Self-portraiture

Spent a long time today drinking coffee with the camera pointed at me, set to shoot at ten-second intervals. Took some with the 50mm lens and some with the 31mm. Found myself wishing that I had a darker coffee cup and also a smaller coffee cup. The giant Atka mug kept dominating the photos:

f/1.8
1/60
ISO 400
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)

I'm sitting at a counter in front of a south-facing window. It's a clear day, so the light was too strong except when it passed behind the trees. I might like this photo with a smaller, darker mug. I did get a few that I liked:

f/2.0
1/90
ISO 400
50mm lens (~75mm equivalent)

On the one hand, this is a much less silly photo than the previous one. On the other, I think it lacks the element of self-awareness that characterizes good self-portraits. This could have been taken by anyone. It's just mimicking a portrait taken by somebody else. Whereas the top one, with the staring eye, seems more like a self-portrait even though I don't like it as much. I'll just have to keep at it.

Two self-portraits I like:

Lee Friedlander. This one cracks me up. He's intentionally "failed" to hide the camera (its shadow is on the hood), which subverts the entire scene (there's no question that he's not really driving). That's the kind of self-awareness or intentionality I'm talking about. I also like this one because the self-portraits of photographers with their cameras to their eye get tiresome fast. Here's an exception, by Ilse Bing:

Two mirrors, obviously. I like it because the curtain fills in the composition perfectly, and there's something arresting in the way the two iterations of the camera are aimed exactly 90º apart, and the front-on face in one mirror and the perfect profile in the other.

I'll keep at it. Don't think I'll turn in either of the above.

Scott Fortino & the GI showers

Found a book in the library called Institutional. Photographs by Scott Fortino. He is or was a cop in Chicago. The book is filled with interior shots from empty jails, schools, hospitals, etc. Color. Square format. The colors and compositions have an effect like abstract paintings even though the images are entirely concrete:

It's hard to explain why I find these so moving. Details like the camera in the top one and the in-boxes in the bottom one. The screen partly pulled down. Fortino must have done a lot of arranging to make them look so perfect. The spaces look oppressive, but at the same time, like they're waiting to be reoccupied.

I took my own stab at something like this for assignment four, in the men's showers in the basement of the GI. Mine, even if they were good, would lack the impact of Fortino's because my subject is all wrong. But it was a good exercise in trying to make nice compositions out of masses of unattractive squares and rectangles:

f/16
15 sec
ISO100
18-55 zoom at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

f/16
20 sec
ISO 80
18-55 zoom at 18mm (~27mm equivalent)

Kaji thought it was strange that I shot these at such a low ISO. There was no special reason. Lower ISO's are supposed to produce the least noisy images, and I had a tripod and a remote, so I figured, why not?

Street Photography

In my heart, this is all I really want to do. Candid photographs of strangers going about their lives. It's almost always more compelling to me than landscapes or portraits or anything else. Here's Robert Frank:

Daido Moriyama:

Lee Friedlander:


















These three are so different, but all came from this method of capturing natural human moments as intentional compositions. Something that comes out, when you look at a bunch of street photographs by a single artist, is how different they all are. Of course there's a consistent style, but so much is dictated by subjects that are outside the photographer's control. It's visually a very fluid and interesting form, and people just interest me more than anything else.

But how does one do this in Fairbanks. It's not New York. If you go downtown, hardly anyone is walking on the street. You can hear the shutter of a dslr half a block away. Also, people in this town are very private and not unlikely to be violent.

The box stores are where the real activity is, but you have no legal right to shoot inside a business. I still tried it a bit, and nobody complained, but I didn't get anything good. At this point I've shot strangers just enough to realize how demanding it is, looking for opportunities and capturing them in the brief time you have. I think I could try for years without ever getting good. But apart from the difficulty, trying to do it brought home how complicated the ethics are. Take this shot:

f/1.8
1/20
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)


It didn't come out, obviously, but I want to talk about the postures of the man and women. I think anyone looking at it would see a defensive posture in the man and some low-level aggression or threat from the woman. At the very least they appear to be at odds. But nothing could be further from the case. They were talking and laughing, and she happened to be turning when I snapped. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Everyone knows how easy it is to lie or mislead with photographs, and sometimes that's okay. But street photography has a documentary element, and I'm not comfortable with the idea of street photos that appear to show something very different from what I witnessed when I took them.

But there's a more pressing ethical problem. Who is it okay to take pictures of? In a city like Kingston or Honolulu or other places I've lived, everybody walks. In Fairbanks, people tend to walk because they're poor or have other problems. Take this kid:

f/2.0
1/30
ISO 1600
31mm lens (~47mm equivalent)


It would have been easy to walk up closer and get maybe a decent shot. I mean, it's not everyday you see somebody go fetal on Airport Way. Instead I called him over and drove him to his house. So I might not be cut out for this. Would Lee Friedlander have driven the kid to his house? No! Lee Friedlander would have gotten the shot.

Pentti Sammallahti

Wow:

Finnish. Seems to be important. Found him on some tumblr photoblog. He does these fantastic, wide-format winter shots. Usually they're lived-in winter landscapes, not nature photography (not that there's anything wrong with nature photography). But these are photos of people getting through long winters:













Some of his stuff is too perfect-looking. Almost precious:

It's gorgeous, but it doesn't do anything for me. Compare to this:

I love this one. The two roads angling away. Bleak sky. The mass of bare trees. And then this drama unfolding, with the sprinting dog and the raven looking the other way. Also the tire tracks in the snow. This photo does a lot of things with just a few simple elements. I like his grey, almost uniform skies. There's just enough texture in them. Makes me want to try black & white this winter.