Interrupting Moss posted:

I don't think that would be satire. It's the same thing. The photos are interesting only because of celebrity. Celebrity ACTORS no less, so it becomes even more difficult to ascertain any specific character quality.

Photos of celebrities, especially in "normal" situations, are the worst.

ZoCrowes posted:

One of my biggest interests is Underwater Photography and Norbert Wu just published some photos that he took of his diving in the Antarctic. I've taken some good shots with what I have but this just makes me just want to give it up because I doubt I will ever be this good

ZoCrowes posted:

I teach scuba diving for a living and if I'm not teaching and in the water I have a camera in my hand. I would kick myself if I ran across a whale shark or something like that and did not have my camera in my hands.

Fists Up posted:

Nah. James Nachtwey is

AIIAZNSK8ER posted:

you should take this to the flickr thread. maybe the OP will update with it because its baller.

East Lake posted:

I really love Nick Brandt, have both his books. Medium format B&W wildlife!









You can see more here, or look through all his shots on his website.

East Lake posted:

That guy turn out to be the man of her dreams?

Also I have to ask since I'm a photography newbie but what kind of connections would you need to get in on an internship with a photographer like that?

General Gingersnap posted:

Eli Reed is pretty amazing, he is my photography professor too!

ZoCrowes posted:

Why do you hate fashion and fashion photography?

ZoCrowes posted:

lovely photography is lovely photography. The same can be said for landscape, portraiture, street and so on and so forth.

General Gingersnap posted:

Yes, homeless people have a culture. But presenting a member of that culture in a context saturated with $2,000 over-the-knee boots and $3000 suits is callous and a bit exploitative. Homeless people don't have the luxury of "searching harder" for clothing - in many cases they wear whatever they can get, and if you think that is a fashion statement then you are mistaken. I dont know, as someone who works in fashion, it rubs me the wrong way.

General Gingersnap posted:

oh ok


The difference is that a war photographer's, or any of the other kind you mentioned, (say Nachtwey) mission is to show the conflict to the outside world. Given literally every single other photo of his, I think it is safe to say that Schuman's mission is not to document the plight of the homeless. Im not saying he is a bad guy etc, thats just how I personally interpreted that one photo.

Alright, I am done hijacking the thread. Dont worry about coming across as a jerk, its a discussion, thats what happens with photography!

A5H posted:

What is good about this?

Twenties Superstar posted:

Why?

Twenties Superstar posted:

In pretty much any form of art some dead guy thousands of years ago figured out a bunch of rules that if followed your painting/choral arrangement/whatever is probably going to look or sound pretty good. Photography picked up a lot of these rules from painting and as a result it is, along with painting and music, still taught under the same guidelines because once you know how to make something that looks how you like it then you are pretty much free to do whatever you want whether it be following the rules or breaking them. In this particular photo you point out that the framing is awkward (something that you don't qualify at all) and that the horizontals aren't levelled. I guess I would ask you why that even matters. It's not the worlds most exciting image but I think what the photographer was going for (i.e. this looks pretty cool I'll take a photo of it (more on this later)) is pretty clearly expressed without having the horizontals levelled or with perfect framing (an idea that still perplexes me).

Photography is a unique medium in that you are essentially capturing what you see. The transformation from what is real to an image on a print or on canvas is not nearly as abstracted as it is in painting. As a result you can pretty much take a picture of anything that you run across. It is entirely possible that when this photo was taken the photographer had no idea what exactly about the scene was interesting but after it was printed it becomes extremely clear. Is it a failure on the part of the artist that they didn't know what affected them to take a photo before they took it? I would argue that it isn't because obviously something about the scene was interesting to them. In this case particularly I'm sure that the photographer new what was going on because the person in the photo was very deliberately placed in the frame and the distances from the garage door to the side of the frame is mostly uniform. It's possible that the photo was taken like that because "it looked right" but I don't really see how that informs a lack of intent. Finally the photo was was taken with an instant camera (and that it was scanned to show the borders, including time stamp). I would believe you if you said that whatever interactions the border holds with the frame were unintentional on part of the artist but I think that's it's a fallacy to suggest that the intent of the artist is relevant in a critical analysis of the formal elements of a work. When you are criticizing a work of art you are essentially recreating it in your mind. Each element becomes an abstraction based on your values. Northrop Frye argues in his essays Anatomy of Criticism (admittedly they are about literature but I think they are still relevant here) that the artists intent is only their personal criticism of the work. He uses Shakespeare as an example saying that the bards intent in his writing is completely unknown and it is only by people hundreds of years later "filling in the blanks" that we have come to a group consensus on what Shakespeare was about.

