First I would like to say that you have done a very good job with this first batch of photos. There was a lot of information to work through to understand how the class works, and how to make artful photographs, but you all seem to have grasped it.
What I have done is gone through all of your Critique 1 posts and picked out what I think are the best photos, sometimes more than one per person. Then I organized them by content to see if there are any trends. This establishes a continuity within a sequence of photographs. It is not unlike organizing photos for an exhibition. Then I sat down and write up a commentary on how these photographs work and am posting that here so we can all learn from the analysis.
Then I read through all of your Self Evaluations to see what pix you have selected as POW’s and read your evaluation to understand your individual creative processes. You did a great job of commenting on each other’s work. I am only one person here and just one voice. It is really important that you get feedback from your peers because that is where you really get to measure the success of your communication. Your statements are intelligently written. They are evidence of serious study and show an understanding of the principles at hand. I am proud of you.
[Can I ask you here to set the line spacing to 1.5 lines. If all the documents are consistent it makes it that much easier for me to read through them all.]
For the next Critique, you may continue to work in B&W if you wish. If you have something you like that is working for you, please continue to develop that theme. Do not forget or discard any of the things you learned for one Topic when working on the next. Photographic learning is cumulative, where all lessons build on the previous. As long as half your Crit 2 portfolio is Color/ Passion, you may continue investigating any other theme if you think you have something good started. Use whatever tools fit the content best.
[Remember, this upcoming Crit #2 is 2 photos more than the last = 12 + 2 self-ports = 14 photos in all.]
Many people expressed that this was their first experience at shooting seriously. Many also said that they will improve with time, and they are working hard at it now. I think this has been a great beginning, better than many other Photo I First Crits.
Quite a few of you have discovered that one way to use the camera is to capture those little bits of the world that are usually overlooked, the small details that can be quite interesting. There are numerous little quips in your statements that are valuable for all to hear. A lot of these point to a heightened sense of emotion. I am glad that you are willing to share this. These include (in no particular order):
eliciting conflicting emotions… the feeling of being trapped… anonymity, confinement and seclusion… pleasingly aesthetic in their despondency … invasion… urban decay… my yearning to express myself but also my fear of exposing myself… a person alone in a crowded world… makes me stop, think, and photograph what’s going on around me… sharing that sense of intrigue I felt when I discovered all of these things for the first time as a kid… try stepping back from the subject and exploring the space that it’s in… naturally occurring circumstances… I like to capture existing beauty, as it is a reminder that there are still good things in this world…. a shadow or reflection that could enhance the contrast and textures… an escape from reality…
The topic of ‘Making Photographs with Mystery in Black-And-White’ seems to have taken you in a couple of specific directions. Let me go through these photographs with you and examine how they ‘work’ visually.
One main point is that many of you tried to make mysterious photographs by looking closely at particular objects. the weakness was if these were singular objects. What you need to do now is to expand that vision to include multiple objects in an environment. To use some photographic language, this would be content in a context. As someone said above, step back now and include some of the environment for those objects.
The other concern is how the photos direct the viewer’s attention. If there is only one major focal point in a photograph then your viewer’s eye will go to that point and then there’s nowhere else to go, and you lose their interest. Having multiple points of interest in the frame causes the viewer to move around in the world that you have created in that frame and the photograph becomes much more interesting. It enables the viewer to make comparisons between visual elements.
Another step forward is to imbue that environment with ‘feel’. If the subject has a sense of time then you begin talking about events rather than just objects. The introduction of ambience provides the opportunity to have your photographs talk about emotionality. And this moves us from the first discipline, the Physical, to another, the Emotional.
I have a document titled Movement through Multiplicity that I have added to the Smartphone site that talks more about this.
Let’s look at some of these photographs in an organized way:
The first set of photographs are shots of natural subjects. Mother Nature by herself is already a great artist. In the Photo Clichés paper I ask you to not shoot pictures of sculpture, and usually not architecture either, because people, namely artists and architects, have already made the art and if you do not change the subject enough you are basically stealing their image. [This is similar to sampling in the music business.] So when you’re shooting Mother Nature you have to remember that she is an artist and you have to alter the subject matter to such a point that you create your own image from her ‘raw material’. One good way to do this is to get close and study the details. The best show of Ansel Adam’s work was a show that was just details. Those photos were far more interesting than his photos of large vistas of the American Southwest.
