Gina O'Leary, 6, hangs out in a newspaper box as she and her bother Robert, 13, wait for their mother to pick them up in front of Aspen Valley Hospital Monday afternoon May 20, 2002.

It's hard to figure out who is more misanthropic, Geoffrey or his detractors. I guess it pays to choose your words carefully here. I have a somewhat similar opinion about photos of people's cats but I don't feel the need to go around telling them not to waste film on cats (well not all the time anyway). I believe his comments had little to do with models or fashion but was an effort to describe the spectrum between the mundane and the much sought-after.

 

I struggle from time to time with the value of taking photos of common subjects and or tourist type shots. Why waste film on a cutesy picture at the zoo, or bother taking the world's worst Yosemite photo? People are a valid a subject just because they are constantly changing and they have a limited life span. Of course, all of this has little to do with the current POW but is an interesting subject for discussion.

 

I have been comparing Paul and Dan's photo.net portfolios and arrived at my personal conclusion that Paul is more of a storyteller while Dan has a more direct style that allows the viewer to form their own interpretation of the subject.

 

One thing I learned hard off the bat from both experience and observation here is that when you post in any forum, be it a construction of shapes and colors, or one of words, that you are making yourself fair game for praise or derision from members across the globe. I half thought Geoff's comment was a calculated effort to start some sort of inflamed debate, which it did, but I don't yet see any of the calculation. He posted a dramatic comment and got a dramatic response.

What I think might not be understood is how challenging it is to make an interesting photograph of something utterly boring and common. In my opinion, it's easiER (note the word: Easy-er) to make a powerful photo of Yosemite, starving natives, erupting volcanoes or half-naked women than it is to make a powerful photo of laundry, or an old shoe, or a piece of crumpled paper. This is a challenge to some photographers, to uncover the extraordinary in the ordinary. Other photographers strive to reveal the extraordinary in the extraordinary, which is with no less honor, but with, again in my opinion, and my experience, a little bit less of a challenge in the creative sense.

This is not to say that photographing anything in my first string of examples is not challenging, because it certainly is, but that the subject matter already has a built in appeal, either of shock or of beauty, and the photographer has to, in a sense, just keep from screwing up as much as make the shot interesting and compelling.

There are several members whose work is focused on water streaks, or concrete walls, stuff like that, while others are turning up photos of stunning vistas, dramatic slices of life, beautiful nudes, etc. Mark Plonsky, for instance, makes bugs look like movie stars. That's what I'm talking about: taking something disgusting, or common, or mundane, and revealing beauty or depth that has been heretofore unnoticed.

Don't you think that is more difficult than revealing the already obvious beauty or appeal of something that is obviously beautiful or appealing?

As for the photonet demi-god, HCB, I thought I saw somewhere that one of his most famous photographs, a vertical image of a man jumping across a pool of rain water, was cropped radically from its original full frame format due to the fact that he photographed through an iron fence, which occluded part of the view.

 

Can someone else verify that, or disprove it? Or make some significant conclusion from it?

I saw a photo of the negative of that photo in a magazine once and it was not cropped at all. I'll try to scan that photo...

Along Geoffrey's line of thinking; I had to bite my lip one day when I was in a doctor's office in Singapore and in that small, cluttered little room was only one photograph, an 8x10 of the doctor sitting at the very desk where she was now sitting. It struck me how odd to put a picture of yourself at your desk right next to yourself at your desk. I got the impression that Geoffrey was saying why bother taking every-day people pictures when all you have to do is go outside if you want to see every-day people. It's 3-D even.

 

For me, although about 90% of what I take is my kids, the argument doesn't mean much, even though these are the most accessible humans in my life, and even though their current state is as always far more improtant than a past state, I do it because I know some day they will be gone or grown up and will become whatever they will be and because I want to capture what I can of the expressions and emotions of the people I love the most, because those moments meant the most to me and defined my family's growth and maturation.

