Reflection: The Photographer's Eye, John Szarkowski
Our first project in BDS 102 is titled Mapping Time and Space. It asks us to use whatever camera we have a document a concept using strictly your creative eye. No Photoshop, no cropping, no tinkering, no nada.
Then, after printing seventy-five of them at the printer of our choice (Wally World, Walgreens, or the big red Target) we are to combine and create a collage.
The reading assigned for today was to give us non-photo media majors a quick background on the history of photography and a few speedy lessons on the basics so we don't keep chopping people's heads off in our snapshots.
Here are some of the basics this graphics major took away:
Way-back-when photography was a pain in the butt.
In the early 1880's, after the dry plate was invented, the photography process became a whole lot easier, so easy in fact everyday people were beginning to use it. And thus spawned the 'snapshot'.
After this 'spawning' veteran photographers went nuts. They worried that because of the increased accessibility of photography that the art would turn into a hobby. But these talented photographers prevailed.
Cropping/zooming/whatever have you, is a big deal: "If the photographer's frame surrounded two figures, isolating them from the crowd in which they stood, it created a relationship between those two figures that had not existed before."
A photographer learns in 2 ways:
1. From a worker's intimate understanding of his tools and materials
2. From other photographs (David Hockney anyone? http://www.hockneypictures.com)
So, to project numero uno in BDS 102: Here goes nothing.
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