On a mountain in Campania

Gah... I love this. Great shot

You are posting such beautiful photos of my country making me jealous:-)......This one is really beautiful.The man sitting under the tree adds mood to the image.Anna

I don't recall HCB ever shooting panos, but this is still a lovely shot -- peaceful and nostalgic even without the title. In fact imo the title interferes with the image, and attempts to over-sentimentalize it. The shot is great without the title -- my favorite I think of all your xpan material on photo.net.

Thanks for your comments above, all.

Kevin, usually I'm prepared to go into my subject matter in detail, but not on this occasion. This man (a stranger we met in a mountain meadow) told us a story that I felt should be kept confidential. I didn't want to reveal any details about him, his occupation or his life history (all of which he revealed to us in broken English) by choosing a more descriptive title. I don't know why he chose to tell us the story that he did, but I do know I'm not going to reveal it. It wasn't shocking or terrifying. It was just private. Hence the title, The Story Teller.

None of which addresses your complaint that the title interferes with the picture. I titled the image so that it would be in keeping with the rest of my pictures here. It was a gesture towards consistency of presentation. This is how they appear when I frame them (if I ever do). I understand that the title is not only distracting to you, but that you see it as too emotional (you could say "pretentious" and I wouldn't object too much). You are correct, of course. But try as I might, I couldn't think of a better one (and I thought about it for some time). I certainly couldn't think of a better one that wouldn't have revealed aspects of his story that, in my judgement, should not be revealed.

Maybe in twenty years... if there's still a photo.net, an internet and I'm still around to reveal more about this man by changing the title (or by that time can remember what the story was all about). I'll be 69 then.This was the picture I took of him (and there were several) that reveals the least about his specific details and the most about his plain goodness of soul.

Anna, the Italian countryside really is beautiful, and contains many beautiful people. It's when they get behind the wheel that I start to shake.

A story of solitude apparently. Very nicely done.

The man appears as part of the landscape, he blends into the truck of the tree, its as if he is a muse. It makes a nice landscape more intriguing.

Tony this is of the highest quality. I can see why you're one of the most highly regarded exhibitors here. I gave a "10" for originality, because I've never seen a portrait done as a landscape.

let's see . . . grass, trees, man, clouds.

 

straighforward . . except for two things.

 

The man's hand casts a shadow the reveals just the barest outline of his face. nice touch, and there's nice detail in the shadow as well. Also the transition from grass to clouds is striking. We must be at a fairly high elevation. Shall we be picky and toss the foreground stick out of the way? No need.

The elevation was about 4,000 feet. Cool, but bracing. He'd started speaking before I noticed the stick, so it was too late to remove it. Don't know whether I would have anyhow (or do you mean PS?).

 

There were more energetic shots than this (hand-waving etc.) but this one seemed to best capture the feel of the place, the marriage of sky, land and a human being perfectly content to be exactly where he was - in time and place.

That was, I think, a great way to put it. What fascinates me about this image is how small the man is in the frame, and yet, what ever is around seems to be all about him - about his thoughts, his being lonely with nature...

I find both the tones and the composition simply perfect, and the pose of the man, which suggests he's thinking, adds tremendously to the image.

Now, about the title... I see a man thinking, I see nobody around him, and he's identified as "The story teller". I personally find the title absolutely brilliant. To me, it takes the picture miles further than it could have gone without it, simply because it raises many questions. Who is he telling a story to ? What story - I'm not asking, Tony, no worries :-) ? What's the relation between his pose and him "telling stories" ?

With these questions, my mind gets to travel further, and after a while I found my own little answer to the last of these questions. He's probably thinking of his next story, lonely, under a tree - finding inspiration in nature... Maybe he's a poet, or an artist. Then, back to the first of these 3 questions: who is he telling a story to ? Maybe to the world, not just to the world of human beings, but to the world per se. The surroundings basically suggesting a very broad world, I'd think that the stories he tells are somehow sent to the Universe and are all about this Universe as well - something art does, I think...

At the end of this tour within the frame, I have to say that this is a very very very romantic picture. I see it as an exchange between Man and His World, where Man receives inspirations from the Universe, transforms them with his thoughts, then releases the result back into the Universe.

This picture, at the end of my personal interpretation, is actually an image about the interraction of Man with His World in the context of all artistic creative process.

Without the title, I am not sure I could have traveled that far. Maybe - but surely the title was a great inspiration for me.

Kudos to the romantic Tony Dummett...:-)

To Ashley Hosten and David Quilty...

 

Ashley and David, it seems you have hit upon an apt description for this photograph: landscape merging with portrait. It took me by surprise and made me ponder (always a good thing), even though I'm the author. It's a wonderful concept, although I'm not sure if the image lives up to it. It has certainly given me much to think about as an idea. Amazing how so few words can convey such a wonderful concept.

 

Marc...

 

Thanks once again for your thoughtful critique. I'm glad you like the title. I had my doubts when I posted the picture and started really worrying when Kevin called me on it. I still have doubts, but your support makes me feel more secure.

