Noticing subject features
Figure 8.12 Shooting at 1/8 sec has softened detail, increased apparent movement . . . and turned a harmless motorist into the stereotype of a road-rager
Figure 8.13 Just three boys in the park, but a picture given meaning by its multi-racial content and sense of friendship
Figure 8.14 Use your hands, or a colour slide mount, to estimate how a scene will look – isolated and composed within a picture format. Position your eye the same distance from the slide mount as your camera lens’s focal length to see how much is included. Alter this distance to preview other focal lengths
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especially if they are close. Looking from the side of a moving vehicle, for example, close parts of the landscape whiz past while the horizon moves hardly at all. Movement seen against other movements in differing directions gives a sense of dynamic action, excitement or confusion. In still photography, movement is highly subjective. Images on the move often record as unfamiliar forms and shapes, not as when you were watching the subject at the time. This is because the exposure onto film was much longer or shorter than the eye’s own perception of events. Results are said to be ‘time-based’. So fast movement can be frozen, like the footballer in Figure 8.26, or the relatively slow movement of a fairground wheel (Figure 8.11) seemingly speeded-up. Eye and brain read such images of movement against our experience of the relationship of blur to speed. You can similarly deceive the viewer about speed and degree of movement by panning (Figure 8.27) or zooming (Figure 5.15). Since movement and time are so closely linked, a sequence of frozen images like frames from a movie or a comic strip also reads as action. Try making a series of closely related images which show changes only in the position of figures against the same background detail. Presented as a panel of matched prints they read as actions and movement happening over a period of time. Alternatively a whole bunch of sharp or blurred images can be superimposed within just one frame. The more numerous the overlapped images the more movement seems to be taking place. Bear in mind too that even though you shoot a picture to show frozen action it can later be digitally manipulated. The computer allows you to multi-superimpose, or add a controlled degree of blur to imply subject movement in any direction you choose; see page 280. Content and meaning
Most of the subject features discussed so far have been concerned with narrow physical detail. Shape, texture, colour, etc., all have a combined effect on the appearance of things, to be stressed or suppressed according to their interest and importance. But remember too that they are only components in your photography’s hopefully much wider content and meaning. Perhaps you choose to juxtaposition something expensive and luxurious against something cheap and tacky, to make a point about possessions. It could be strictly instructional ‘what and why’, showing correct actions when someone is doing a job, or using particular equipment. Or it might be some wry facial expression that reveals a relationship – say between people, or people and notices, or animals and children. These choices of content are all opportunities to express concepts and emotions such as craftsmanship, concern, bewilderment, aggression or joy. Often meaning can be communicated by straight recording – the subject ‘speaks for itself’, like Figure 8.1. Sometimes (and this is usually more challenging for the photographer, and interesting for the final viewer) it operates through subtle use of symbols. For example, the cast shadow of a row of railings or a pile of timber can be made to look menacing, like some advancing horde. Use of ‘old against new’ can say something about ageing, irrespective of your actual subject. Visual communication, whether based on symbol, metaphor, or simply ‘gutreaction’, is central to photography. Develop your ability firstly to notice