On Sun, Mar 6, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Bob W p...@web-options.com wrote:
A week or 2 ago there was a brief discussion in which someone - sorry, can't
remember who - suggested the idea of telling a story in 4 photos.
By coincidence I ordered a few weeks ago a book called Serial Photography,
which arrived yesterday. It's by Harald Mante, a photographer whose books
I've mentioned before - Photo Design (my particular favourite) and Colour
Design. This new book is about displaying similar pictures in multiples -
the strapline of the book is 'Using themed images to improve your
photographic skills'. It's full of very interesting ideas and well worth
looking at if you get the chance, with numerous ideas for photographic
practising, like doing your scales on the piano.
I like Harald Mante's books. His pictures are very good but not great - they
are about form more than they are about subject matter, but they can make
you think; they are deceptively simple. But his greatness is as a teacher of
photographic composition.
The great photographers of subject matter, such as HCB, are masters of form
and composition, which they use as tools to show the subject matter in the
most effective way possible, so I think it's very important that
photographers try to understand master these techniques, even if it's only
to reject them, just as painters like Van Gogh and Picasso were trained in
the academic method and went on to reject it.
Where this book differs from the story essay is that the traditional story
essay is narrative, whereas these photographs are not - their effect comes
from the juxtaposition of photographs which are similar, but different
enough not to be repetitive. It would, of course, be possible to construct a
narrative using this technique, for example by some sort of sequence or time
lapse.
http://www.harald-mante.de/
Bob
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Thanks for the suggestion, Bob... I couldn't resist amazon-ing myself
a copy. Looking forward to checking it out.
:)
-c
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