 

I feel that way about many of the kids and families that I work with every day, but I haven't gotten to a point where I feel I can comfortably, respectfully and appropriately photograph families that I meet. I've tried it and it didn't feel right. I can easily see though where a photojournalist can feel an urgency to document in the most professional manner the people of the community they serve, because communities change and mature and it's good to see where you have come from. A community's defining moments can often best be seen in its people's faces. You can generally tell when a photograph of a person is done out of respect, love or admiration or out of a more prurient or poorly thought out interest.

 

I disagree with how you said it Geoffrey, but I think I understand where you are coming from.

 

I don't want to contribute to 'a batlle between'landscape photographers and people photographers beacause I admire both. But Michel Walter last contribution made me post this reaction: Why bother to go out and take photo's of landscapes, even if they are as beautifull as Yosemite park.... 100 years from now, when we are all dead the landscape will (hopefully) be the same as now. But people change all the time. I think photography is making a great contribution to preserve the everyday life facts in history. What is more interesting watching photo's from 1900 with people or with landscapes..... With people off course (see the sales of people photoalbums from that time).

So I think people photography (portraits and street photo's and even photo's from family albums) are very important for our internation history books.

 

I wish I (as a Dutchman) could write more easily in English so I could make my point more clear.

I think it is a great tribute not only to the photographer, but to photo.net as well, as a forum expressing what's so good about the photographic art. The preserving of a so insignificant, momentaneous piece of life imparts an uplifting sensation to our spirit, and shows that photography, as the mirror of life, really turns the instant into the timeless. Congratulations on a truly great photograph, your professionalism allowed you to take full advantage of the luck that the muses bestowed upon you.

How many shots taken of you when you were a kid were candid shots rather than posed? If you have any that were candid, don't you value them more? How do you as a photographer approach people shots? Do you establish a rapport? Do you pose them? Do you shoot from the hip or use something like Ben Shawn's right angle lens that convinces the suspecting subject that you are not shooting at them?

 

People are not the only subjects that change over time. I've never shot halfdome, but isn't it true that a lake which provided a reflection is a lot smaller? How often have you returned to a site expecting to reshoot only to find the subject is gone or significantly altered?

 

It's interesting how the 'aesthetics' rating applies to this POW. If the image with its' clashing colors and distracting background had anything other than poeple as the subjects, we would toss it in a heartbeat. Are their expressions so riveting that we are willing to look away from the less aesthetic aspects of the image?

 

 

Great shot. I gave it a 9 for aesthetics and a 10 for originality. Why? Although it is not "pretty" in the conventional sense, it does contain its own beauty. Besides, not all great photographs are aesthetically pleasing in the traditional sense, but I don't think that we should penalize them in the ratings because of that fact. (Fortunately, the new ratings system will soon free us from such quandaries.)

 

As for other commentary, I am appalled to find that both "shopping" and cropping are now crimes for some visitors. Art is abstraction, not fishing, and a good work is not so much a catch as a creation. Masterful cropping can be a powerful component in realizing the attainment of the desired vision, whether journalistic, artistic, or something else.

 

That said, the distinction between "discovery" and "creation" is not always clear.

To Doug Burgess, I can verify Peter's statement that that photo of HCB of a guy jumping a pool is not cropped. The french magazine called PHOTO, in a special edition on HCB, shows a photo of HCB's lab technician holding the negative of this particular photo, where you can plainly see that it isn't cropped. If it was cropped? So what? Does that make HCB a liar or a sinner?

On HCB, I'll take your word for it on the cropped/not cropped issue. I may be thinking of something, or someone else, and I have no idea where I saw it, or when, although it was in the last year, and I remember it was for a 100 year retrospective, or something. Maybe if one of you finds the scan it will jog my memory. Alzheimer's runs in my family, so I won't be surprised to be wrong.

