in the kitchen / 12:35AM ~ in the Adirondack PARK (embiggenable) • µ4/3
In his book, THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S EYE, John Szarkowski, in discussing the idea of Vantage Point, wrote:
If the photographer could not move his subject, he could move his camera. To see the subject clearly-often to see it at all-he had to abandon a normal vantage point, and shoot his picture from above, or below, or from to close, or to far, or from the backside, inverting the order of things' importance, or with the nominal subject of his picture half hidden.
From his photographs, he learned that the appearance of the world was richer and less simple than his mind would have guessed.
He discovered that his pictures could reveal not only the clarity but the obscurity of things, and that these mysterious and evasive images could also, in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful.
iMo, these are some of the absolute best words-when one fully understands their import-to make pictures by inasmuch as Szarkowski is not attempting to impart a formulaic methodology for the making of good pictures but rather to express how Vantage Point can influence the creation of visual characteristics and qualities which define a good picture.
It is my intention, over the course of the next few entries, to attempt to emunerate and clarify those visual characteristics and qualities which Szarkowski has chosen to mention in his Vantage Point writing.