one of the qualities of formthat most interested the inventive painters of the latter nineteenth century. To whatdegree this awareness came from photography, and to what degree from orientalart, is still open to study. However, it is possible that the prevalence of thephotographic image helped prepare the ground for an appreciation of the Japaneseprint, and also that the compositional attitudes of these prints owed much to habitsof seeing which stemmed from the scroll tradition.

Time
There is in fact no such thing as an instantaneous photograph. All photographs aretime exposures of shorter or longer duration, and each describes a discrete parcelof time. This time is always the present. Uniquely in the history of pictures, aphotograph describes only that period of time in which it was made. Photographyalludes to the past and the future only in so far as they exist in the present, the pastthrough its surviving relics, the future through prophecy visible in the present.In the days of slow films and slow lenses, photographs described a time segment ofseveral seconds or more. If the subject moved, images resulted that had never beenseen before: dogs with two heads and a sheaf of tails, faces without features,transparent men, spreading their diluted substance half across the plate. The factthat these pictures were considered (at best) as partial failures is less interestingthan the fact that they were produced in quantity; they were familiar to allphotographers and to all customers who had posed with squirming babies forfamily portraits.
It is surprising that the prevalence of these radical images has not been of interestto art historians. The time-lapse painting of Duchamp and Balla, done before theFirst World War, has been compared to work done by photographers such asEdgerton and Mili, who worked consciously with similar ideas a quarter-centurylater, but the accidental time-lapse photographs of the nineteenth century have beenignored�presumably because they were accidental.

As photographic materials were made more sensitive, and lenses and shutters fasterphotography turned to the exploration of rapidly moving subjects. Just as the eye isincapable of registering the single frames of a motion picture projected on thescreen at the rate of twenty-four per second, so is it incapable of following thepositions of a rapidly moving subject in life. The galloping horse is the classicexample. As lovingly drawn countless thousands of times by Greeks and Egyptiansand Persians and Chinese, and down through all the battle scenes and sportingprints of Christendom the horse ran with four feet extended, like a fugitive from acarousel. Not till Muybridge successfully photographed a galloping horse in 1878was the convention broken. It was this way also with the flight of birds, the play ofmuscles on an athlete�s back, the drape of a pedestrian�s clothing and the fugitiveexpressions of a human face.

Immobilizing these thin slices of time has been a source of continuing fascinationfor the photographer. And while pursuing this experiment he discovered somethingelse: he discovered that there was a pleasure and a beauty in this fragmenting oftime that had little to do with what was happening. It had to do rather with seeingthe momentary patterning of lines and shapes that had been previously concealedwithin the flux of movement. Cartier-Bresson defined his commitment to this newbeauty with the phrase The decisive moment, but the phrase has beenmisunderstood; the thing that happens at the decisive moment is not a dramaticclimax but a visual one. The result is not a story but a picture.

Vantage Point
Much has been said about the clarity of photography, but little has been said aboutits obscurity. And yet it is photography that has taught us to see from theunexpected vantage point, and has shown us pictures that give the sense of thescene, while withholding its narrative meaning. Photographers from necessitychoose from the options available to them, and often this means pictures from theother side of the proscenium showing the actors� backs, pictures from the bird�sview, or the worm�s, or pictures in which the subject is distorted by extremeforeshortening, or by none, or by an unfamiliar pattern of light, or by a seemingambiguity of action or gesture.
Ivins wrote with rare perception of the effect that such pictures had on nineteenthcenturyeyes: �At first the public had talked a great deal about what it calledphotographic distortion� [But] it was not long before men began to thinkphotographically, and thus to see for themselves things that it had previously takenthe photograph to reveal to their astonished and protesting eyes. Just as nature hadonce imitated art, so now it began to imitate the picture made by the camera.�8After a century and a quarter, photography�s ability to challenge and reject ourschematized notions of reality is still fresh. In his monograph on Francis Bacon,Lawrence Alloway speaks of the effect of photography on that painter: �Theevasive nature of his imagery, which is shocking but obscure, like accident oratrocity photographs, is arrived at by using photography�s huge repertory of visualimages� Uncaptioned news photographs, for instance, often appear as momentousand extraordinary� Bacon used this property of photography to subvert the clarityof pose of figures in traditional painting.�9

The influence of photography on modern painters (and on modern writers) hasbeen great and inestimable. It is, strangely, easier to forget that photography hasalso influenced photographers. Not only great pictures by great photographers, butphotography�the great undifferentiated, homogeneous whole of it�has beenteacher, library, and laboratory for those who have consciously used the camera asartists. An artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and simplifyhis sense of the reality of life. For the artist photographer, much of his sense ofreality (where his picture starts) and much of his sense of craft or structure (wherehis picture is completed) are anonymous and untraceable gifts from photographyitself.

The history of photography has been less a journey than a growth. Its movementhas not been linear and consecutive but centrifugal. Photography, and ourunderstanding of it, has spread from a center; it has, by infusion, penetrated ourconsciousness. Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in ourprogressive discovery of it that its history lies.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 21:00

Thoren: May 28, 2008

adnam posted:

For a completely different note, I actually like this guy's guide on reddit, which is quite comprehensive: Finding Great Photography without Instagram which helps you with free inspiration for better technique and inspiration. I started collecting photobooks after this from some of my heroes like Robert Frank and found that to be a great way to learn by copying. Some of the ad agencies online release full collections of high-res photos from recent projects and they're both free and great. I hope it helps, of course nothing replaces instruction but I have the attention of a gnat and no free time to enroll properly

Thanks. This should be useful.