 

Now, what else was I going to say? Oh, yeah. If he cropped, or not, doesn't, in my opinion, change anything about him at all. But, I have noticed here and there on photo.net that his named is dropped more so than any other of the medium's historical Greats, and always with reverence. Adams gets slammed a good bit of the time, apologized to frequently, HCB is always revered, and the rest of them, well, I rarely come across the names of Weston, or Strand, or Steiglitz, or W. Gene Smith, etc, (except in the titles of the current critque circles). Nothing wrong with this in any way, just a personal and amusing observation from the folders and threads I've visited.

 

We all have our heros and I am just observing how many here seem to have chosen HCB. If this is true, then I would expect it to flavor the character of this site, and therefore be a contributing undercurrent in many of the discussions and controversies through out photonet, and perhaps even be a base point for ratings.

 

??

 

 

Marc: "Adding beauty without modifying reality is, to me, the grandest type of photo-journalism"...

 

Very well said!

 

Bubba....I mean Dennis...or is that bennis? Or Dubba? Apples, potatoes, fibre or fruit, it's all food in the end I guess. Images are all that matter in the visual digestion of film or film-less fodder. I use to dislike negative film for I love the "way on or way off" learning curve of it. Neg film has saved my arse more than a few times. Thanks for showing interest in my work too..:-)

 

Newspaper photo departments can often be a place for ego's to clash and disfunction to set in. I know as I have seen it in the Department before.

After returning from a year away from the paper to travel, I found Paul to be a really cool, easy to work with kind of guy. In a world of fearing for your fun "Artsy-Fartsy" job, we simply have no worries.

Paul would more likely keep the police scanner volume above the 1/2 way mark, while me, below it.

I want to photograph more people than before and want to develop a better feel for it.

Paul has mentioned wanting to do better landscapes.

Aspen is a place that instills inspiration for both. The Aspen Times THE most fun, free and loving place on earth to work. The Aspen Times photo department works in a seamless and non-ego driven way that encourages what Paul reffers to as "Friendly competition".

 

We have just both decided that in light of enjoying our jobs and sharing the results with you all, we will both create a folder that we will upload our favorite photo of the week from the Times. This photo will be replaced with a new one with the old one bieng added to the permanent collection if we see fit.

 

There are many new changes for the better taking place on the site. Many of the complaints that I had are now bieng addressed and it's a happy family again!

 

.....even good ol' Tony Dummet is popping up!

 

db

 

 

I could not believe Victor's comments. How could Victor understand the lives of these children so well from one picture to the point of criticizing our youth and parenting - he knows NOTHING of these kids lives. How would this picture be interpreted if the boy had a slight smirk on his face - it's all in the moment that was shot, but don't make ignorant judgements based on one picture - I have wonderful kids who have great lives, and they too could be photographed as bored at any given time.

"On HCB, I'll take your word for it on the cropped/not cropped issue. I may be thinking of something, or someone else, and I have no idea where I saw it, or when, although it was in the last year, and I remember it was for a 100 year retrospective, or something. Now, what else was I going to say? Oh, yeah. If he cropped, or not, doesn't, in my opinion, change anything about him at all." - Doug Burgess.

Like you, Doug, my memory is a bit blur, but if I remember well, you must have seen the same as I did - and I don't remember where either... But basically, I saw the rest of the image you are refering to, and the actual picture taken by HCB was "indicated" or "drawn" from a larger image. Maybe HCB took a larger shot and it was later cropped indeed or a smart montage based on 2 photos could have been set up by the publisher to show how HCB framed his shot in a given environment. I believe, though I'm not 100% sure, that the second case is the right explanation.

Now, back to the cropping question in general... Of course framing is seeing with a camera. So, theoretically, seeing well is framing well. If your subject isn't moving, what excuses would you have to recrop instead of framing right in the first place ?

If the subject is moving - street photography for example -, you might sometimes not have the time to frame perfectly, so, you'll grab what ever you can, and crop later - or not, up to you... From the purist's point of view, the ideal shot just doesn't need to be cropped, and that's correct. From a practical point of view, you always crop to IMPROVE an image that NEEDS a crop, therefore NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.

