RE: [Leica] I missed it.

["Robert G. Stevens" <robsteve@istar.ca>]

Eric:

I was the originator of this eye contact thread.  To clarify it, it was in
comment to Nathan's Belgium market scenes where some of the pictures just
showed the backs of peoples heads, not people looking off somewhere.  The
exception on this page are the one of the little girl ,Tongeren 10, and the
two boys checking out a find, Waterloo 88C.  It may have been better to say
that the viewer has to connect with the expression of the face in a
photograph.  It matters little whether or not there is eye contact as long
as there is some connection to the viewer.  

http://members.xoom.com/wajsman/belgian.htm

My Noctilux page has some of both eye contact and the subject looking
elsewhere.  For example, Jennifer, Boyd, Bruce and Kim are not looking
directly into the camera and the pictures work.  The Baby picture has the
the little girl staring right at me.  This picture works because of this.
Look at the basket ball picture at the bottom of the page.  It is player
42's expression that makes it. All of these pictures on this page are not
staged.  I just press the shutter relase when I like the composition.  None
of them are posed.  

http://home.istar.ca/~robsteve/photography/Noctilux.htm

As Eric knows, when you have a camera to your face people around just get
used to it and start to relax.  The lack of flash also helps, as they are
not self concience about you taking pictures since there is no flash to
announce that you just took a picture.  This is where Leica excells.  You
can use fast lenses and get decent images where others need flash or faster
more grainey film.  My Basketball shot on the Noctilux page was taken with
E200 pushed to EI 320, while most other photographers were using EI
800-1600 print film.  On my R6 I was using F2 lenses which were still a
stop or more faster than the other photographers lenses.  This still
allowed me to use the EI 320 slide film.

Regards,

Robert


At 08:30 AM 3/31/99 -0600, you wrote:
>
>Maybe the message that started this topic isn't directly related to the 
>direction I'm taking, though. If their goal is to do portraits where there 
>is eye contact, and they are just too shy to approach the subject, then you 
>are right. The picture will be strengthened by eye contact. Some times. I 
>don't think there is a formula, or principal that applies in all 
>situations. I find some portraits, where they are looking off somewhere, 
>are very powerful. That's for portraits. I wasn't talking about portraits. 
>I'm talking about photos of people in the act of being themselves. That's 
>where eye contact kills the photo.
>
>Eric Welch
>St. Joseph, MO
>http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
>