Re: [Leica] What makes a good photo (was: Lee's week four)

[Martin Howard <howard.390@osu.edu>]

Johnny Deadman jotted down the following:

> on 1/25/01 6:58 PM, Martin Howard at howard.390@osu.edu wrote:
> 
>> I do agree and don't agree with this.  I think photography should primarily
>> be visual and not intellectual.
> 
> You mean primarily visual and not primarily intellectual?

Yes.  Sorry for the obfuscation.  Doesn't a * (b + c) = ab + ac hold true
for English? ;)

>> Second, I think two very, very good criteria for a "good" picture are from
>> two very good photographers: HCB and Costa Manos.
>
> 'good' is such a tough word in these contexts.

Why do you think I put in within quotation marks? ;)

> Duke Ellington (I think) said the important thing in music was to know which
> note you were going to play before you played it. It didn't matter HOW LONG
> before you played it you knew you were going to play it...two months or an
> eighteenth of a second. Of course, being perverse, I'd like to throw in a
> little Miles Davis, and say that the really important thing is to know what
> note you're going to play, and then play a different one...

I thought Miles take on it was to know which note you were going to play,
and then *not* play it?

I like both of these -- and they go back to photographic clichés.  Know for
a given situation what the photographic cliché is and then don't to it: do
something different.  At the moment, I'm very much exploring photographic
clichés, conciously taking the unexpected, mundane, unsurprising photograph
so that I get to know it, get to feel it in my gut when I'm confronted with
it.  Then I can start finding ways to break out of the mold.  Like music,
where people practice scales and variations until they can use one structure
to create others.

M.

- -- 
Martin Howard                     |
Visiting Scholar, CSEL, OSU       | Lottery: (n) A tax on people who are
email: howard.390@osu.edu         | bad at maths.
www: http://mvhoward.i.am/        +---------------------------------------