© Jock Sturges

Lines of Beauty and Grace, the photography of Jock Sturges. You can see an interesting interview with the artist here. This interview is associated with a documentary released on DVD about the photographer and entitled "Lines of Beauty and Grace".

I love this title because it is associated with the theory of aesthetics by the painter William Hogarth, as he wrote in a book called "The Analysis of Beauty" [full text online here]. The concept of Lines of Beauty and Grace is just a perfect description of the sense of beauty that the work of Jock Sturges conveys. Smoothness and curved lines, with gradients leading to smooth transitions. Lines of Beauty and Grace.

William Hogarth proposed that the core of "Beauty of Line" in art or nature is not the simple geometry of a straight line or circle, or more elaborated but still simple shapes like the oval, but of curves that progress smoothly from one gradient to another. An example of line of beauty would be a S-shaped line, a geometric figure that excites the attention of the viewer as opposed to simple straight lines, or crossed lines that convey a negative impression to the viewer. Hogarth defined the s-curve as the basis for all great art.

The following excerpt is from the book, Mental Science: A Compendium of Psychology and the History of Philosophy (Classics in Psychology Series) [Ayer Publishing]

"Waving lines are more beautiful that straight lines, because they are more varied; and among the waving lines, there is but one entitled to be called The Line of Beauty, the others bulging too much, and so being gross and clumsy, or straightening too much, and thereby becoming lean and poor. But the most beautiful line is the serpentine line called by Hogarth, the Line of Grace. This is the line drawn once round, from the base to the apex, of a long, slender cone. As contrasted with straight lines, the Lines of Beauty and Grace posses an intrinsic power of pleasing"

The power of pleasing, the power of beauty, this is the intent of the photographic work of Jock Sturges, as he explains in the interview.

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If you want to lose passion for your hobby, just make it your business!

When photography becomes a business ... often times it looses its most appealing attraction, uniqueness and artistic essence.

For most photographers that go into the business of making money with their photography, the initial driver is a personal passion for art, an internal need to express themselves with their photography. Soon after, they face the reality that a business is about the product, and it is about the client and market needs.

Commercial, and editorial photography target "average tastes", and it has become a commodity. Event photography is a commodity as well. Yes, exceptions occur, and some advertisement and magazines take advantage of the artistic aspects of photography. Even some event photographers do great artistic images, although it seems that most use the same "cheesy" photoshop filters and actions. Some great editorial photographers are now exhibiting in fine art galleries, an interesting trend that keeps growing in importance. But, in general, photography has become a commodity.

Anyway, why is this important?

Well, because selling commodities is a hard pill to swallow for people with artistic passion, people that want to be themselves, unique. Many photographers can't handle the idea of creating average pictures to satisfy average tastes just because of the money. They much prefer to sell their "unique" product, no matter if there is only a tiny market for it. Like in any other business, selling to a tiny market is a hard path to follow.

One has the option to explore the fine art market, and sell personal art for money. In fine art, no commodities are allowed, originality is what pays. This is a genuine adventure that I very much appreciate and admire, but often times it becomes a recipe for frustration. After all, what is the proportion of fine art photographers that can make a living selling their work?

So, what are the options for most of the photographers that just want to make the pictures they are passionated about?

One path is quite simple, and actually can be very satisfactory. Keep photography as your hobby, and do it just for pure passion and interest, not for money. This will allow you to keep your artistic essence intact, and you will follow a given path because your emotions drive you there. It will not be about the money, no need to compromise your work because of the money. Your images will just be limited by your own skills, talent, dedication and passion. You, nothing else, nobody else, will set the limit. Perhaps you will even have more time to photograph your personal projects than if you work as a full time professional photographer. Ironic, isn't it.

Photographers are passionated people, and passionated people are passionated not only about one thing, but many. Perhaps an option to consider is to choose to make a living with a passion that offers better opportunities to bring money home, and keep your second passion, photography, alive as a hobby ... to live a passionated life, at full intensity. Your job and your photography. I took this path myself. Circumstances and realities set the trajectory for me. Now I live with passion my job as a scientist and thoroughly enjoy my love for photography.

