[MUSIC] Hello, welcome back. Responding to photographs is one of the most important activities photographer's engage in. Not only do they learn how others see their work, they also get a chance to hear what others think of their works say or mean or review. Overtime, it can add questions to those the photographer asks herself and open up new insights into how the photographs might be seen. It can also illuminate how the photographs get the viewer thinking and what they get the viewer thinking about. There are some simple ways to structure the process to ensure that it's largely fruitful. Asking these three questions in this order goes a long way to creating the most productive interchange between photographer, work and viewers. What techniques were used? What visual elements make up the photograph? How do the elements work together and how is the image composed? We can elaborate on this model and get into a little more detail. When we respond to photographs, either our own or those of others, we can either remember how we made the work or we can imagine how someone else made the work. To start off, hold off on assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the result. Push yourself to being by describing the subject, what you wanted it to be or imagine someone else wanted it to be. Describe the techniques you used. As you remember them or as you imagine somebody else might have used them. Describe important elements of design and how those elements works within the organization or composition of the whole. Evaluate the techniques that were used. Are they affective in achieving what you wanted or you imagine the photographer wanted? Can you imagine ways that techniques could have been used for affectively to convey what was wanted? Evaluate the design elements and their organization. Can you imagine ways other design elements could add to the effectiveness of the photograph? Are the design elements you think could be changed or eliminate it? Can you imagine adding something or changing something, or taking away something about the way the elements are organized into the composition? How do all the aspects of the photograph above contribute to the strength of weaknesses of the subject of the photograph? Then you can turn to other aspects of the photograph. The mood or emotional address, the fantasy or the documentary function. The suggestion of a story or emphasis of a detail, the drama or the mystery. The reflection of some aspect of people or the world, or reality. So in the first phase, we could look at what you could call camera work. We can look at what aspects of the photograph relate to how the photograph was taken. Important terms can guide our response to questions. Exposure. This image shows normal or desired level of exposure on the left. And to the right, you see two other kinds of exposure. The one in the middle is highly underexposed and the one on the right, overexposed. Depth of field will be dealing with in great detail in another segment. Here you see on the left, an image that has a shallow depth of field. Notice that the background is blurry and even the fence post near the subject are also blurry. To the right, you see an image that has a very broad depth of field. Almost everything is in the sharpest possible focus, including the mountains and the clouds very far in the distance. And also, it's important to note the foreground is in focus. So the roof tiles that are nearest the viewer are also in focus. Here, you see two different approaches to light. The one on the left uses only natural light and even then, a very bright, ambient light. The one on the right uses an on camera flash to supplement the lighting that was in the space and you can see that the flash is actually incorporated into the design of the image. In this image, you can see the role played by ISO. And in particular, this is an image, which if you were to blow it up, you would notice has great deal of graininess and all kinds of color artifacts, particularly on the right side of the image, because it was taken with a very high ISO. Another aspect that you can look at in this phase of responding to photographs has to do with the vantage point. So when the left photo is taken from the side of the subject and you're looking over the shoulder of the subject who's looking back at you. This creates a distinctive vantage point for the image. The one in the middle, actually is from very far below and hanging out with those structural steel members, so that it seems like they're not grounded to any kind of physical structure and the one on the right is also a unique image and we'll talk more about that later. The vantage point for that is a semi aerial perspective and it was taken from a tower in a old part of Havana. Another aspect that you can pay attention to has to do with focus. In this case, there's three different kinds of focus or at least two. Notice in the photograph on the left that the foreground is very sharp and in focus at least on the central flower, and almost everything else is blurred, and smoothed out. The one in the middle, the girl running. She is sharply in focus, but the wall against the background is very soft focused and slightly blurred and the image on the right is very much out of focus. Although it seems almost there, but if you look closel, y it actually pretty much completely out of focus. Another aspect that you can pay attention to has to do with framing and it's framing within the frame of the image itself. So sometimes, people call this a frame within the frame. On the left, you see that the silhouette of the window that makes up the image next to the plant actually becomes a kind of second frame within the image. In the middle image, the frame of the window of the subway car acts as this frame within the frame. And in the image on the right, it's the walls and roof of the cave that create a silhouetted frame for the rest of the image. Another aspect that you can pay attention to has to do with the