Don't tell me it's blurry
I remember thinking to myself, in my head, why am I being so frugal with film? That last one I took wasn't timed right. She'd just turned the other direction as I pressed the shutter. I'll take another.
And after that, I thought I got the shot. [Or I was still being frugal.]
Two exposures. One's super blurry, with the old woman looking away. This one is better, but still blurry. And, she's looking this way. I remember thinking, I don't like taking photos of strangers, especially when it's obvious they're the subject. I was trying to hide the fact that I was taking a photo of her. Camera down. Then, quickly, camera up to my eye, snap, turn, walk away. That's probably the blur right there. Camera shake.
This is to illustrate the canal village I was talking about earlier. Best photo, out of about fifteen, showing actual buildings. [Yeah, I'll probably post more – like I said, I liked this place.]
I know, it's a bit, 'so you wannabe Cartier-Bresson'. Ignore the person, and it's a crappy architectural photograph from my travels. [I've been teaching myself to not look at buildings in elevation any more.]
I so want to be Henri Cartier-Bresson. Charmaine, I'm going to steal your Leica.
Oh well, until next time.
And: Nikon F4; I'm feeling inadequate because I can't tell if it's a 50mm or 35mm lens. Parts of me are saying 50mm, because I would have to be quite close to her to get that framing with a 35mm lens [and I didn't want to alert her to my presence any more than necessary – the 50mm would have given me a bit more distance]. On the other hand, it feels like a 35mm image, as I study it more. I should write these things down. No, it was the 35mm f/2. It must be. Fuji Sensia 100 pushed to 400. I must have been fairly close to her, then. About ten metres away, or less.
posted by Martin at 20:48
5 comments
5 Comments:
So you want to be Henri Cartier-Bresson. Don't we all? He is God. I've been looking for books on him on ebay, but am hesitant to buy a second-hand copy. It must be pristine.
Apparantly his biography is quite good. Note to self: must stop at bookstore this weekend.
Frugality [is that a word?] is a good characteristic to have - or so I've been told.
Ps. It looks like a 35mm to me.
She is awfully short. I wonder if she's sitting... Somehow I don't think so.
She is probably used to the likes of you though, camera-in-hand, you know those tour types. But she probably enjoyed the gander as much as you did - and she probably shuffles out to the front door everytime she hears that tour bus pull up! Perhaps she's in someone else's photo album, or on their blog.
Have you seen the Three Colours Trilogy? Blue, White, Red... The director is obsessed with the little/big moments (where something tiny happens but it means something hugely profound - check out the sugar cube part; I can tell you about it sometime). He also is fascinated by coincidence. In each of the films, he has this same little old woman, shuffling slowly down the street in the background, behind the main character, who is having one of the aforementioned little/big moments. She finally reaches her destination, the post box, and gets up on her tip toes; you can feel the arthritis; slips in a letter, then shuffles away. It has this way of creating a snug, warm world; it feels good to see her there, in every film. You feel fondness for her. You want to help her drop that letter in. You wonder who she writes to? A lover, a child, a life-long friend? Maybe she is posting checks? Or writing letters to the editor...
You feel like that world is yours, and that you are a part of it, because he. the director, that moment, connects you to her.
Somehow, Tamara, you've overturned my desire to be detached from the subject into an exercise on how connected I, she, we all are through this photograph. There you are, empathising with her, while I was behind the camera, thinking, how best to arrange the objects in front of me, some of them static, some of them moving, to form a good image.
Alright, maybe as I composed the moving object among the static, I thought about 'emotions', 'feelings', and other associated girly things that might be expressed by the woman in her house.
You remind me of an exercise in writing we did in high school. They showed us an image, and asked us to empathise with one of the characters. Although I didn't know it at the time, the image was the one by David Moore of the migrants on the ship. As I think, I compare it to Seurat's painting of the people on the bank [you know the one]. In both of them, perspective is played with [with all subjects in focus], and there's a whole bunch of stuff happening at once.
Nothing like my photo.
I'm not yet thinking what the girl in white is up to, or what those hands are reaching for. It is a very gestural photograph, isn't it?
Biting the hand that feeds? Subtle, but I didn't miss it. Wow, you do have faithful, don't you?!
you know what?
At first glance I honestly did not see the old lady in there.
Shows how much she complements and blends in to her environment hey? I mean, even her face has that woody grainy look to it. She's glowing, too.
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