To read and to understand

When a photograph lies infront of you, you uncounsly read it. You eye is unable to see more than just a tiny spot with full sharpness. So when you see a picture (unless it’s tiny) your eye scans it for certain patterns. Usually those are: foreground before background, light before dark and left before right.

When you check out the picture above, it starts as a seamlessly looking scene inside some sort of train. Then you continue towards the right (and dark) part and it starts getting confusing. Questions arise and confusion starts: How was it possible to take this picture? Are those two pictures in one? What’s the black silhouette on the right half? Where is the photographer? Continue reading “To read and to understand”

Frozen Decisive Instant

Photography inside museums is a strange subject.There are a lot of museums in the world who forbid photography. Sometimes it’s in order to protect the works from people who can’t manage to turn their flashlight off, sometimes it is to protect the authors property rights (why not take a nice picture of that painting on the wall). Is there any point of photographing art in a museum? Continue reading “Frozen Decisive Instant”

A different approach

Most of you have probably been asked to take snapshots on some event. Maybe you took this seriously and tried to create a comprehensive photographic documentation. Let’s say you shot weddings, parties, conventions, presentations… in the end your ordinary audience expects a certain format and type of picture from you. They may recognize that (since you know what you’re doing) your images are “nicer” than the ordinary, but what if you shoot it completely differently? Continue reading “A different approach”

The Human Ingredient

Images with a good composition, often have lines leading towards the corners, tangents gently touching the sides, objects placed by the golden ration and so on… Yet geometrically well composed pictures often lack a certain “something”. This little something that gives a scene it’s uniqueness so that you truly captured a moment in time that could not have been taken a second later or a second before.

Wherein lies that certain something? Well it’s mostly the so called “élément humain” (french) or the humant element/ingredient. Humans are hard to control and that’s why photographers often tend to avoid them. There is barely anything more interesting and at the same time more complicated that human beings in front of a lens, but that’s a whole different subject.

For comparison: this is overall geometrically the same shot but with no interesting elements in it. The original is there for comparison:

Simple Abstract

Abstract photography is a style of it’s own. Many pictures of graphic nature fit into this categorie. Usually we face closeups of objects and settings that we can hardly recognize. This is the point and there is not much else to say. There is not much of a story to tell and in my opinion, the viewer should look at it more like an abstract light painting. Continue reading “Simple Abstract”

Making you wonder

Many times we take pictures in order to tell a story. Most of the times we seek simple an self explanatory situations. Then there is abstract photography which deliberatly shows you something hard to define.

Then there are images shrouded in mystery. Pictures that give no answer and just make you wonder. Who is this guy? What is he doing? Were are we? Why is he dressed like that? How does he look like? The viewer shall find out for himself and create his own story.

Obviously I won’t tell you what is going on. Many art photographers create technically banal images, that show a sureal situation you cannot possibly relate to, because you have never seen something like that. I will eventually dig something up for you.

Not through a Lens but through my Eyes

One way a to tell whether a photograph is really good, is when it puts the spectator right into the scene. Emotion is only transmitted when the image puts you into the story.

This was taken on a last day of a trip to Buenos Aires in Argentina. It was a late afternoon in summer (in february). The hot aire started to cool down. After an excellent argentinian barbeque with friends I lay and relaxed flat out on the juicy and green grass, watching my friends sitting around the pool ahead. I took out my camera and simply took this one picture out of intuition (at minimal aperture) just a couple of centimeters above the ground. Continue reading “Not through a Lens but through my Eyes”