degree of blur if any found in the image or the degree of sharpness in a image, which tries to stop the motion of a moving object or moving phenomenon. On the left, you see a piano player there. There's a blur created by the piano players moving toward the keyboard. In the middle, you see the top of a fountain where the movement of the water has actually been stop by using a fast shutter speed. And to the right similarly, you see that the birds seemed to be stock in the middle of the air when actually they were flying, rather quickly. Because of the high shutter speed, they seemed to be frozen in time and motionless. Finally, we get to a different kind of camera blur most often done intentionally, although sometimes unintentionally and sometimes it's treated as a mistake if the photographer didn't want it. On the left side, actually, it's a compound blur that's created by shooting through a colored glass window into a bar. And in the middle, there's another kind of deliberate blur. And in this case, it's created by a different kind of camera. This was taken was taken with a pinhole camera. And the image on the right, again, has two different kinds of blur and actually several Sharply and focused parts and that's actually shot through the window of a car in the rain at night. Next, we can look at the aspect of the photograph most often refered to with the term composition. We can look at how the elements in the photograph are put together in to a whole. Again, important terms can guide our response and our questions. Form has to do with the overall configuration created by the elements. And on the left you see that there's a knife like shape created by the black silhouette that surrounds all the rest of the image. And in the middle photograph you see similar with these silhouettes that create the shape light part in the middle of the image. And then on the right side, you see a different version of that, where the dark silhouette part is mainly a triangle shape in the middle. Surrounded by other triangle shapes that complete the form, and allow it to look like various kinds of triangles. You can also, in the photograph pay attention to whether it's dealing with a dominant feature or a particularly striking detail. The left, obviously is focused very closely on the eye. And the right, the detail is a compressed and cropped version that emphasizes the structure of a single hand. You can also pay attention to symmetrical or asymmetrical configurations within the photograph. There are different kinds of symmetry, some are called bilateral symmetry when you have a center and then elements alternate off of that center. There's also what's called radial symmetry like the spokes on a wheel, where you have a center and various repeating relationships all around that center. Asymmetry is the converse of symmetry and usually, it has to do either with broken patterns or things that don't seem to fit into a pattern. Or that have patterns that fall apart and disintegrate over the course of moving from one side of the image to the other. On the left, you see a group of trees that are drooping under the weight of an ice storm. And on the right, you see a number of columns in the lights within an airport in Europe. Tone is a special kind of category there are lots of ways to establish tone and we'll be talking about several of them later on in other parts of the course. This particular one has two different kinds of tone. The one on the left is actually synthetically created. The one on the right is a high key image where all the light and all the tones are bright. It's a stairway shot in a town in Portugal. Here you see another aspect that's very important in looking at composition. Generally referred to with the terms line and shape. And so in both of these, you can see horizontal lines, vertical lines, diagonal lines that play an important role in guiding your eye through the image and establishing the overall shape of the forms that are included. The one on the right being the Broad Art Museum and the one on the left being a sculpture within that museum. Similar kinds of things hold true for vertical or horizontal lines that pass through the image, either from corners or from the sides, or the top or the bottom. The one on the left is a photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge. Where 99% of the bridge is invisible due to the fog. The image in the middle is a greenhouse in which vertical and horizontal lines dominate the image. And the one to the right is the same location but shot through the window, and through a skylight. So that you see the somewhat chaotic combination of vertical, horizontal and diagonal beams within the structure. Finally, there's a familiar term and it's a very important term used within photography and the term is perspective. And the one on the left, you're looking straight across a elevate bridge into the mountains in a particular area in Cuba. And the one on the right is actually shot from an airplane in the winter, looking down on farm fields in the Midwest. Negative space is a crucial category, and in each of these images you see it. The one on the left, the negative space is around the door, which is framed in the light. And in the middle, the negative space is the light blue space around the limb of the tree, which pokes out into that space. And on the right, you see kind of experimental light photograph, which is predominantly the negative space of blackness that surrounds those very bright lights erupting across the image. Another aspect of composition is texture. Here, we have three different kinds of texture, the one on the left is the cracking, glistening aspects of mud hole in Arizona. The one in the middle is the side of a house which is being overtaken by vines. The one on the right is wall in a green house which has had water streaming down its side. Another aspect of composition has to do with point of view. The image on the left we talked about before, was shot from a semi