Two Cents and a Thousand Words

So maybe now that Yahoo scooped up del.icio.us, I can get gre.gario.us going again.

I’ve been posting a bunch of photos on facebook today, and it’s made me think about my growing interest in photographing people. I’ve always been more of a landscape photographer; I like going places, seeing things, and taking pictures of them. Lately, though, I’ve begun to value taking pictures of my friends (and as a lot of my friends can attest, I can make people very annoyed by always asking for photos).

Photos tell a lot about a person. It seems as though most people stop the analysis of any kind of casual portrait photo at “so THAT’S what s/he looks like” (or “whoa, s/he looks really good/hot/etc.”). What I’ve come to find, though, is that the real value in photographs of people lies beyond the first glance.

You can tell a lot about a person by his or her surroundings, whether it’s people, things, or places. First, there’s a lot of materialism in photographs. Clothing and makeup tells a lot, of course, about a person’s view of looking pristine (you can often tell a model - or someone who would want to be one - by how they wear casual clothing, and the amount of makeup they wear). While some spend an amazing amount of effort to always look “perfect”, others really just don’t care. Often, I find, it’s the people that don’t emphasize their looks that help create the most interesting - and beautiful - photographs.

Another tell-tale sign of personality is the average number of people in a group of pictures. Facebook is a really interesting place to study this; some people take the majority of photos as a single self-portrait. Others have a very large majority of pictures where they are surrounded by three, four, or ten of their friends. (You can also tell a lot about a person by seeing how they interact with their friends, even in the single shutter frames of a photo.)

I really could look at photographs of people all day. I could also talk about photographs of people all day. I should stop.

By the way -

That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been constantly trying to find a common thread in my photography - a single characteristic that defines my primary area of interest. Surprisingly, I’ve found that looking at photography by other people allows me to critique and analyze my own work more easily. I’ve become addicted to Flickr’s wonderful interestingness page, and it’s lead me to build a quickly expanding favorites page. By showing all of these favorite photos on a single screen, it’s fairly easy to notice some commonalities. Take these four wonderful, Creative Commons-licensed pictures, for example:

   

(l-r: “Vincent at the Frozen Foods Aisle” by carlosluis, “Chihiro” by fofurasfelinas, “DSCN0885” by tiswango, “Ambassador Bridge” by redmann)

As it turns out, I have many photographic interests. My classmates in my senior year photography class actually commented that the work I did before the class was much more varied than the norm; most of my peers had specialized in one certain area. For that particular class’s project, I turned to my interest in geometry. Here are some of the common threads I’ve discovered:

• People (especially children) and animals. Emotion is a wonderful thing, and both children and animals are wonderful at expressing it (as a side note, my interest in theatre and dance might be due to the emotion that is expressed in those). Living creatures are just interesting in general, too.
• Geometry. My logical mind seems to recognize and emphasize the interesting geometry around us all every day. My geometric interest is often expressed through pictures of architecture and infrastructure, but it just happens to pop up everywhere.
• Detail. I love texture. Detail allows the viewer to see deeper into the subject if they really examine it; in my mind it leads to a much richer photograph.
• Color. Color is amazing - especially when it happens to be natural. An impressive photo straight out of the camera is especially wonderful to me, and an interesting mix of color tends to make a good picture unforgettable.
• The document. Providing evidence of an event or object is one of the most valuable aspects of photography; the best photojournalistic or documentary photos are able to tell a photo or capture a mood in a single frame.

The combination of two or more of the above characteristics leads to interesting results. Detail combined with people (children) or animals leads to a very apparent sense of intimacy, for example. Is there a single photo that could combine all of the characteristics above?

If there is, you’ll probably find it in my Flickr favorites soon.

How well do you think those five points cover my interests? Check out my Flickr photos, or check out this little site I made.

I love good advertising. Some companies just always seem to come through with the best ads to market their products - and of course, Apple’s on the list. Lately I’ve been hooked on what I think is the best ad they’ve done within the last few years: an old iPod ad with posters, “Ride” by The Vines, and dancing. To me it just encompasses everything great about having an iPod.

Watch it over at the mactv videocast.