Sad thing is... we are not all masters of photography...:-) Which means that our imperfect framing and a little crop to adjust that later is our last chance to get a better image... and we have to make do with it... and by cropping, we learn...

What concerns me a bit more than a recrop is a picture framed too tight, as it is a mistake you can't really correct - whereas framing too large is of course easy to correct and allows crops.

In advertising, many CDs & ADs ask photographers to frame a bit large in many cases, so that they can play around with the appropriate crop that will suit the page design, etc.

In the case of this POW, the photographer explained that the surroundings were distracting elements, and I'm with George Day here, as I feel the image is somehow TOO tight... We really do need, I think, a minimal breathing space, and maybe we would even gain something if we could shoot this at an angle that would let us understand the context - bus stop far, blur, or such. BUT...

Trouble is that this particular subject doesn't seem to really lend itself to so many choices... Move to the side and the left kid's face is gone... May or may NOT be serious, by the way, as long as we keep at least the legs visible...

I am just not sure how much of a distraction the surrounding elements would be. Not very distracting imo, because the subject itself is strong enough to grab the eye, but I reserve my judgement till I see what was around of course...

Basically, this scene doesn't seem to give much freedom to the photographer, but there are still quite a few creative choices available, and I just feel the present shot COULD maybe have benefitted from better choices... Difficult to be sure without seeing the surroundings, but here comes the best part of this thread imo...

Tony Dummett mentionned something quick about the usage of tele-lens for this image, and my best bet would also not have been a tele in this case. Why ? Because it inevitably flattens the image. 2D more than a real 3D... That's maybe something we can learn from HCB indeed: life is 3D, photography 2D, so, to keep an image as fresh as life, it seems (in general of course) more logical to use 3D lenses like 50mm or 35mm or even wider... The 50mm being the human eye, it seems to be the most appropriate for a faithful reproduction of life as we see it.

Trouble is: such lenses would in general give you a background that you might not find great at all. And that's what explains the photographer's decision when shooting this POW... That's why I was hoping to see the surroundings.

As a side note, portraits with tele-lenses might not feel so "alive", but I like them to emphasize an expression or such...

Here, the original impression remains: too tight... But I do feel the need to see images of the surroundings before I can accurately confirm this impression.

I agree with Marc's comments about how life is 3D and not 2D. However, With this moment, the use of 35 or wider lense would've ruined the spontinaity and surprise. I did try to shoot with a wide but the kids were too aware of the camera, I think as a result of the "Aunt Betty" syndrome one of my photo teacher's called it: "Now stand still so I can get a good picture." Sometimes I agree with Marc's comment about it being too tight, then I remember why I like it tight: because the girl's in the box and the boy is hunched over.

In response to the questions Carl Root poses, the situation dictates my approach of shooting. In this case, it was from the hip. I tried to remain discreet but then the kids noticed me and it was all over with. Sometimes I start conversations with my subjects by asking really interesting questions about their lives and they soon relax and I get better photos of them. And then there are the times, grudgingly, I need to set up a portratit because that is what the paper needs.

For the most part, I love taking street photos of people. Real people doing their thing and over the years I've discovered that they really appreciate it.

Thanks go out to everyone for quite the liberating conversation and discussion, especially to Alex for his comments about the muses and to Dennis for compaing the works of Dan and mine. Now you know why we are such a great team. And for cropping. I try to shoot full frame but there are times I need to crop. It usually has never been a big issue with me unless the production crew does it.

As a side note, Here is a photo of Dan and I at our work stations in the photo room. Can you figure out who's who?? These were originally the offices of Climbing Magazine, hence the wall has rock epoxied to it so they could climb it during their breaks. The Aspen Times is such a great place to work.

Dan and me at our work stations.

Great shot in a great place.

...around 11:00am today.... who ever we are. .

 

Paul, don't ya think you should pull that card board kid outta the box now? The circulation guys are getting a bit hacked that they can only fit 15 papers in there....;-).