But, of course, if you are one of the few ones that truly have courage, genuine and unique talent as an artist, I wish you the best to try make your art your daily job. I admire you for trying, and respect you for succeeding.

This post was inspired after reading recently some posts from great emerging photographers that I very much admire and respect, who expressed at their blogs the frustration of the difficult path to make a living and get recognition. It is also inspired after reading an article about stock photography and seeing, "again", the commodities that are being produced by top micro stock earners.

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Mark Hobson, photographer and blogger at "The Landscapist", has written a very interesting post regarding the interplay of words and photography. I love the humorous, but meaningful, finishing of his post.

In a way, the same concept applies to most activities and projects we undertake in life. It is quite revealing how taking a paper, and a pen, and translating thoughts into words can shape our perspective into directions we did not anticipate. Like photography, writing elevates the intensity of the present so we become more aware of what we intend to achieve, why we want so, and how best to get there. As much as a I love spontaneity in photography, purpose is what provides cohesivity, and to find it, sometimes you need to write it.

Words, yes, words. A word that seems to strike terror, fear, and loathing into hearts and minds of most photographers. Even though a picture may be worth 1,000 words, don't ever ask a photographer to write a few about their own pictures. No, not that! Because, as everyone knows, a picture that needs words is a failure. After all, photography is a visual medium.

IMO, the world would be a better place if those who couldn't write a coherent and interesting 1,000 words about their pictures had their cameras wrenched from their hands and smashed into a zillions bits (or a zillion bytes if it's a digital camera). Or, better yet, how about if you couldn't even buy a camera unless you submit 1,000 words about the pictures you intend to make with it. And, oh yeah, one of the rules is that, if you even mention equipment in your 1,000 words, they poke your eyes out.

Of course, even in that perfect world, anyone would be able to buy a 2mp P&S. After all, I am the benevolent one. - Mark Hobson, from "The Landscapist"

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© Matthew Dols

I like the series by Matthew Dols, "Women w Text". Text added as a caption to the image can provide quite a different feel to the understanding and perception of the photograph, and in this series it works beautifully. The other work of Matthew is very interesting as well. He tends to push the image to the extreme of light, with high contrast, extensive use of dark and highlight areas. It works.

Look also at the Work in Progress, very interesting photo-collages. More pictures with text can be seen here.He prints the images in silver gelatin paper, nice. And if you are interested I found that some of the pictures are for sale [quite inexpensive] at Absolutearts.com.

I am writing this journal as though you might read it. I have this desire for you to read this because it's those things that I mean to say, and never do. It's who I feel I really am, but never show.- Matthew Dols

I personally like a lot when the artist blends an interesting caption with an interesting image, like Matthew does. I am not sure why this is not used more often. Mixing words with pictures actually elicits different reactions from the viewer than just looking at either one alone. There is biological basis for a synergy between both visual and language inputs as the neuronal pathways involved in receiving, processing and integrating the information are different but they can cross-over to generate a different emotional reaction when activated simultaneously. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is the image "This Photograph is my Proof" by Duane Michals. I can repeat enough how much I love that image and the caption.
Here it is a challenge for you to consider. Try to use captions in your existing photographic project, and see if you can engage a different response from the viewer. You have nothing to loose, and lots to gain.

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Please note my new e-mail account: miguel@exposurecompensation.com

The gmail account I used for this blog has been deactivated without reason or warning by Google. If you have been trying to contact me in the last 1-2 weeks, my apologies if you did not get a response from me. If you can, please send the e-mail again. To know more about what happened, please read below.

_____________

Yes, it is possible to make lots of money giving away products for free. Indeed, we have become accustomed to the fact that many of the services we use MUST be free, and e-mail services are a genuine example of that. But with free lunches, we can get in trouble ...

In 2007 about 180 billion of e-mails were set every day, or about 2 million every second. Of these about 70% were spam e-mails, and genuine e-mails were sent but just 20-25% of the world population. Doing the math, one can easily understand that companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, with their extremely popular FREE e-mails services, will experience lots of abuse by spammers, hackers and unreasonable users. Their reaction: fight it, hard. Understandable. The problem is that in any fight there are colateral casualties, and I have become one of them.

