One of the many amazing photos I managed to create last night. When the photographer and the model are on the same page mentally, it seems like everything just works. Talent is great, and looks help too, but for me there is nothing more valuable than someone who understands my vision.
Unlike snapshooters — those who take photos — when you make a photo you have control over your subject. This added control opens up a wealth of new possibilities.
Appearances
Perhaps the most obvious new option is your ability to choose the right look. If your goal is to visualize a hero, for instance, you’ll probably be looking for someone tall and muscular, with friendly facial features. By contrast, portraying a victim will be far easier for someone of a more diminutive stature.
Innocence can represented in a child’s smooth skin, experience in an old person’s wrinkles. Scars tend to make people more imposing. Long hair on a woman can seem matronly, while short hair is playful. Long hair on a man tends to be rebellious, and bald tends to be more intimidating.
Thinner people tend to have very strongly defined features; proper lighting can reveal a whole landscape of muscle, bone, tendons, and veins. Heavier people, on the other hand, tend to have a more smooth shape, with less features.
Special talents
Sometimes the features of the person aren’t as important as what they can do. Do you need someone who can juggle? Someone can can do the splits? Does your idea require someone with great strength, or excellent balance, or the ability to hold still for a long time? While these types of requirement are less common, they do come up when you start taking it upon yourself to make a photo.
Environment
Where you shoot is an equally important part of your subject as who you shoot. The environment has many implications on the feeling of a photo. Synthetic building materials (brick, concrete, steel) tend to make a cold and ominous feeling, whereas more natural settings (consisting of woods, water, grass, flowers) tend to feel more warm and welcome by comparison.
Environment can also create limitations. For instance, you don’t want to shoot tall people inside a typical home, because the space (or focal length of your lens) necessary to fit them into the shot will cause you to catch unwanted details like ceilings and light fixtures. Likewise, most beauty and glamour requires lenses with long focal lengths, which will have you wishing for more working space than what a typical home provides in any of its rooms.
A project that has long sat in the back of my mind as something I want to do, but which never got any attention, is a series of photos based in single-color themes. This weekend, I actually made the first step in that direction, and shot yellow.
One of the aspects of art that has always fascinated me is power of symbols. There is a truly powerful resource out there for artists to tap into, in the form of everyone else’s prior work. Funny isn’t it?
Symbols carry messages with them. They do a large amount of communicating for the artist. And what’s more, symbols have an advantage over words because whereas an opinion expressed in words will lose most of the portion of its audience who disagrees, the use of a symbol resonates just as much with those who agree with it as with those who do not.
Let’s take a look at a few examples of symbols, and consider some of the various thoughts and emotions they can evoke:
When used well, a symbol can take an average idea and make it into a truly powerful image. For instance, imagine the difference between a photo of a man pointing a gun at another man when compared to the same image if the man with the gun is also clinging tightly to his Bible. How much stronger is the emotional connection to the second image?
Similarly, how boring is the typical group photo? Everyone bunched in, arms around one another, all wearing that goofy fake smile. What if everyone posed like Charlie’s Angels? Or Michael Jackson’s Thriller?
What are some possible symbols that could be used to make your photo more interesting? Here are a few ideas…
Charlie’s Angels
Michael Jackson’s Thriller
Raising the flag over Iwo Jima
Lunch atop a skyscraper
Mona Lisa
Gabrielle d’Estrees and one of her sisters
sitting in yoga “lotus” position
the crucifixion
The Last Supper
“Air” Jordan
Michelangelo’s “David”
the Unabomber
The Statue of Liberty
Hopper’s “Nighthawks”
Rocky
A Coke and a smile
Rosie the Riveter
Does something else come to mind that you don’t see listed? Please, feel free to add it in the comments!
So I’m walking back from Home Depot — it’s maybe 10 blocks through the city for me — and as I cross Broadway a man comes from behind me and says “you should find an ash tray, or quit smoking, or something, you loser.”
