I really like how the stage lights hit the off-white canvas of Bob's Converse sneakers.
Just for the record, I'll explain my obsession with photographing limbs. I've always held that one can judge (honest, not critical) a person based on how they move their hands, but the imagery side of this really began when I first photographed professional ballroom dancers. The amount of energy flowing through their appendages was so utterly visual that my eyes couldn't help but focus on single parts of motion. If you, as the subject, have the ability to convey your persona, or performing persona, through a few fingers and the photographer has the eye to capture that with one flick of your wrist, I'd say you're both in good company.
Feet don't interest me as much as hands, but I'm easily distracted by bright colors.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
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2 comments:
The Shortcomings of Photographing Limbs
I don’t quite disagree with you completely on the body parts as subject. I used to tend that way as well. Mostly close ups of hands on guitars, drums or whatever the instrument.
However, when looking at the photographs, I always asked myself the same question most did “What are the sums of those parts?” Was there something cool here that I've not relayed because I'm just seeing the guitar pickup and his eyes in the distance? How WAS that show? Energetic, mellow, blah...
I finally reasoned that what I was photographing was inherently more interesting than what I was trying to leave to your imagination, so I started shooting wider and cropping less – again.
Perhaps it’s because I come from the thinking that photography rarely, if ever, reaches art. Unlike painting or sculpture, the existential relationship between us and our subjects is something for which we have no control (save photoshop manipulation). As such, we can craftily light and angle in all the greatest ways. But the guitar or whatever, was there. That's not a debate that I want to have, it's just the way I look at it.
So my point is, (and I know you’re waiting breathlessly for one), is that if we are to photograph the ballerina’s hand in pirouette and not much else, we short change our audience by denying them the beauty of an art, one instant that is ballet.
Instead, we’ve asked them to accept our craftsmanship at framing a hand , or guitar as a replacement for the whole of which we are simultaneously enjoying as art while we shoot.
But I like limbs. They're ever so useful for things like photography.
Cheers.
There are way too many points in this piece that I wish to counter - not for debate's purposes, just simply to probe into the basis of your perception.
As Ansel Adams said, "there are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer."
...and if the viewer doesn't like it, bite me... haha just kidding.
I will say though, that frame is synonymous with art and vision. The VF is your chisel to carve out the angels that have appeared before you in Michaelangelo's stone. You aren't necessarily creating, just seeing in a way that the viewer may not have... and in my case, if the viewer choses to run with me on a particular framing, close or wide, great, if not, perhaps I can interest him/her in some landscapes with the horizon smack in the center.
Haha, and I'm almost just kidding on this one.
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