jacquesvroom
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 p.1 #15 · First time poster in this forum, ready for my beating! | |
All:
I am grateful to the 7 of you above for taking time to join in this process!
A few not-so-brief thoughts in response; apologies for the length :
Peter—I, too, am a big fan of Kubrick, including Barry Lyndon. You remind me to see it again, soon; it's been a long time; and well before I owned any f:1.2 [or f:0.7]! lenses. I remember faintly a distant conversation with an old college friend, about Vermeer-influences on BL. [Artie Wheelock, if you know him or of him.] You are kind to find a connection.
The white "Texas Ranger" baseball shirt remains difficult for me. On my naive own, I chose it to be the brightness level in that first image. Once the "extra" brightness was pointed out to me, I hated the "overexposure", and tried to reduce it a little. Now that I've seen both for a day or two, I am "of mixed mind". As you suggested, all that objectivity as a wrapper for our inherent subjectivity is hard, indeed! I hate that excellence seems so difficult, tedious, difficult to define, and fleeting. Though my hope is to continue on through all that fog!
Ron, and Steve, and Brent, and Vicki—Thank you for your reminders of the impact of different pov and sensibilities. In some ways, maybe all the images, here, and maybe everywhere, are like Rorschach tests. There will likely never be unanimity on meaning. I spent a few decades presenting design and photo creative I loved to clients—and sometimes getting my ass handed to me! I eventually sort of came to understand creative preferences can be very "context-sensitive". My eventual solution to all that was to retire and think more about the origins of my own preferences. It helps that in retirement, there are rarely any production deadlines!
Which takes us to matters of the hair and the camera-left eye. I think I get and accept both "complaints", though I'd like to add a thought to the mix:
I know there is one huge difference between me and a seasoned professional photographer. He or she is supposed to go into the field and reliably get a shot that has been requested and somewhat defined. I only do that infrequently and imperfectly. Mostly, I only "see" pictures a few minutes or even seconds before I take them. Many times I only "see" something I like after the exposure. I don't know what I am looking for until I see/think it.
The hair and eye now come back into play. I remember the "girl" picture-experience reasonably well. I thought it unusual that she'd be so pretty and so fully made-up on a warm July afternoon in a non-descript setting. Our whole interaction was maybe 90 seconds. I "saw" most of the eventual photo above pretty close to the way it came out.
I cannot pretend I pre-visualized how her left eye would be in sharp focus and her right eye would be in "less-sharp" focus. But I do think I saw early-on her left eye as the primary "focus" of her face. I was happy though, to have stumbled on the eye/focus relationship that showed up by accident. I like the viewers' eye-flow being guided by the visual primacy of her left eye, and then secondary attention to her other eye. Impressionistic? Rationalization? No objective answer!
Similar idea with the hair. If she were a portrait client, I would at least offer to "clean-up" that hair on the right side. But I consciously like that even young, appearance-perfect subjects have some small "imperfections". I hate pretending otherwise. My shrink wife says I am pretty disturbed!
Above is probably why I don't get asked to do that kind of perfect-portrait much, actually ever! And I was lucky she was so close to beautiful without much pp work.
With regard to her lack of soul-invitation, I agree. But I don't think she wanted to invite me or or any of us into her world that afternoon. Her friend was gregarious, but she was not. My sense was she didn't want to be rude, but couldn't help show a hint of her wish to get on with her non-me activities. To me, lack of empathetic connection wasn't so much because of the light, but rather her own psyche "leaking" out. On the other hand, wtf do I know?
I hope the takeaway for you contributors to this thread is that you have made me think beyond what I once thought, and I am grateful.
Thanks again to all. I promise not to card-dump!!
Jacques Vroom
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