May 2009
13 posts
Studio shots for Jasmine Matus
I did some studio shots for Jasmine a couple of weeks ago. She is an amazing object and jewellery designer based in Sydney. Believe it or not we only used available sunlight to shoot these shots. See her interesting pieces here: http://jasminematus.tumblr.com
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“During the first years photography bought him no income, and it can only be...”
– Szarkowski on Winogrand in Winogrand: Figments From the Real World, p.15.
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Colour Theory
As with any other work, photography is a series of difficulties. You become a photographer because you like working at and overcoming these difficulties. A constant challenge has been working in colour. The key challenge of colour is one of consistency. Colours change dramatically throughout the day. Colours are unruly and clash dramatically within a frame. Colours mean too much, and they shout...
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On Writing on Top of Photography
A photographer should be scared of talking too much about his work.
Talking usually means not taking photographs.
Saying anything means you’re not saying something else, and so limits what you can say through your pictures (see Open Pictures).
Photography may only have a tenous link to thinking as we understand that process.
But there is suspicion that talking and thinking about it may...
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The Boring Ingredients
From an interview with W. Eugene Smith:
“Do you believe there is a distinction between photojournalism and documentary photography?”
“No. I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose. I think the only thing wrong with the word ‘documentary’ is that it can give some people the idea that you can make absolutely dull pictures of the ingredients of...
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Quiet Nights set added to site
I’m not quite used to being this productive, but I’ve mined the work that I have been doing at night around Sydney to complete a new set for the Work section of the site: http://www.adnanchowdhury/quietnights/. There aren’t many people about, but the colours are nice.
I’ve also added a new on hover drop down menu to the work option in the navigation bar. It should make...
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Modern Status set added to site
I trawled through over 5000 street shots that I have and tried to come up with one coherent story. It’s a very particular story and many others could have been told. It’s about anxiety or something. It’s up now at http://www.adnanchowdhury.com/.
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Becoming a neighbour (W. Eugene Smith)
“… We photgraphed the fishing first, because we knew we needed fishing pictures and it was a safe subject—you didn’t need to know the individuals involved intimately. But we began to know the people better and we ate their food. It was such an exciting time, and because I was not working for a magazine, I stayed as long as I wanted to. I didn’t know where we were...
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Aphorisms 4
1
Often what is only half seen, darkly, is clearer and more transparent to the heart than a ‘better’ photo. I’m thinking again of Winogrand’s picture from a car in Utah, 1964. The trick is that you aren’t making photos, you are making emotions in someone else’s chest and the photo is a tool (the camera is even further removed). The apocalyptic death of a beast...
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Aphorisms 3
1
As a photographer I’m not interested in what people say about themselves. There are better arts for capturing that kind of thing. I want to collect the things people don’t say about themselves, can’t say, or didn’t know they wanted to say. 2
Photography at heart is about angles. Looking at a scene from 10 meters to the right often changes it entirely. The light is now...
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Aphorisms 2
1
Photography is important because love is important. A photographer mustn’t ask what am I going to photograph, but rather, what is it that I love and what loves me?
2
Your camera must be the least interesting thing about you.
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If you aren’t rejecting 1 out of every 100 photos, then you aren’t doing your job. It could be three things: You’re not being brave, or you...
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Aphorisms 1
1 Photography is an attempt at righting a deep and very personal misunderstanding of the world. The photographer thinks that by capturing the world, he will be able to explain it better. At most, he ends up explaining himself. 2 The photographer must be in it. Without feeling the fierceness of reality he cannot hope to affirm it. Affirmation being the principle voice of photography (of course...
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‘Open’ pictures
Utah 1964, Garry Winogrand
The photos that are worth taking are incomplete by design. They should be ‘open’ rather than being ‘closed’ pictures. An open picture doesn’t tell the viewer what to think, but suggest what they might like to think about. It is crucial to a living, breathing, engaging work to not say everything that it could. Or the real problem: everything the photographer thinks it...