A few trick shots

Found this concept thought provoking in respect to creative opportunities, not necessarily the specifics.

 

How those amazing Instagram shots were created | Daily Mail Online

Interesting and educational to the creative process. A concept does not always just appear. Unless one is seeking street verité It is stagecraft. A good way to experiment is to use a model and play around. And it is fun in your own backyard or driveway. You need the lie down stretched prone exercise at least.

The processes are interesting. The pictures, not so much, IMO. Were I to see most of these pics without knowing about the gimmicks used in their making, they'd be competent but not much more. It strikes me that in some social media circles what should really be a floor often acts as a ceiling.

 

(And, having people lie down and taking their picture to make it seem like they're not doesn't always work because people's features look different when they're lying down and subtle perspective hints often give it away, as is the case with the young woman supposedly standing in the jungle. She's pretty clearly lying on her back even if we don't have the benefit of an article disclosing this to us.)

Edited June 5, 2017 by Norma Desmond

The processes are interesting. The pictures, not so much, IMO. Were I to see most of these pics without knowing about the gimmicks used in their making, they'd be competent but not much more.

 

I think the reason is, most of these pics serve as examples of commercial photography, whose purpose is the same as in advertisements, flashy, attractive, and improving the rating of the photographer towards the masses. Most of them are pretty formulaic in concept and near perfect in execution.

 

I find some of the 'inside story' pics more interesting than the main ones. I like the last one the best. I suspect some of the spitted out water ended up in the bride's face :D:D

It is the process, and make do I think Sandy was highlighting. Sysiphus (sp) thinks same way, well shoott I may never get over the mark with that fmother of a boulder might as well enjoy the up and dowhn and get some good cardio out of it :). Backgrounds are everywhere is what I have found. People should indeed recline more often. some like it. And outdoors is a perfect place for people pictures no matter where you live. But a little fool the eye is also kind of fun. And part of the craft to try on.

I guess what I was trying to open up, though I dislike the idea of "faking" things is that there might be more than one way to "skin a cat" for the occasional "impossible" photographic situation. ;;-)

It is the process, and make do I think Sandy was highlighting.

Gerry, I think so, too. That's probably why Sandy said, in his OP, "not necessarily the specifics."

 

In any case, regardless of what Sandy may or may not have been highlighting, the article was linked, so I read and I looked. And then I highlighted what I wanted to.

 

Sisyphus (just google for the correct spelling) was crafty but got punished for overdoing it! ;-)

 

I think one can overdo craftiness in a photo by making the craft too obvious where the craft wants to be more subtle. Nothing wrong with good use of craft and craftiness.

 

I love faking things in photos, except when I don't. This means I assess what I'm doing one photo at a time and generally don't approach them all the same way. If faking something would have moral or journalistic implications, I'd likely not do it in those instances.

 

Photography, by its very nature, is a fake to either a very small or a very large degree. But the minute you start compressing the world into a 2-D rendition and the minute you start framing something, leaving out greater context and periphery, you are toying with your viewers.

Ok, not disagreeing with your last statement, Fred. Though I fail to understand some stuff I suspect. - "2-D rendition." Good or bad or just part of the canvas , and how does one avoid same or should we set that as a goal. Is there a process or is it more of a mind set. - context and periphery. i have some trouble imagining examples. Got a few? -Toying with viewers. Suggests falsity or intellectual dishonesty to use an old college term. And importantly for all who try and even recognize they rarely succeeem if the limits are part of the nature of the medium itself ( flatten the world, a map of a globe, selected context and cropping, prejudices and squints both behind the camera and in by the viewer. Who does not get to know intent but must divine intent if one cares)

 

What I am getting at may be how you have opened up the confines of picture-taking to be more generous. To whom? Maybe toying is a word that I misread. Are we not all toying , i.e. limited to confines of the basic visual senses. A larger question I know I know. Seeking definitions we can all narrow down and understand better. Opening up illusion and reality all the time as well, but is that what we all do by intent or not. And sell veneers as photoshop plug ins as well.

"2-D rendition." Good or bad or just part of the canvas , and how does one avoid same

Just part of the canvas. It can't be avoided in a photo. A photo, as we've come to know it, is a two-dimensional object. The world it depicts is not.

Is there a process or is it more of a mind set. - context and periphery. I have some trouble imagining examples. Got a few?

