Re: [Leica] Squares and sabotage

["Bill Larsen" <ohlen@lightspeed.net>]

BD writes:
|>
|I don't know whose post this was, and therefore whom I'm about to
|insult...BUT...
|
|How can a horizontal portrait be a "cliche" when the vertical, which is how
|99.9% of the world's "portraits" are taken, isn't?
|
|Whether any shot is a cliche depends not on whether it is horizontal or
|vertical, but what it is and what it shows...
|

Well, I kinda know who said what and when.  But my problem is I have never
used Bob's definition of an environmental portrait.  Now I guess I need to
read a lot of books about photography definitions.

I always though that an "environmental portrait" was one where you try to
capture the persona of the subject to the point at which if you leave the
subject out, anyone that knows him would ask why he wasn't in the picture or
might even remember after time that he was in the picture.  I perceived that a
lot of what Ted Grant did in _This is Our Work_ is environmental portraits
linked together with a theme.  A lot of the recently maligned
Cartier-Bresson's work was environmental portraiture.

I guess what I am trying to say that if you do it right, viewers will know who
and what the subject was without necessarily knowing the name of the
person --- you'll have at the least a slice of the subject's life and
personality.

As to format and lens length, that is completely dependent upon what you are
trying to show.  If everything works, you do not have a cliché.  (I should
note that I am not very good at taking environmental portraits --- but as a
genealogy buff, I wish my ancestors had environmental portraits rather than
studio portraits.

Regards, Bill