You have done that in numerous examples, including some that use pattern, some that use light, some more abstract, some more real, but the most extraordinary photo of this set is a shot by Maria where the top of the frame has leaves that are very close to the camera while the bottom opens up to show a vista of great expanse. This extreme difference is what I’m talking about when I say you should have multiple focal points in your frame.
The next seven, even more abstract, are shot in various situations. Some of them I am not sure at all what’s going on while others I can figure out after a while. Both Lauralea and Alexandra seem to be using reflection as part of their process. And Maria comes back again with her seemingly simple picture of the sofa, but the extreme depth of field created by her closeness makes it intriguing. There is enough space that I can fall into that photograph. Make photographs that invite people into their space!
The next set of seven all use a similar visual device of vertical lines. In the beginning they are more visual and manipulate the way we see the space. Later they provide an obstacle for the viewer to look through. Broke’s shot is beautifully toned, Debora’s is a dark mysterious site.
At the end the series above Rachael K’s tree divides the frame as people move through in the background. She and the other Rachel B. and Alexandra’s shots are only ones in the set that use Cartier–Bresson’s method of tracking people as they move through interesting spaces. These three have proven that these students are reading handouts, looking at slides, and watching videos that I have assigned. (Although it looks like you are all paying attention...) Make photographs that investigate the way people move through spaces, and consequently through time. Find an unusual space or make one unusual by how you frame it. Do not forget about framing the background while you are focusing on the movement in the foreground.
The last frame uses depth of field that distracts us from the tiny figure perched in the middle of the frame. Yikes!
Next we jump outside to a series of photographs that have and interesting environment to them. It is partially in the look of the sky and these shots. But then it drops into darkness and windows and doors and arches all become vehicles for our imagination to travel through. (through which our imagination can travel?)
The Archway in the last photo segues into the curve of the bottom of the mirror frame in the next shot. The mirror contains probably the most interesting portrait of this group, shot by Brooke. This is because it makes us work to find the figure and then work again to identify her, but she never really does become clear, perpetuating the mystery. This is followed by a nice set of self-portraits, each working in it’s own way.
I am not quite sure how that last one by David is working. I think it might be a picture that has been painted over and not quite a straight photograph, but it sure does make me wonder what’s going on. [I found out later that this is his skateboard!] This brings me to two shots by Rachel Burkey that include her feet as the entry point into a peculiar space. Feet do not really qualify as self-portraiture but they do make me assume her point of view and ponder what she is going to do next. Jump, anyone? I can’t tell how far down the right side space really goes, but the left side sets up an expectation of depth. (I could see this becoming the beginning of a collection that can run throughout the semester...)
[I took this opportunity to combine these two photographs into what I call a Duplet. (note: the correct art term is diptych, but since I am also a musician, and a duplet is 2 notes in the space of one, I though I would borrow the term.)]
[note: pictures of your feet are NOT self-portraits! We need some portion of your head, even if not recognizable.]
From here we get at the series of photographs that are more visual than anything else, creating abstract patterns from what could be common everyday objects and spaces. But we never really know for sure.
[I have an ongoing question: how can one convey meaning through abstraction? This is because I am a photographer and photos have an inherent connection to the referent. I keep asking the painting people at Tyler but have yet to get a good answer.]
The final shot again by David is an interesting one. I would generally caution you against using text and an image where that is the defining feature of the photograph. My professor used to say, "If you have to read text to understand a photograph, then the photo is not doing its job." In this case, however, the text complements the scene and his balanced with the environment, making this a successful shot.
[There is a set of examples of ‘Text as Image’ on my set: www.berk-edu.com/RESEARCH/text that run from very simple beautiful visual shots to very complex exquisite poetic images.]
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A note about grading:
Your grade can be assessed by counting how many photographs you have on this post.
If you have just 1 then you are doing okay but you need more work and better focus. If you have 2, you are doing better. If you have 3 you are doing quite well and if you have 4 you are doing exceptionally well.
This class is just as much about growth as it is about productivity, so fret not.