 

Hey! If the Japanese can go all introverted about haikuu (5-7-5 syllables), then why can't we navel-gaze about a photograph?

 

Cheers to all who've visited,

 

the Romantic

Tony, I looked many times at your picture before I liked it.( I think you did the same :)) Because at the beginning I was not able to answer the main question - nature (with a figure for scale and mood) or people shot. Gradually I came to the second and I agree with the "portrait in a landscape" definition what is a little strange because the natural viewer's reaction is to be closer to the man and see him better ignoring the woods. But you want him to look both, man and nature. Never mind the nicely done panoramic view the trees are cut in the middle, so I am going to the man again. I think the format selected here is the tool that makes the portrait and (limited) landscape work together. What I see from the photo is that this man is thinking if not suffering. I see the drama in both hands and the face. In moments like this a man wants to be alone, usually in a quiet and soothing place like this ("solitude" was mentioned), and thus the viewer is going to the nature again. Many stories could be speculated - he is a poet fighting for a phrase, he just failed in what he was doing for his whole life, he lost a close friend, he put an end of a marriage (love)...If following the "drama plot" a new title can be easily found, say, "Suffering in Silence" or alike. I have a microscopic remark - the fingers of the man's left hand and the folds of his left trouser leg are looking very much alike, creating for a moment an illusion of hand movement. You could dodge (burn) one of them. Blago

My first reaction to this photo was 'what a terrific landscape.' It reminds me of something I would expect to see from John Sexton - minus the story teller. I like the stones. This is the sort of image I strive for, and I have found that my best landscapes are those that for some reason (intentional or not) include some person or persons to tell the story. A beautiful shot. Although I think you nailed the composition as a panoramic, I am curious as to what was cropped. Again, fantastic image.

This is an interesting picture. I don't know about the title though - the man doesn't stand out as a storyteller.

 

Usually, I like tony's use of the x-pan format, but I don't think the wide format helps this image. I'd crop the right half of the image from just beyond the midground tree to the right of the man on.

This is a full frame, no cropping. I don't often crop photos. Full-frame printing (for want of a better word in these digital days) is a habit I picked up years ago.

The Great Man, Cartier-Bresson, didn't crop. His explanation was quite complicated and high-falutin, but it boiled down to a moralistic point along the lines that the photographer should present the whole scene as he or she saw it, uncut and unedited. This was supposed to be "honesty". I just shrugged my shoulders and did the same, not really understanding the justification. If that's what HCB did, then I'd do it too.

Years later, and many thousands of frames later, I keep up the habit. HCB's argument in favour of full-frame printing can be looked at in several ways. At its crudest, you could say that it involves reflexes, like a simple juggler's or magician's trick; a matter of being "fast on the draw". This view would have candid photography as as much a showbusiness or even a sporting activity as its is a creative one.

The other, more philosophical view, sees a photograph not as a thing of beauty (or otherwise) in itself, but merely proof that the photographer on the day, at the time, was able to "see" the elements of the image in juxtaposition to each other in his or her viewfinder. The actual print is almost an afterthought, given to technicians to finish as if it was less important than the "seeing". When you think of it, photography has been called The Art Of Seeing. Does this mean that photography is the art we produce as a by-product of seeing? Or that "seeing" in itself can be an art?

This last idea, that perhaps the most important thing about a photograph is what the photographer was seeing and thinking at the time of taking the photograph (and not what was actually produced as a print), can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It implies that ideas are enough; that deeds are of lesser weight, as long as the "idea" is sound. I wish I could persuade my bank of this concept, because then all I'd need to do would be to want to pay my mortgage off, to think that it was a good idea, and that would be enough. When I tried this out on them they didn't go for it. So I guess "ideas" aren't enough for the bank. But what about for photography?

When I was walking around Europe last year with a weighty XPan round my neck, struggling with the rangefinder focus mechanism and thus missing most of the great shots I saw, I invented the perfect camera, as an idle thought exercise. It would be a CCD-based device, very small (but very high resolution), that was either implanted into my eyeball or was somehow attached to a pair of spectacles. It would be actuated by some kind of remote release in my pocket... or perhaps just by blinking. The electronics would have to be in a shirt pocket, with just a cable to the optical head. As I turned my head and focussed on various things, so would the camera. With this device, I'd never miss another fleeting smile, or facial nuance. I'd never miss a one in a million arrangement of people and scenery. Finally I'd be free of reflexes, embarassment at getting caught, danger from unwittingly photographing Sicilian mafiosi in the streets, and all the rest of the emotional and physical clutter and baggage collected over a lifetime that goes with this type of photography.

What would be left would be the perfect connection between "the idea" of a photograph and its "realisation". Most (if not all) of the craft would be removed from the procedure, leaving my work as a mind exercise in the main. Comparing the work of several photographers would be an exercise in the evaluation of their Mind's Eyes, not their physical reflexes. In fact, the camera would be as much a window into the soul of the photographer, as it was a window on the world he or she was part of. It would be a two-way interface, unencumbered by physical realities. Where would my ideas of "craft" be then? In a world where craft was gone forever?

