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[OM] Re: composition and how it changes perceived meaning of a photo

Subject: [OM] Re: composition and how it changes perceived meaning of a photo
From: Winsor Crosby <wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 02 Oct 2005 19:58:11 -0700
I don't think that either of you was going as a journalist to  
document the country, but taking pictures of things you encountered  
that pleased you about the place. I don't think there is any lie of  
omission in that. The goal of travel photography is different.  As a  
viewer of photographs I think you have to take into account the place  
you find the pictures. A traveling friend is going to show you  
pictures of things that made him enthusiastic about his trip. You  
would expect something else from a journalist documenting a stated  
aspect of a country or event.

Interestingly discussion keeps talking about cropping and omission of  
detail that changes the import of the picture. The article also  
included the additional element of a clenched fist that was inserted  
and not in the original. That goes beyond the genteel term of  
omission and  is just falsification and a blatant lie. Photoshop is  
returning us to the era before photography when newspapers were  
illustrated by artists who did what they were told. Just something to  
grab the attention for the article and to match the sense of the  
article.



Winsor
Long Beach, California, USA




On Oct 2, 2005, at 6:52 PM, iddi wrote:

>
> On Sun, 02 Oct 2005 18:34:25 -0700, Andrew Dacey <adacey@xxxxxxxxx>  
> wrote:
> <snipp>
>
>
>> How about a less politically charged example of how we do this?  
>> For my
>> colour photo class that I took in the summer I printed a number of
>> photographs from my travels in Vietnam. My teacher liked my stuff but
>> one criticism he had was that he knew that Vietnam was a very crowded
>> country but that none of my shots conveyed that reality. My shots all
>> portrayed very quiet scenes that seemed very serene and  
>> contemplative.
>> This is a fairly accurate indication of the process I went through  
>> and
>> part of the emotion I was feeling when taking the shots but that is
>> not the reality of what you see 90% of the time in Vietnam. In terms
>> of presenting what Vietnam is like I was only presenting a very small
>> portion of it. By omitting the rest my "lie of omission" is to  
>> suggest
>> that all of Vietnam is like that instead of just a small portion.
>>
>
> I understand perfectly; my photos taken in India two years ago, I  
> made a
> conscious choice not to portray the typical images of poverty. For  
> example:
>
> http://users2.ev1.net/~wesiddiquis/india/pages/trash.html
>
> was taken after a person done looking for food through it. A very  
> strong
> image, but one I was not comfortable with.
>
>
> -- 
> new email address: iddibhai at verizon dot net
> photoblog: http://iddibhai.blogspot.com
> aim:iddibhai | icq:104079359
> dum spiro, spero
>
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