Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
High above Mafeteng (C&C)
Options
Comments
-
A very interesting place by the looks of things.
In terms of my opinion on this and it's only that - an opinon (which means there is every possibility i mightn't be right!
),
the composition / framing is weak and would/may need some work.
Having said that it is difficult to tell exactly without understanding exactly what you intended to capture in the image.
From what I see, I think there's a great image behind the hut of the mountains.
From the right hand side of where you were standing there may have been a nice image of the hut. The issue here is the tree is obscuring the hut something major - plonked in the middle (God bless their landscape gardener
).
Is there a little horizon straightening needed?? (i'm not certain there is - although it looks off balance to me, the line below the horizon in the mid left hand side looks reasonably straight).
But the overall point is the composition consisting of the tree in front of the hut in front of what could be an amazing vista, to my eye, doesn't have appeal.
Don't get me wrong - it is a nice memory to have and is i guess as you've seen it. I'm just thinking the composition wise there are a few aspects of it which could do with attention / further thought if you were to take it again.
Hope that helps / gives food for thought.0 -
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
-
-
-
Advertisement
-
-
-
Thanks for the constructive critisism and interesting discussion. Maybe I'll try and respond to keep it going.
The first thing is to suggest that this discussion raises the limitations of displaying photographs in such a space - a discussion board. I accept that I should, perhaps, have included a description of the photo beyond the mostly cryptic thread title. I did think about it but decided to link to the Flickr page instead. I wondered what impact no information might have on the community here. I'll attempt a description now.
The photo was taken in a small village, accessible only off-road, roughly 1,700 metres above sea level in Lesotho's 'Lowlands'. The drive was breathtaking. I went there to accompany a colleague inspect a development project there. The village had, until recently, no running water, no electricity, no sanitation. The people were full of life, friendly and knew how to have a laugh. As I walked around the site, I took photos as I saw them.
A word has to be said about taking photos in these situations. I had to be aware of my position in relation to the community who welcomed me. I had to be aware of the fact that, in comparison to them, I may be exploiting poor, vulnerable people for my own sense of aggrandisement. I had a responsibility to treat the people with respect, asking to take their photos and explaining to them what I would do with them, not being sure if they would understand. Through other work back home, I became acutely aware of the power of photography to represent and misrepresent, to reproduce power-relations in the world rather than transform them. In this situation, it being my first time visiting such a place, I felt intimidated by a sense of responsibility and therefore took very few photos and certain kinds of photos, working with but also against my intuition.
The Photo
Admittedly, this photo was an off-the-cuff snapshot. Not just that, but when I reviewed my photos of the day, I dismissed it, filed it away. When I came back to it weeks later, I saw something in it, not that it was by any means one of my best photos. But intuition is always built on something more.
When I look at it, the photo takes my eye on an elemental journey describing the landscape and the people's place within it. First, I see the foreground, my eye takes me up the left to the mountains, noticing the deep gorge below; my eye then moves to the scowling grey sky above and to the house, having kept it in the periphery of my vision all along, I also notice the tracks leading to more houses. There is the contrast between the vivid umber soil and angry grey clouds, yet I feel these elements to be in balance. The edge of the gorge to the right suggests the house lying on the edge of the roof of the world, but it seems grounded, rooted even, as are the people. But there is still a sense of isolation.
I therefore deliberately placed the house on the left (rule of thirds) but above the 'Golden Section' point vertically. I felt this was a symmetrical yet deliberately unbalanced composition.
Another element that caught my attention was the tree in front of the house. An important story in Lesotho life is the shift away from the 'traditional' round thatched stone house towards a rectangular 'Western-style' house with corrugated iron roof. I was conscious of not taking a romantic photo of poverty. However, a great many houses I saw had small trees very close to them - it's a typical feature of people's houses. But, again, I was conscious not to aestheticise the scene, I wanted it there because it made more of a statement about the reality precisely because the tree is in such an odd location (from the photographer's standpoint). But, as someone said, the tree is still in some kind of relationship with the house, standing as it does between the two little windows, suggesting a roof.
Critique
I have my own problems with the photo. One issue is that there are no people in it. I've explained the ethical dilemmas involved in photographing vulnerable people - particularly the exploitative element. However, were I not to photograph people at all, I could run the risk of dehumanising the country, the people and calling my own purpose here into question (and maybe I should). That's something I'll have to deal with as I develop an appropriate practice (one strategy being developing specific and well-conceived projects).
A second issue is the tension between the photo's descriptiveness and its discursive effect. In all my photos, I'm very conscious of falling into standard rules and personal habits, and I always ask myself, 'is there another way to depict this scene?' I also feel strongly committeed to the principle of depicting the world as human beings see it - to work into an aesthetic rules of thumb which suggest how the world is really perceived (objectively and psychologically) rather than a photograph being a romanticised, 'impactful' interpretation of it (positive or negative imagery). I also realise this is an impossibility as all photos are interpretations. Furthermore, I don't think photographs should contain a world within them (Cartier-Bresson, for example, believed this), I think photos should imply a wider world, they should depend on the world, a photo's margins should be dissolved. At the same time, I do not feel objectivity has to forsake psychological impact. What I’m concerned about is reflexive photography – the photographer’s position is always implied and called into question. Touchstones for me here are Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Thomas Ruff. (By the way, this is not to say I don't appreciate nor admire and wish to emulate completely different kinds of photographs.
One more issue I have is whether my default mode of taking photos (which I've described) is appropriate to where I'm now living. I had great trouble capturing South-East Asia; in only a few circumstances did I ever feel I succeeded. Here is the same.
A final word on what I feel when taking photos – when I see a scene I want to photograph, something in me goes ‘wow’ but pulling the viewfinder up to my eye means I have to re-frame all over again to rediscover that ‘wow’ moment. When I have it, I shoot. It happened in this case, it rarely works, but I’ve learned to listen to that instead of thinking about rules of thirds, etc. But I also know those rules are embedded in my thought processes, and in some cases I obey those rules, others I pre-consciously break them. But what’s important is what I want to say with a photo. What’s important to me about the subject matter.0 -
Advertisement