Few days ago, I found that my gmail account [exposurecompensation@gmail.com] has been deactivated. No questions asked, no reasons explained. Indeed, zero has been the information that Google provided, and null has been the response to my multiple e-mails asking about the situation. Searching the web, I found out some posts from Google technicians explaining that in attempts to fight a new network of spamers they had to deactivate a large number of e-mail accounts and they expected many regular e-mails would be affected as collateral damage. Mine was one of them.

This is quite annoying and I have to send my apologies if any of you tried to contact me, and my excuses if I have difficult to follow up some previous e-mails because I lost many of them.

From now on, I don't use free e-mail services any longer. I will pay for them. At least I will have the chance to get customer service if anything goes bad. Getting the e-mail deactivated without warning does not make it in my book. The perils of having free e-mail ... with Google.

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from Blurb.com

The world of on demand photo-book publishing keeps evolving, with one of the main players here in the USA, Blurb, moving into the right direction. In the coming future they will be launching a new service [they call it B3] tailored to photographers that do care about color managed printing. At this stage the B3 program is still closed to a restricted number of photographers, but it is expected to lunch as a paid service this year. It will be interesting to see how it comes along. They are even considering to use printers with GRACoL certification.Lack of color managed printing has been, in my opinion, the key limitation of the current publishing system followed by Blurb. No color management has meant unreliable printing, with some images coming out very well and others resulting in unacceptable color shifts. When part of a photo book, even few poorly printed images have a very negative impact in the feel of the photo-book, thus my reluctance to use the service as much as I would like to.

Talking about Blurb, they are launching a photo-book competition, "Photography Book Now" where anyone can create and submit a book using their service and win a number of important prices, with the Grand Price being $25,000. The deadline for applications is July 14th 2008, and the rules and submission guidelines are here. It is a good opportunity to get visibility for your work and perhaps even hit a major score with a price.

If you care about copyrights [and you should] for the images that are submitted, it looks to me that the conditions for submission are a reasonable compromise. Copyrights belong to the contestant and the images can be used only by Blurb for advertisement and promotional purposes.

Copyright and all other rights remain those of Contestant and/or any third parties from whom Contestant has obtained permission to use the third party's material(s). Any book or image of the book used by Sponsor shall carry the photographer's credit line. Use may include publication in any Blurb publication or web site. All Contestants understand and agree that any Submission may be used by Sponsor for marketing and promotional purposes including in any media such as exhibitions, print and digital media. All winning Contestants understand that their name, likeness and winning Submission will be used for marketing and promotional purposes including in any media such as publicity, exhibitions, print and digital media. [from the rules of submission]

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© Adress Latif, Reuters.

From the Reuters blog, the story of Pulitzer Price Winner image by Adress Latif, the photo of Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai being shot in Myanmar during the protests in September last year. These are the stories that remind us the difficult circumstances that are faced by reporters around the work while documenting revolts and wars.

I had already locked on my 135mm lens and set my camera shutter speed to 1000, aperture to F/7.1 and ISO at 800. With the camera on manual, I wanted to stop any movement while offering as much depth-of-field as possible. Two minutes later, the shooting started. My eye caught a person flying backwards through the air. Instinctively, I started photographing, capturing four frames of the man on his back. The entry point of the bullet is clear in the first frame, with a soldier in flip flops standing over the man and pointing a rifle. In the second frame, the man is reaching over to try and film. More shots rang out. I flinched before getting off two more frames - one of the man pointing the camera at the soldier, and one of his face contorted in pain. Beyond him, the crowd scattered before the advancing soldier. The whole incident, which went on to reverberate around the world, was over in two seconds.

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© Darin Mickey

Darin Mickey has a photographic style that is intriguing. His work focuses on photo realistic images, with subjects being ordinary people and ordinary places, but they turn to look unusual. The people in his photographs look lifeless, although they are indeed well alive. The people and the street scenes in his images appear artificially frozen, immobile, isolated. I am not sure on the visual clues that convey that feeling. Perhaps it is the lighting, the isolation of the elements in the composition, perhaps the fact that the people never look at the camera. What ever it is, I like it a lot.

