mardi 27 mars 2007

Early Morning Blossom Reflex Viewing... and Inverted Images Users of large-format studio and field cameras, such as the Lotus Rapid View, become accustomed to viewing their subjects inverted and laterally reversed on the camera's focusing/viewing screen. Most people would think that a particularly awkward and stupid hindrance to accept when making carefully composed photographs. Of course the second "disadvantage" with using a view camera is the lack of mobility... not only the camera - but you also - are literally tied to the tripod. However, from these hardships come discipline and creativity... discipline from the sequence of technical considerations and adjustments one has to make with the apparatus in order to focus and expose the sensitised material (or digital chip)... and creativity from the standpoint of framing the wider subject and selecting your choice of composition from it - so producing, eventually, an interesting image. It hardly need be said that the "inverted" image the photographer sees on the view camera screen translates into a correctly aligned photograph when printed and held up for appraisal. But... there are instances where the "inverted" image is stronger. In Richard D. Zakia's book "Perception & Imaging" [pps. 307-308] he quotes the German artist Georg Baselitz whose paintings, "...large, ambitious, and emotionally turbulent--explore the territory between abstraction and representation." By inverting the figure (in this instance a self-portrait entitled "Male Nude" from the North Carolina Museum of Art collection) he shifted attention to the abstract quality of the composition... "An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object." In a previous article Great Ridgeway I described how and why Eva Beagan, from the Ilford publicity department, used to photocopy my hand-crafted portfolio prints and view them inverted and reversed in order to get a better idea of how they would look in their brochures and on product packaging. It's a trick I turn to from time to time... and sometimes in order to achieve a more believable result. This morning, just after the sun rose, a took a few shots across the garden of the house where we're staying for the next few months... using a Nikon D200 fitted with a 300mm f/4 AF Nikkor (producing the equivalent of a 450mm lens with a 35mm film camera). I was thinking and seeing in "long" terms and wanted to compress the distance between the main subject - the tree in full blossom - with the foreground branches of a walnut tree and the background blur of a neighbour's house wall. The original shot was a vertical composition (as seen left) which didn't look correct or balanced when viewed this afternoon in PhotoShop. So I tried flipping and rotating the image... and cropped-off some of the unwanted out-of-focus foreground branches... resulting in the main image above. It was not how I saw it... but it has become an improved, more realistic, image through looking at it abstractly. I decided to keep the gnarled branch top-left of the image... I like how the uppermost branches of blossom seem to recoil slightly at it's threatening presence. 11:24:34 PM    comment []