I actually just looked through "The Americans" for the first time recently. The photos are novel as a window into American history, and they certainly work as a collection, but I don't feel as consistently 'wowed' as I do with some other photographers. Would you mind sharing what makes him one of your heroes?

# ? Jan 4, 2023 21:53

bellows lugosi: Aug 9, 2003

from American Photography and the American Dream by james guimond, via american suburb x

quote:

All the 1950�s signs of democracy, prosperity, popular culture, and success are in The Americans � the flags, cars, jukeboxes, cowboys, teenagers on dates, motorcycles, television sets, political conventions, movie and television actresses. Seen in �real life,� however, through the lens of Frank�s Leica, without the flattering techniques and selectivity of the picture magazines, these icons of the American national identity all seem disappointing or debased. Cowboys in the mass media during the 1950�s, for example, were still rugged, masterful young men whether they were performing in Hollywood movies, posing at rodeos for Life, or working on ranches for Look�s photographers. In The Americans, however, one cowboy stands by himself, a lonely figure under a glaring fluorescent light in a bar in Gallup, New Mexico; a rodeo cowboy leans against a trash can on a littered street in New York City; and another rodeo cowboy, seen relatively close up in Detroit, turns out to be an unattractive young man with a bad complexion, who is smoking an ugly cigar.

Frank�s images of automobiles were similarly disrespectful. During the 1950�s, the nation�s well-known �love affair with the automobile� reached orgiastic proportions. Earlier, during the depression and World War II, many Americans were unable to buy cars because they were too poor or because production was severely rationed. During the 1950�s, though, some people could buy all the new cars they wanted, and the automobile companies responded with extravagant public relations and advertising stories. �The Great American Automobile� epitomizes the Great American Dream,� Look told its readers in 1957; �more than any other material possession [it] sets you and the American way of life apart from all the world�s peoples. To their wondering, hungering eyes, your automobile is the symbol of your power, the proof of your prosperity.� Also symbolic were the annual General Motors �Motorama� exhibits � photographed in 1953 by Dennis Stock for Magnum � in which bands of awed consumers stared worshipfully at floodlit, futuristic �dream cars� like pilgrims visiting a shrine or cathedral.

The 1950 Ford Business Coupe Frank used on his Guggenheim tour did not fit this iconic stereotype very well � it was already five years old when he bought it � and neither do his pictures of automobiles in The Americans. Throughout the book, he showed automobiles associated with people and scenes that would never have been allowed to appear anywhere near the �new models� in advertisements and pictures magazines. In this image of the General Motors �Motorama� exhibit, he photographed three rich children sitting in one of the model cars, their faces already hardened by precocious boredom and arrogance. In Butte, Montana, he photographed a slovenly, middle-aged woman in her car with a sullen child staring out of the window behind her. He showed a bench full of decrepit old people in St. Petersburg, Florida, staring at nothing in particular while a shiny new Pontiac whizzed by on the street behind them. In a public park in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he made a wonderful parody of a pastoral love scene when he photographed teenagers in bathing suits necking and petting in the grass by a parking lot, surrounded by Packards and Buicks glistening in the same afternoon sun that makes the park�s trees seem hazy and romantic in the background.

Frank also used sequences in The Americans to make some very unpleasant connections between automobiles and other realities. The St. Petersburg picture of the old people on the bench, for example, is immediately followed by a picture of a �Covered Car � Long Beach, California.� Following the picture of the old people and the Pontiac, the image of the mysterious, shrouded car suggests that the old people and the Pontiac, the image of the mysterious, shrouded car suggests that the old people are about to die. Then to complete the connection between cars and death, Frank followed the Long Beach picture with one showing the results of a �Car Accident � U.S. 66, between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona�: three men and a woman stand over two corpses shrouded by a blanket or tarpaulin, lying on the shoulder of the road. In the background, a weedy, barren field, a drab ranch-style house, and a few flimsy outbuildings are a bleak vision of death in a wasteland, witnessed by strangers and a passing photographer, as any image in a modern poem, film or novel. Another accident scene, marked by three crosses beside �U.S. 91, Idaho,� is followed by a picture of Detroit autoworkers on a Ford assembly line. Instead of the immaculate, orderly assembly lines in the USIA brochures and the picture magazines, Frank�s is real � blurred, hectic, crowded and grimy. And, since it immediately follows the image of the three crosses, the sequence implies that the workers are dying as they manufacture cars that kill people.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 22:35

Health Services: Feb 27, 2009

Frank's photos say something. They stick with you years after looking at them.

# ? Jan 4, 2023 22:56

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# ? May 19, 2024 19:10

Philthy: Jan 28, 2003; Pillbug

Got Fred Herzog: Modern Color for Christmas, and it's absolutely amazing. The best inspiration for me is just paging through photobooks and getting a feel for what makes a particular photo so good. It helps your muscle memory for framing, I've found.

# ? Jan 5, 2023 00:09

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > General Photography Questions Megathread v4 - Don't Listen to Any of These Freaks

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