A couple of series worth to mention are "on land" and the great "Stuff I Gotta Remember Not To Forget". This last was a photographic recording of Darin's father at work and at home. It is a unique visual story that shows with incredible candor the everyday life of his father while working as a salesman. It is a remarkable work; even when the images look sort of lifeless, they convey humor and tenderness. The work was published as a book by J&L Books.

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"Behind the Gare St. Lazare" by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Why I love looking at photographs?

My first reaction to a question like this is to think about what gets my attention when I first see an image. The response is actually quite simple: quality of the composition, quality of the subject and the quality of the moment. Even if this sounds as a cliché, it is not more than that. Yes, composition includes in itself a large number of important aspects of a photograph but for simplicity I just refer to them as one.

Technically, composition describes the two dimensional mapping of the light reflected by the different objects onto the final photograph. Composition is what makes me look at the image, relates the subject with the context and puts the image in perspective to the purpose of the photograph. Composition refers to the "space" of the image, how the three dimensions of our surroundings are placed within the unnatural perspective of two dimensions. This mapping in two dimensions is what adds a unique quality to the image: a way of seeing, how the photographer looked and saw.

The quality of the subject, is one aspect of the photograph that has large subjective connotations. Not all the subjects are interesting to everyone but, the subjects in the photograph are a critical component affecting the "impact" of the image. The subject/s is often times what drives most of the emotional response from the viewer. Subjects that make me wonder, subjects that make my laugh, subjects that make me cry, will define the "impact" of the photograph, my reaction to it. Make no mistake here, quality of the subject in a photograph does not relate to the importance of the subject within the framework of our cultural rules. A mundane object can be a more interesting subject that a human being in a photograph.

The quality of the moment, is what Henri Cartier-Bresson called "The Decisive Moment". We perceive life as a continuous experience, and by doing so, we rarely see "the decisive moments". Our every day life is an average of unlimited instants. They pass in front of us, and they are left behind our memory before we even realize that they happened. Photography, by being a recording of just one instant, becomes a window to see what we can't see. Like the skillful surgeon, now we have the scalpel [the camera] to dissect time, and to select the moments in life that define the most powerful experience. The quality of the moment has powerful influence in my reaction to the photograph.

After all this writing I realize that I have not answered the question I was analyzing. Why I love looking at photographs?

I love looking at photographs because photography gives me a vision of the world that I would otherwise miss. It is not only about the image itself, it is about the photographer. The images that remain with me, are the images that show a unique perspective of the world, a unique vision that let me see the world with the perspective of another human being. A perspective that I would have never been able to experience myself, and by doing so, it expands my life with your vision. It is this human connection that makes looking at photographs fascinating to me. By experiencing the perspective of the photographer, their vision becomes also my reality and my experience. The two dimensions of the image, multiply the dimensions of my life. And for that I am grateful to all of you, photographers, for seeing what I can't see and for sharing it with the world.

And you, "Why do you love looking at photographs?"

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Often times when I am on the move or doing sports I like to listen to podcasts about a range of topics, including photography. There are several listed in iTunes, but the one I don't miss is The Candid Frame. These are excellent interviews by Perello Ibarionex with a broad range of photographers. The interviews are extremely well conducted, and the discussions focus mostly on the meaning and experience of photography, touching sometimes on the business of photography, but very little on the technical aspects of photography. There, you will also find some recommendations for books and artist referred by the photographers interviewed.

The most recent podcast is an interview with Freeman Patterson, a great photographer and educator, who has written very interesting books on composition including "The Art of Seeing", a great book discussing the art of seeing in photography.

If you know of any other good podcast about art and photography in particular, I would very much appreciate to hear your opinion. It is not easy to find podcasts that are focused on the art of photography rather than the technical aspects of it.

Note: Paul Giguere, from the podcast "Thoughts on Photography" sent me a note about the Photocast Network where you will find affiliated podcasts covering various topics in photography. Thoughts on Photography (www.thoughtsonphotography.com) focuses on the fine art aspects of photography.

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