Category: photosophy
I have been doing a lot of research the past couple days into a new concept for me: the rangefinder style of camera. Most of you, like me, are probably quite uninitiated when it comes to rangefinders, but we still probably have heard at least one name, the epitome of rangefinders: Leica.
We hear the term “SLR” all the time, and really start to think it just means “big camera with exchangeable lenses”. Minus the “big” part, so are rangefinders. When viewing an image through an SLR, you are looking through the lens, thus there is a need for mirrors that flop back and forth when you take a photo. With a rangefinder, you are not looking through the lens, but through a small window to the side. Sounded a bit disposable-camera-ish to me at first, but I realized it was actually a totally different approach to photography.
I really could not say for sure why I decided to distort the whole QingMing photo collection. It really is a shift for me, for usually, I am a pretty standard issue, depict real life, photojournalistic type of photographer. Usually, I just want to document what is going on, telling the story that is already in front of me.
The first photo, if I remember correctly, that I distorted was “Say What”. Something about the colors and subject matter just jumped out at me when I shot it, and I wanted it to jump out at others, too. Really, though, all the original photos from that day had some strange coloring already. I still cannot quite figure out what was going on. I am guessing it was just the bright sunlight. One thing is for sure: mountainside graveyards at midday are not the best lighting situations.
Having somebody stare at you everywhere you go would really get old fast, would it not? I live in China, and certainly receive my fair share of “socket lock”, especially since my wife and I live in a rural town. I would imagine, though, anyone who travels enough endures the same treatment (depending completely on where you travel). So, I have a little homebrew photographic psychology to help prevent unnecessary mental anguish.
From truly frieghtening to innocent babes, from Don Knotts to Danny Glover, I found one of the most evocative collections of portraits that I have seen in a long time. Bruce Jackson found and printed photographs from the Arkansas State Prison between 1915 and 1937, calling the collection “Mirrors”. And indeed they are if you look through them. There is an incredible amount of character that flows through these faces. Save the prison ID number tagged on their chests, you might think some of these faces were average house wives. And some of the photos make you wonder how a photographer so able at capturing a person could get stuck in a job taking mug shots in the prison system. See: Mirrors. Photographs from the Arkansas State Prison 1915-1937.
After my first few years in China and bearing with the constant need to communicate with those back home, I started a website. These past few years of having the website, though, have made one thing clear: people want to see the photos. That works: I love taking them and others like viewing them. Therefore, this third version of the ChinaCoop.net website (what I call the “PhotoCoop” version) has now come into being. And what is with this “photosophy” stuff? Well, I will have many other categories, some focused on simple photography how-tos, some how we average folks can make our photos better, some about my photography here in China, and some about my “photosophy”. It is not really a philosophy, nor is “view of how to do photography” nearly catchy enough as a subject. So, I came up with “photosophy” or as I would like to translate it “the…