 

db

Dan reminded me of a friend of mine from Alabama (yes I have at least one) who always insists on calling me "Dubba D" in an accent that is better imagined than described.

 

As a charter member of the Photo.net cropping society, I would like to point out a few things. 1) The viewfinder on my camera does not show the complete image area of the film. 2) When I take my film to the (shudder) one-hour drugstore photolab, they do a strange job of cropping my negatives depending on what size prints I happen to fancy. Sometimes they even print my 35mm night shots as panoramas because they can't figure out how to turn off the automatic frame selection on the processor. It thinks anything black along the edge of the frame means that I own one of those cute cameras that mask out part of the negative. 3) I forgot what number three was because I keep getting interrupted. 4) I can control what is included or excluded from the frame by using photo-editing software, just like I could with my camera if I had a really cool camera.

 

What's all this piffle supposed to mean? It means that if I am lucky enough to get exactly what I wanted or expected, then I don't need to crop. I usually have to crop my photos anyway because I want to print them as 5x7 or 8x10. That just happens to be the size of the frames I can readily buy. Unfortunately those sizes have nothing to do with 35mm film. Cropping is just another tool and as with most tools it can be used or badly abused.

 

I like the workspace photo, I think we should all submit one. Suddenly, patching nail-holes in drywall doesn't look so bad when compared with trying to paint over glued-on rocks. I was thinking you guys should start a photography show on NPR radio similar to Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers (Car Talk). You may have to adopt a Brooklyn accent in order to make it work.

 

ps: (I think) Paul is the solidly built man on the left and Dan is the bobble-head toy on the right.

 

pss: Paul appears to actually be an android and is being recharged by the electric cord coming out of the top of his head. Dan is apparently much too fond of Starbuck's Coffee and is trying wind down by acting as an air circulation unit for the entire building.

 

If you have overactive sweat glands on your palms like me, printing 35mm full frame onto 8x10 paper means you have a "grunge margin" top and bottom of the image space for fingerprints, as well as for pasta sauce and disturbed coffee. This also lessens the chance that the print will be damaged when the dog gets hold of it and starts chewing. If he's a "landscape" orientated dog, you're laughing. If he's a "portrait" dog, well... he's just a bad dog.

According to HCB, the reason he principally used a 50mm lens (sometimes a 35mm) was to force himself to get in closer. It was a self-imposed discipline. It also made focussing a lot easier (set to "4m", f11 for sunshine, f4 for shadows and forget). News photography does not always afford that luxury. You have to grab the picture and get it to press. Although he started Magnum and was regarded as a "reportage" photographer, I think HCB hardly ever had such deadlines, and hence could afford to be extravagant with his idiosyncracies. He was also the boss, so it was unlikely he'd have the editor disagreeing with his creative decisions. Of course HCB wasn't really a photographer, reportage or otherwise. He was a painter who took photographs to pay the rent. The author of this image is a photographer who takes photographs to pay the rent. That's the difference.

Nevertheless, if it was me taking this picture I'd have either given up on it as too hard, given the childrens' vigilance, or maybe might have gone in closer and tried to sneak up on them, or (if they had sussed me out) might have tried to make their reaction in itself the picture. But I wasn't there, and I think you had to be.

For my money, this picture lacks full context, a context that could only be garnered from a wider perspective. The faces are indeed interesting, but not compelling to me personally...not without something else to complete the story.

The thing I really like about this picture is that it didn't originate out of desktop paintbox software. It may have passed through a PC, like a ship in the night (as everything on these pages has to do at some stage), but owes no creative allegience to either Kai's Power Tools or the software sweatshop at Adobe. It is a real photograph, taken by a real photographer: a rare thing indeed... nowadays.

And that concludes tonight's episode of HCB theatre Join us next time as we relive the curse of Tony's ancestor, Shoeless Antonio Dummetti who (sadly) also suffered from an overabundance of perspiration.