aerial perspective from a tower in Havana. The one in the center is shot from extremely close up to a large Arabian horse. And the one on the right is shot slightly from above and almost parallel with the figure who doesn't look at the photographer. And each one of these represents a different kind of point of view for the image. And as was talked about in the other module, none of them represent a quote, normal point of view in that they don't seem to be taken from the angel that we most normally look at from when we're standing. Another aspect of composition is pattern. In this particular one on the left, you see the swirling patterns seem like layers or striae and dirt. The middle one is painted rocks in the northern part of Michigan, which has to do with mineral deposits that stream down the sides of rocks and create incredible vertical patterns. And on the right, you see the interior of a building in Chicago. It's the Derksen Building and it has these incredible concentric circles from the ground that go up several hundred feet to the skylights. And in the final phase of responding to photographs, we can look at the subject matter, the content, the concepts and the meaning. And as before, important terms can guide our response and questions. Looking at some photographs, we can discern if they have a kind of documentary function, either to show a place or people or a time, sometimes they could be historical. Taken from a time period beyond what we remember or even before we were born. And in some cases, they may document important events or important people or at other times it might simply document everyday life, or your house or your backyard. This kind of photograph is sometimes refered to as allegorical. It has to do with whether the photograph seems to evoke some kind of story, or some kind of sense that the image itself is connected to a story that somebody knows or to a plat structure or a dramatic structure that somebody knows. Portrait is a very common category of photographs and a complex category, perhaps one of the most complex in all of photography, since it refers to so many different kinds of projects. Here, you see two different kinds of portraits. There are many, many others, and we could do a whole course on nothing but portraits. Still life is another category which has been used. Many, many different ways and many, many different times. On the left, you see a still life that is a photograph of a vegetable. In the middle, we see a magnolia bloom. And on the right, a swirl in a wooden fence. These are just a few of the many possibilities that you can encounter when looking for still lifes or when thinking of how to create still lifes. In this particular category, the image evokes a kind of metaphor where the visual image suggests a concept or perhaps, a bit of language that the viewer knows. The one on the left, you see a figure digging into the sand and notice that the figure is very much out of on the extreme top edge. This suggests a certain kind of space intention and you could elaborate those things, and the viewer has to figure out in a way what might be suggested by the elements in the photograph doesn't necessarily give that away completely. The one in the center, you see suggests a kind of mood. There's both very sharp elements in the image and blurry discolored kinds of patches. And the one on the right, you see an image of a woman, but also that image of the woman is kind of floating in a night scene that was taken in Cork, Ireland. And again, you have to figure out why did the photographer put these two images together and what did the photographer hope to suggest by putting them together? Another category is called experimental and experimental could refer to the way the photograph was taken using an unusual photographic process or it could refer to the final result, and the quality of the image. Or in some cases, it can actually refer to both. The image on the left was taken by superimposing ten different photographs taken a few seconds apart of the same space. The image in the middle is shot from underneath the hands and you see a repeating pattern of fingers, and this is actually taken with a flatbed scanner. These kinds of images are sometimes called scanner art and the image on the right is a set of long, poled pieces of light and it's actually created by shooting a set of lights and moving the camera very slowly over an extremely long period of time. Sometimes 5 to 15 minutes, usually at night. And this particular one is inverted, so that everything that was bright in the original image is dark and everything that was dark is white. Finally, another category similar to portraits in the sense that it's a very broad category. There are many, many, many different kinds of landscape and many ways of approaching it and it seems to have been almost an inexhaustible source of inspiration for photographers to try and create pieces that could be called landscapes. The one on the left is shot in the desert near Phoenix and the one on the right is in a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico. So as you can see, there are number of categories that have to do with each of these. Camerawork, composition and concepts. All photographers deal with these categories and there are many, many different approaches. And when you're responding to photographs, it is very helpful to go through these categories. And as I said to start off by trying to not get so much into whether you like or dislike the image or whether you think it's good or bad, which really may or may not be all that helpful to think about. But more importantly, you need to start off by noticing things and trying to hold off thinking about what it might mean or what the larger form might be? What the larger scale questions might be? And to pay attention to detail, look at relationships in a sense to do a kind of inventory of what's there before you start trying to figure out what the meaning of what's there might be. [MUSIC]
