Photography and Imaging 2

Michael is bringing up some interesting points in his blog. In response to Matt Stuart's comments about his photography. I think it is difficult in terms of street photography to choose striking images. This point touches on something we talked about in chips as well, which was the ever saturating photography market, with so many consumer cameras and amateur photographers taking street snapshots, the general public begins to see a melding of the same thing over and over. Now on this comment about media literacy i am merely playing devil's advocate. I don't know if Stuart can be considered as being too self critical, because he may understand the importance of the smallest detail in each of his images, and if some small thing is missing the image my fail at what it was intended to do. Street photography as i experienced can be extremely frustrating because it is so uncontrollable, as a photographer you know what details you are trying to frame, but on the street that detail can change in the fraction of a second it takes to expose your negative. You can't change the fact that the cab drove in front of the couple kissing, or whatever else might have happened to completely alter the image you were attempting to capture. So i feel he is a good photographer rather than a lucky guy with a camera and a hell of a lot of film, just because he seems to understand what he needs to do to create compelling images. Now i am going off of michael's quotes of him in making this comment, considering i have never heard him speak.

On the note of your images michael - i have noticed, not only in the work you show in class, but also in the work i have seen in your video and other work that you really have a talent at capturing almost vulnerable moments within the people you are photography, in terms of the informal, on-the-fly type photos. The top two portraits are my favorites of the ones you have shown. Just by the simple fact that they feel real, simple, but very real. I think it might be interesting to see what you could do with this focus if you just took it and ran with it, just seeing what you get. There is a comfort, yet a confrontational feel to them, your subjects are relaxed, yet they are starring directly into the lens with no aversion. I think you should test the waters, so to speak, in that creative pool. Hope this was a useful comment for you, and lets get some more crits going people!!!!

Also if any of you are interested, the photographer named Tim Calver does some really interesting underwater stuff, peter and dennis will probably crucify me for putting this link up, but i will anyway because his imagery of water is helping me conceptualize my project. Click here to check out his sight