Apologies Tony, your humor always brings out the smart-ass in me (which for some reason is never far from the surface). I think it's interesting to note how we each select our role models. Your zealot's view of all things HCB almost sways me to conversion and being reborn as a people photographer.

 

I used to be a zealot, till I saw one of his paintings. He should have stuck with the day job. Funny how we're never happy with the hand God dealt out to us, are we? The kid with the orange hair should have kept away from the botox.

Like you, Dennis, I got the impression too that photo.net is really a huge fan club in disguise for either AA or, more often, HCB. That's OK, although I have (alas!) neither of them on my walls. (I have Pieter Breughel's Tower of Babel there, a fitting late medieval mirror to this forum.) To compensate a bit, I'd like to ask the Photo.net Full Frame Brigade what it thinks of Arnold Newman? He was a painter too by the way. But I have never seen any of his work, so I fear it was in HCB's league.

 

Some of Newman's most famous pictures were shot on 4x5" and significantly cropped afterwards. Like his portrait of Stravinsky leaning on his concert piano or the close-up of Picasso's piercing eye. But these photos were far from the journalistic type of Paul's POW or HCB's street photography. They were meticulously planned, lit and posed. Marc G. said above: "Of course framing is seeing with a camera. So, theoretically, seeing well is framing well. If your subject isn't moving, what excuses would you have to recrop instead of framing right in the first place?"

I can see the validity of this point. But where does this leave Newman, who often drastically reconsidered his choice of framing back in the darkroom? What excuse did he have, apart from his opinion that cropping improved the (already quite nice) original? Well, I'd be interested in your take on this. Oh, and if people are interested, I'd like to show a scan from One Mind's Eye (get that book!) showing his cropping decision in Picasso's case. Can I do this, for educational purposes?

 

Congratulations on POW, Paul! You definitely captured the moment of ultimate boredom. Although to me, the big red-haired kid looks distinctly unhealthy and the framing is indeed a bit tight. Regards,

I remember at one time I was timid taking photographs of people, especially kids. While interning at the Ogden Standard-Examiner, It reached a point I botched an assignment. I had a good tongue lashing and the editor almost fired me. We talked about why I was timid and just told me I need to learn to shoot people, especially kids.

So, in order to cure this, I used a 35mm for one month straight so I could free myself from that timidity. It worked. I became used to people and learned that people like having their foto taken. I now like using a 24mm, getting even closer and still VERY little resistance form the subjects.

I once thought that the fear I felt was the person just not wanting their photo taken but it was in fact, my own fear being projected onto the person. Once I learned that, my fear subsided and now I shoot them in a variety of settings. In doing this, I also learned when to back away, usually you can tell by some form of body language. And sometimes they politely ask. The best part of my job is meeting the everyday people that make this world such a great place to live.

To Jeroen: yo can as long as you give the photographer credit and it is strictly for educational puposes, according the International copyright act of 1977.

I learned to shoot with a square format, but was encouraged to make rectangular prints, so cropping was almost a requirement. Years later, I can go back to some of those square negatives and reinterpret them. I feel that this is not only fun, but it can be an expression of artistic growth, being able to return to an original negative and re-emphasize different things about it that were not important at first, or were not even noticed.

 

I crop in the camera as much as possible, but I also don't worry one bit if I find myself trimming later. Sometimes I allow room for cropping because my subject is not screaming for any particular format. Cropping is a way of seeing, yes, and in some cases I've found it to be a way of seeing over again, of seeing differently after life and/or time has changed my vision.

 

I don't feel that cropping in the camera exclusively makes one photographer better than another. Like our heroes, we also chose some of our limitations and deciding to print our entire negative to the black frame edge to show that our vision was somehow 'complete' is ok, but I don't feel it makes the work, or the photographer superior. The image makes the work superior, not the border. I doubt if anyone would disagree that a crop can make or break an image, but the philosophy of never cropping is in no way the mark of a better photographer, just one who choses more stringent limitations and strives to work within them.