The Rule of Thirds

On Friday night, we stopped by the Met for a gallery talk on David's The Death of Socrates. Great lecture. Of interest to photographers: this painting serves as a perfect example of composition using the "rule of thirds."

The basic idea photographers can learn from this: rather than automatically placing the subject dead center of the frame, explore what happens when you place the main subject -- in this case, Socrates face -- at one a point 1/3 from the top of the frame, or 1/3 from the side of the frame, or at the "node" 1/3 from each.

While life will rarely unfold in front of you in perfect composition, thinking of the photographic rectangle of film or digital cameras as divided into three parts is a powerful strategy. For many images, setting up a 2/3 versus 1/3 arrangement creates a much more dynamic composition.

Forever is Opening

Heddy Honigmann's Forever is probably my favorite documentary I've seen in the last year. It will be opening in New York and then the rest of the country in the upcoming weeks. Go and see it.

The New Fall Looks -- in Cameras

A while back I noted Canon's new cameras:

Canon EOS 40D 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III 21.1MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)


Nikon has since announced new cameras also, including:

Nikon D300 DX 12.3MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)


And Sony has followed as well:

Sony Alpha A700 12.24MP Digital SLR Camera (Body Only)

All are amazingly capable, and all are moving toward incredible resolution, great high ISO performance, and other capabilities that surpass what was once possible with film. At the same time other aspects of photography -- from image storage to printing to software -- advance.

Is a sort of photography renaissance moving forward -- or have our ideas been surpassed by our tools?

The Return of Photo Chick

Episode Two of Photo Chick is now online at youtube.com.

Photo Chick, Episode 2

The second episode of the Photo Chick series is posted.

Fashion Week Documentaries

If it turns out you aren't invited to any of the shows in the Bryant Park tents, are there any good documentaries to watch during New York Fashion Week?

Yes, there are. Here are three.

Notebook on Cities and Clothes

Seamless

Unzipped

Gotta Catch 'Em All

I'm always amazed at how many people photograph in museums, and at how they do it.

In the Guggenheim, of course, people want photographs of the building. A good number, though, want photographs of themselves standing near the art. Do they make photo albums, and later flip through them while saying "...and here I am with the Kandinsky..." or do they collect them like sports trading cards?

My paintings: let me show you them.

And So Fashion Week Begins

Every so often I run around the reservoir in Central Park. It's a pleasant loop. There was good weather today, so after I finished two short editing projects and put one of them in the hands of a bicycle messenger and the other in my stack of materials for tomorrow, I went for the run.

On the back stretch, by the West side of the park, I looked up to admire the trees and the usual collection of people. And then I noticed a large umbrella, black outside and silver inside, and a man holding a medium-format camera at waist level. Flash. As I ran on, I saw a model holding one of those poses photographers get out of posing books. Flash.

"No," I thought, "you've got to move her hip forward. You're doing it wrong."

And then I remembered why I hate that sort of thing: even if you're doing it right, you're doing it wrong.

Or Could It Be the Poor Quality of the Product?

Is the Internet killing cinema?

"The Hollywood director, Ridley Scott, warned yesterday that new technology is killing off the big-screen experience. The Oscar-winning County Durham-born movie mogul said mobile phones and computers threatened movie-making on an epic scale.

He insisted that the best way to experience great film was still in a cinema with a big screen and state-of-the art acoustics."

To stories like this I say the same thing I have said to every "we're losing the old way!" story in the last 15 years: let it go.

Let it go. The 35-million-dollar-budget model of filmmaking needs a good thorough killing. More precisely, it needs something better to compete for the same resources. That's the only way art forms have ever developed.

Reflex Redux

The first Labor Day celebration took place in Union Square, and by coincidence we went to Union Square -- on Labor Day.

We stopped into Trader Joe's for a few groceries, and the woman at the check out counter noticed I had a magazine in my hand. I explained I was planning to use it in a photo class to talk about the use of lighting in contemporary fashion photography.

It turned out she was a photographer, and had just finished a year at the school at International Center of Photography. We talked a bit, and it wasn't until about 15 minutes after I left that I realized why she seemed so familiar.

I'm 99% certain she was the woman from this post.

Running and Gunning

I've been discussing and thinking about the theory behind editing run-and-gun footage lately, so I really enjoyed David Bordwell's post on the use of that style in The Bourne Ultimatum and the other Bourne films.

In general, the run-and-gun look says, I’m realer than what you normally see. In the DVD supplement to Supremacy, “Keeping It Real,” the producers claimed that they hired Greengrass because they wanted a “documentary feel” for Bourne’s second outing. Greengrass in turn affirms that he wanted to shoot it “like a live event.” And he justifies it, as directors have been justifying camera flourishes and fast cutting for fifty years, as yielding “energy. When you get it, you get magic.”