Well geez, that was pretty hostile. Naturally, I fired back, “hey, go preach to someone who gives a shit, asshole.”
His response? “Hey, screw you, ya loser. Why don’t ya think about that, huh? Think about why I said that to you, ya loser.”
And my silver-tongued response, naturally, was to make all the curious onlookers laugh: “I already know why you said it. Your father was an alcoholic and your mom didn’t hug you enough, and you’re filled with the rage of 45 years of virginity, so the only thing that makes you feel better is calling people names as you pass them on the street. Who’s the loser?”
And yes. People did laugh.
But I did think about it. I did, as he said, think about why he might say that to me. Who knows? Maybe some of my cigarette ashes flew into his eye — that would be unpleasant. Or maybe I didn’t put out my butt all the way and he burned his big, gross, sausage toes on it as he walked by in his stupid looking man-sandals. Who knows? Whatever the case, it was more than coincidence, because he was upset.
What stands out most, however, is that this 40-year-old virgin thought the way to make himself understood was to cuss people out. It’s kinda silly when you think about it, because if he had said, “hey, man, your cigarette ash burned me… you might want to be more careful,” I would have felt sorry and immediately taken the opportunity to apologize and we could have had a semi-pleasant interaction. And moreover, I would have been more careful about whatever it was from that point on, because I’d be concerned for the people around me.
But instead, he never told me what his problem was. All he did was call names and make a fool of himself. And now, every time I’m near that street corner, I’ll be looking for him so I can flick a cigarette butt at him. Mission accomplished, eh douchebag?
So my point is this… anger really doesn’t solve anything. Nevermind the fact that people have more respect for a man who is in control of his emotions… but how about the thought that being calm about expressing his problem might have actually gotten him a better result? I, for one, learned from this experience that it’s important to express myself in a positive, friendly manner the next time I’m inconvenienced by a stranger.
I don’t know what I think is worse, the fact that John McCain’s latest campaign ad has sunken low enough to call Obama the Antichrist, or the fact that there are people out there who are actually buying into this horseshit.
There is so much wrong with this that I don’t know where to start. I suppose a good place to start is Snopes, which points out plainly how much bullshit all the antichrist talk is anyway.
But I’m really mind-blown at the baseness and audacity of such an ad. I mean seriously, people… how can you even call that political? This is the equivalent of campaigning on a message of “elect me because my opponent is clearly better than me, and that makes him evil.” And this from the guy who promised to run a policy-based campaign without attacks. Come on!
Moreover, doesn’t this defy all logic? I mean, if Christians truly believe the horseshit they keep telling each other, then they should welcome the antichrist! I can’t believe I’m even humoring the thought of it, but let’s just go down that road for a minute…
So let’s play along, and assume there actually will be an armageddon, and that we’re near the “end times”, and that the antichrist had just made his appearance. If you really believe in all that bullshit, you should be happy! You should be celebrating! It would signal the beginning of God’s great plan, and you’re going to magically disappear anyway, right?
And wouldn’t it be heresy to vote against him? If he really is the antichrist, wouldn’t a vote against his election be the equivalent of a vote against God’s plan? Wouldn’t it make sense then to say that voting against the antichrist is voting for evil? Because, after all, by working against the master plan, you are actively trying to keep “the devil” in the world and delay its destruction?
Yeah.
So the fact that these religious nut-jobs and assholes are actually biting this bait proves something much bigger: deep down inside, they really don’t believe any of this horseshit either. They’re afraid the world will end, but they don’t really believe they’re going to be spared (or “saved”, as they call it in their cult code language). A vote against a possible antichrist is the equivalent of saying “I want to live — right here on earth — because I’m not sure I really believe in this place called heaven, or my place therein.” And thus the entire religious argument uravels yet again. Funny how that always happens when you follow logic.
Which leads me back around to where I started. I just don’t know which I find more offensive: the hideous depravity of Republican campaign tactics, or the self-deluded masses who are, like sheep, swallowing it up.