Join the conversation
Subcribe to comment rss feed
Much photography directs the viewer to look at a ‘thing’ – an object, an event etc. Emotional impact tends to burst onto the viewer through the process of realization and recognition of what is being shown. Christopher Thomas’s images work in a different way. They focus on absence rather than presence. Their emotional power seeps rather than bursts onto the...
more
Photography can be a frustrating art form. It delights to pose questions and not to provide answers. Take this eerie image by Kilian Schönberger. Why are these trees bent at the base and straight at the top? What is going on? How and why does a tree grow like this? It seems unnatural, a deformity, a challenge to our usually...
more
Much photography is descriptive in a literal sense. Sharp lenses, high resolution cameras transcribe in great detail and clarity whatever subject the photographer choses. The viewer recognises instantly what is being shown; as a result interpretation is relatively simple. That is not the case with Doug Chinnery’s wonderful moody seascape view above. (Click here for other articles Doug Chinnery has...
more
Abstract photography, which is how I would almost classify this lovely photograph by Michéla Griffith (click here to read previous articles by Michela), engages the viewer in a completely different way from other photographic genres. Unlike a landscape or a portrait there is a momentary hesitation, a second of uncertainty, as we ponder what it is that we are seeing....
more
Back in 1973 John Szarkowski made a comment about photography that has only increased in resonance in recent years: “The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy…” Now...
more
Many photographic images are illustrative. They present the viewer with whatever is in front of the camera. However, photographs are at their most powerful when they tease out an emotional response in the viewer. They go beyond illustration and become evocation. Bruce Percy’s image of a small iceberg on the beach at Jökulsárlón in Iceland is just such a picture....
more
Do you like modern art/photography? Especially abstract modern art…? Or does it frustrate you? Does it feel like the artist is being deliberately obscure, cloaking an image in obfuscation, and then calling it Art! I must admit I can have both reactions… But with this image by Sandy Weir I’m definitely in the former camp. To me this is beautiful,...
more
If our reading of a picture is based on a literal, descriptive level, then the inclusion of a figure in the landscape has a very simple function: it is there to suggest a sense of scale. The figure acts as a basic juxtaposition between a known height/size and the rest of the content of the image. However, if a photograph...
more
Landscape photography is a slight misnomer, in that a large number of landscape photographs have as their subject not land but water. Or at least they take the interaction between water and land as a starting point for their imagery. The juxtaposition of moving, viscous, water and immobile, matt, land helps create tension and flow in the image – a...
more
Photography is always a delicate balance between technique and aesthetics. Think of the debate that swirls around long exposures/Big Stoppers. You either like the effect or hate it. All very Marmite. And a similar discussion is evolving around the manipulation of depth of field (DOF), particularly as tilt and shift lenses seem to become more popular in mainstream DSLR photography,...
more