The Great Picture

The Great Picture -- now in the Guinness Book of World Records under "World’s Biggest Camera" and "World’s Biggest Photograph" -- is finally going on exhibition.

The image, created by Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada, will show at Pasadena's Art Center College of Design in the South Campus Wind Tunnel, Pasadena, California September 6 through 29, 2007.

There is an opening reception and performance set for Thursday, September 6, 6 - 9 p.m. and an artists’ lecture set for Thursday, September 20, 7 - 9 p.m.

The Great Picture is a history-making gelatin silver photographic image three stories high by eleven stories wide. The $65,000 photograph was made using a shuttered Southern California F-18 jet aircraft hangar transformed into a gigantic camera obscura—the largest camera ever made.

More information is here.

Frugal Reminiscence

There's a new Frugal Traveler up at The New York Times. (I didn't edit this one, though I'm hoping to do some future episodes.) Worth watching anyhow.

A Parallel of Sorts

One of the things the field of photography wrestled with as it became one of the key practices in art was a sort of reaction against professionalism.

That is, if you were a conceptual artist in the 1970s, it was likely you would describe yourself as "an artist using photography" or perhaps a "photo artist" rather than as a photographer. Photographers were interested in craft, and you, as an artist, would have been interested in ideas and the concerns of art. To a degree, since the piece you might create for a museum or gallery was likely about the ideas or evidence photographs held rather than their aesthetic quality, it became common practice to avoid being "slick" -- the photographs should be rough and unpolished, unconcerned with traditional technique.

A trip to the Guggenheim this weekend brought up a related question: as artists use more video in their work -- at times essentially documentary video -- can they have disdain for the "craft" of documentary making? Strangely, this isn't manifesting in a lack of technical quality -- a lot of artists are able to get high definition equipment and show the work on ultra-slick plasma monitors -- but in a disdain for giving the viewer any welcome to the work.

I walk up to the piece -- odds are in the middle and not the beginning -- and I have little clue as to whether it's 3 minutes or 2 hours in length. I have no clues, often, to how the video is related to the rest of the installation. And my hope that the artist might keep the traditional concern of documentary production for "watchability" in mind is quickly abandoned -- shots go on for long, unedited stretches, bad audio combines with unrevealing camera angles, and I struggle to make sense of what I'm seeing.

It's notable that today few artists using photography feel they can present unpolished images. Will artists using video make that same leap? Should they?

New Fall Gig

As I've mentioned on Actualities I've started teaching a video editing class at Bronx Community College. It's been great so far, and I'm looking forward to an enjoyable term.

It's also made me realize I haven't shot enough photographs in The Bronx. While I have visited Stickball Boulevard, I haven't seen most of the borough. I'll see if I can remedy that soon....

And Water is Wet

Enjoyed the Guggenheim's show The Shapes of Space.

Still, I want to be perfectly clear so that future generations don't think we were all fooled: Pipilotti Rist is boring. I know many of my generation and a number of institutions have been fooled, and once fooled can't go back on their investment. It's clear though: her work is boring.

The museum's didactic text claims:

"The work simulates a dimly lit interior cluttered with found objects—retro furnishings, piles of books and magazines, assorted bric-a-brac—seemingly in casual disarray, but in fact carefully arranged by the artist. Videos from hidden projectors are cast onto the surfaces of various static objects, animating them in uncanny ways: on a side table, the artist presses her face against a windowpane; a lamp is lit by a close-up view of the open mouth of a woman standing in the snow; liquor bottles atop a 1950s-era bar glow with tiny films of an athlete and a landscape."

It is worth noting that the way the work simulates a dimly lit interior cluttered with found objects is by being a dimly lit interior with found objects. It is also worth noting that the "hidden" projectors are not. And that the ways of animating the static objects are canny. Also, the piece is not good. Just to be clear.

Ah well, mine is a minority opinion. Next thing you know they'll be showing Tracey Emin in major museums.

Fashion Photography

And while we're on the subject of fashion photography, here's a portfolio I think you may enjoy:

Rodney Smith

As Fall Approaches

It seems half of New York has left the city for one last attempt at Summer vacation.

So on Saturday, we went out and took advantage of the things our neighborhood offers: a good brunch, a walk through the Guggenheim, and coffee and sachertorte at Cafe Sabarsky. The weather keeps hinting about Fall, Fashion Week approaches, and you can sense a transition ahead.

Above: A woman making a self portrait at the Guggenheim, September 1, 2007.

Fashionesque

With New York Fashion Week approaching, here are three photography blogs that take a more-or-less documentary approach to fashion on the street. I think what I admire is that these sites depict the stylized in an unstyled manner: point the camera at the subject, let the interest emerge from that.

The Sartorialist

stpiduko

HEL Looks

New Gig

I've started teaching a video editing class at Bronx Community College. I'm really happy about it -- there's a very good program in place, and it's part of the C.U.N.Y. system.

I'm keeping the old gigs, of course.