Returning to the original point I would say that one could argue that the fact that this is an instant photo implies a certain off-the-cuffness (corroborated by the time stamp, just a day in the life) and that the sloppy geometry of the image itself is contrasted to the perfect rectangle of the frame. Similarly, the dirty white and grey in the image is contrasted to the perfect whiteness of the border. Was this the original intent of the photographer? Maybe, but probably not. I don't think that it matters in the least because its a cool looking photo that shows something other than what you see every day browsing photo forums and flickr.


It would seem like based on what criticisms you might get online and from the general public that every photo needs to be something exciting (like a sunset over a vast plain or an attractive women or some gnarled old man or something) that looks great because it followed the rules or has some kind of historical relevance. Well I think that's a bad way to think. I see a lot of beauty in banality and feel that there is a lot that can be expressed by it. Most of life is banal and I think the best way to tap into capturing most of life is by tapping into that banality. I choose to do this primarily by taking photos that show the interaction between nature and humanity. Showing how people conform to what is natural and how nature conforms to and is moulded by people. Imaging the strange products and ironies of people in how they live and form the world around themselves is really interesting to me. Most people might see that and think that it's boring and bland because they see that stuff everyday but as a photograph it becomes an expression of the weird things in life that are just accepted as normal.

In my personal life I go to school to study geography which, in its current academic incarnation, is the study of the interactions between people and space. The way that how I think and my approach to photography is, I feel, deeply informed by my field of study.

poopinmymouth posted:

You are telling me you are absolutely befuddled at the idea some of us see (in others) a legitimacy enhancer whenever something was shot on film?

Aidan_702 posted:

Just 'stumbled' across this guy:
http://jonaspeterson.com/wedding/mikey-felicity-wedding-melbourne/

Admittedly I've not seen too many good wedding photos but these absolutely blew me away and also now I want to give up and kill myself

poopinmymouth posted:

So much intense cheese, but the production value is still incredible. Some interesting meta aspects too.

http://www.chanel.com/de_DE/parfum-schonheit/Universe-Coco-Mademoiselle-122461

Pompous Rhombus posted:

Stumbled across this photographer's self-portrait series when I was perusing featured examples on 4ormat. Her other work is also very good.

Pompous Rhombus posted:

Really? Everything is working fine for me (Safari/OS X).


...no good?

rear end is my canvas posted:

http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/tagged/cinemagraph/page/1

tee hee

Reichstag posted:

really enjoy some of the photos in this series: http://austingranger.com/astoria

b0nes posted:

I am not sure if he has been posted before, but I like TJ Scotts photos.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tj_scott/sets/72157605672626680/

atomicthumbs posted:

Demon_Corsair posted:

Stare at it too long or not wear sunglasses and you will damage your eyes?

Thoogsby posted:

Any idea what his setup is like for the two shots you posted? I can't even begin to think about how I would go about doing that.

dorkasaurus_rex posted:

I don't mean to make any waves, but as creative and technically good as those photos are, I still think 365s are very, very lame. I mean, shouldn't your subject be something a little bit more foreign and interesting than your own self?

A5H posted:

Because large format.

decarboxylated posted:

ding ding

A5H posted:

Yeah. I do it quite often.
For certain applications it has an excellent aesthetic.

Reichstag posted:

Some of those photos are alright but there is something I find fundamentally problematic with the concept of the 'flickr-star;' they are instantly recognizable as Flickr Photographers. I think this homogeneity is one of my main problems with the propagation of social media as the avenue of choice for young photographers.
The 365 project is exemplary of this, as it functions primarily as a platform for instant interaction with a fickle and cursory audience. Instead of encouraging contemplation and development it encourages photographers to produce that which gets immediate results in the form of views/favs/comments. This is especially bad in my mind as the social order of flickr/deviantart/most photo forums is to actively discourage criticism. This leaves non-viewing as essentially the only accepted form of dissent. Further, the effect of 'views' as not only a primary motivational factor but a major contributer to popularity and 'discovery' within the social media sphere encourages a flash-recognition mode of photography-reading (ie: people tend to notice and therefore view thumbnails which are composed of bright colors, contrasts, easily cropped to square and seen small, etc.), which in turn seems to lead to increasingly similar work. It's a form of 'individualistic' genericism where stylistic and thematic similarity is writ-large (see the overwhelming popularity of not only self-portrait but specifically sexualized-skinny-white-teen portraiture).

Some better (but not entirely overlapping and not perfect) writing on the subject is in La Pura Vida photo magazine.

This may not be the best thread for this discussion, but I'm not sure where else to have it.

TomR posted:

Thanks a lot. Now I've gone and ordered his book. I hope you're happy.

Sevn posted:

I am loving this lady's work.


the world above by brookeshaden, on Flickr


the wicked dreamers by brookeshaden, on Flickr