I'm sure that one day such a camera will be available (if it isn't already... that guy over there with the big pair of horn-rimmed spectacles might just be the next Cartier-Bresson, out for a jaunt). Until then I am left with what's left of my craftsmanship, plus my eye. We're all in the same boat as photographers. The mind game I choose to play is to leave my serious work uncropped, as an exercise in craft, to go carefully and always prepared to capture what my eye has seen.

Will photography be different when my Perfect Camera is finally manufactured? When images can be recorded without any restraint except those of our own personality? Will consumer happy-snappers go about with their X-ray spectacles grabbing just as "good" an image as the experienced photographer? Will it matter if they do? Will places like Photo.Net still be necessary when equipment is transparent to the photographic process? That's too complicated for me to answer today (hopefully someone else might take up the challenge).

Like it or not, in this day and age we're still encumbered with needing to use the gear necessary to make a high quality picture, suitable not only for viewing on the net, but also for enlargement, framing and presentation in more august surroundings than a web page. We must still use elements of craft. We must still work under physical limitations. A limitation I impose on myself is to leave my work uncropped. It's like the 5-7-5 syllable formation of a haikuu poem, or the ababcdcdefefgg rhyming scheme of a sonnet (although I'm no poet!). It's just something I do.

Maybe a couple of other points should be tabled here, before I finish. I mentioned the Art Of Seeing, unencumbered by equipment. But what of the print? Unless we're technical photographers striving for a 1-to-1 representation of some industrial process, we use impressionistic principles in our printing: a burn here, a dodge there to produce an effect. Unless we have a perfect memory (and have photographed a perfect scene) it is difficult to produce a print without being influenced by our impressions of the scene, our memories of what it was like, and (I would like to suggest) our hopes of what it might have been like. Isn't this another way of the photographer imposing the photographer's "eye" on real life? How far can you go in doing this before the print becomes expressionistic and not just impressionistic? does the question matter at all?

Secondly, when I "designed" my perfect camera, I also had to ask myself this question: "If I got mine before anyone else, would I tell the guys on photo.net about it?"... or would I just make out that I'd honed my craft and my reflexes and was using traditional gear?

Lastly, perhaps the reason why no photograph has ever sold for 50 million dollars is because there is still too much of an element of craft versus "artistry" in it. Would my perfect camera, in liberating us from craft altogether (at least in the origination part of the process) elevate photography to the levels (and monetary rewards) that painting offers its participants? We would have then the combination of an unemcumbered artistic eye, joined to the pure skill and vision of producing a perfect, impressionistic print.

Final note... Blagoy, you're very observant! I did see how the folds of his trousers mimicked the fingers of his hand. I had used a slow shutter speed and thought he'd waved his hand and ruined the shot for me. It's why I'd never printed this picture before now. When I had another look at it (with a more powerful magnifying glass) I saw the truth, that it was an optical illusion. I actually liked it that way. I don't paint out annoying artefacts (for similar reasons as to why I print full-frame), so the trouser creases stay.

This one grabbed and held me. I'd give it tens across the board. Quite apart from the craftsmanship and sense of a story waiting to be told, this photo shows me, just a week before I'm set to leave for Italy, the power that a panorama can have when it's used to make a thoughtful photograph, rather than just because the photographer happens to have this tool in his arsenal.

This Story Teller is a great photo which tells a story without a conclusion. Hopefully, I will be around in 19 years time to read the new caption which will provide the full meaning of the photo.

I have come back to this photo numerous times to read your thoughts on the perfect camera, how it might function, it's impact on the craft and art of photography, etc, etc ..

Just yesterday, I read an article from the New York Times [titled Smile, You're on Candid Cellphone Camera (alternate link)] that made me think of your perfect camera and that maybe the first evolutionary steps are occuring towards its implementation (concealment in this case). Also the article gives some clues as to:

• how photos might be archived and presented to a worldwide audience in a matter of seconds from capture, and
• the heighting of privacy issues surrounding street photography.

Another couple of links (by Pedro Meyer) collected on the matter over the last 6 months include:

• Street Photography
• CAMERA PHONES

Plenty to ponder .. Geoff

PS - I have been trying to work up the courage to take photos of people and not be noticed. The use of a small digital camera sitting on my knee (while seated in the case above) has helped my efforts go unnoticed.

Geoff,

 

I read another article the week before last (October 2003) that Hewlett-Packard had managed to put a CCD chip into.... a set of sunglasses! It's all happening.

 

The perfect camera is one that causes itself to become completely transparent tothe photographic process, leaving only the photographer's imagination as the medium of expression.

Thanks for the lead on the HP technology. Did some quick searchs and found a couple of links:

• Always live, always on (Jul 2003)
• Camera specs take candid snaps (Sep 2003)

Looks like the HP research is moving in a direction that even automates the selection of the decisive moment. Again, privacy seems to be a major concern.