Sure.

 

 

This guy was at one of San Francisco's more naughty-minded street fairs, which used to attract a rather intense crowd and a lot of nudity and even some public sexual activity. He was sitting on a beach chair with a friend and they were both nude from the waste down and masturbating, something I didn't particularly think worth a photo. I gestured to him by way of tacitly getting his permission to take a picture. I assume he thought I was taking a picture of his lewd activity, since he was obviously seeking a little attention by doing that in public. Instead, by leaving out the lower part of his body, I think I got a more interesting portrait of him, just a character shot. Had I included the crowd on the street and his full body, it would have been more documentary or journalistic and, to me at the time, not what I was interested in. I saw character in his face, liked the pipe, and found some fun and ambiguity in the way he was wearing his shirt.

 

There are a million examples, Gerry, though many of them obviously don't include masturbation scenes! Take a picture of a tree with just other trees and shrubs around it and leave out the houses next to the trees and your pic might feel like a nature pic, even though it was taken in a suburban environment, which the viewer will never know about. Take a pic of someone gesturing wildly to some friends down the block, show him without including the friends and get the angles and lighting right, and he could easily look deranged instead of animated to see his friends. And on and on . . .

 

The reason I don't think leaving out the houses near the trees is problematic, even though it's leaving out important context if one were trying to give a more complete picture of the neighborhood, is because our eyes do sometimes focus on the trees and not the forest, so why not allow a photo to do the same. My photos aren't trying to be accurate. They are trying to be insightful. It may not be accurate not to show the houses, but it can focus in on a different visual truth.

Toying with viewers. Suggests falsity or intellectual dishonesty to use an old college term.

I think you're dead wrong here. Filmmakers toy with viewers all the time. They shoot night scenes during the day. They add stuff later that wasn't originally there. They do the dialogue in a studio while making you think the people were saying what they were saying out on the street. None of that is false in an intellectually dishonest way. It's part of MAKING ART. Again, art, photography, movies, painting, sculpture, and lots of other stuff aren't there to be accurate. They're there to be expressive. Again, if you're doing journalism, it's a different story. But that's not what the article was or what we are talking about.

So much of what we choose in our photos is based on a personal view of what is "important" or memorable. When you come down to it, any 'Truth" for me can be a lie for someone else. Back to "To thine own self be true" and do no harm without cause. Hopefully, 'No one (human or animal) was harmed " by my photos!

So 'toying' as you write was not meant even mildly to disparage that crafty part of creating visual illusion in 2-D or even multiple Ds. Why did I even suspect... I get it now. And I look at a photo with an educated eye. I grant myself that. But I enjoy illusion as much as I did Punch and Judy in the Public Gardens or shadow shows of sound and lighnt. So super duper, Fred, Sandy, we are on the same page all three of us. I used to get a kick out of scanning pages of American Cinematographer when the library carried it the magic of DPs.. ( Masturbating Man. Gee. Sounds like a name for a festival even. Just kidding. alooha all got to go) Edited June 6, 2017 by GerrySiegel

Gerry -- no offense, taken as intended. Once in a while, I have to be serious! Aloha!

Fred, Sandy, we are on the same page all three of us.

That may sound all nice and rosy but I don't think it's true. Not that there's anything wrong with not being on the same page. It's part of life. But I prefer to acknowledge our differences rather than paper over them in order to pretend they don't exist so we can move on. Sandy clearly said he dislikes faking things in photos. And I think it's perfectly fine that he feels that way. But I am not only not on that page, I'm not in the same book. Because I think faking things like some of the ideas in the article is a very clever and creative way to make photos, even when it's not necessary. It's just fun, adventurous, and experimental. It also requires an understanding of the relationship between reality and photography and different ways of translating visual relationships into a medium that is built on such things and that can tolerate a fair amount of construction in the service of vision.

Here's an early bit of fakery from me when I was new to photography. The shot was taken in broad daylight, and it seemed to have something but lacked mood and atmosphere. So I did what is classically done in cinema, referred to as "day for night." I took a daylight scene, used all the lighting info that's stored in the file which might not read as well or as cleanly had it been shot at night, in order to create a night scene which offered a mood I thought would be visually and emotionally interesting. It is fakery, pure and simple. And I was thrilled to do it and learn from it and get a result that I felt worked.