When Capa is wrong or stepping back

[johnastovall]

Sean Reid has a very interesting aside in a review of 21mm RF lenses about small images of people in landscapes. He points out how this as a staple of the work of Bruegel the Elder in his paintings. Winogrand was starting to explore this more in his later work to.

This got me to thinking. Maybe we've taken Capa's dictum, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." too far or rather too close.

We need to think about sometimes stepping back more and placing context around the subject or placing humans in the landscape. I got to remembering the concept of the three tiers in Chinese landscape painting, the human, the architectural and the natural. The three tiers works to show the human form, human construction and natural forms in a progression of small human forms to the foreground with the architectural at the mid-ground and natural forms rising and dominating the background.

Reid got me back to thinking maybe we need to think more about space and humans in the context of that space rather than just getting closer.

Maybe I was primed for this as I've been using ultra wides more and more to create context when shooting people rather than just focusing on the person as a face and when shooting landscapes and architecture look at how to place people in the space.

[lhdvies]

I feel very much like this. I thought maybe I was the only one. My word, I remember an art class (a long long time ago) when we actually studied something about 3 teirs or somethng similar to it. Can you believe I never once thought of utilizing that in photography?(OK so you can HeHe) This post has just opend up a whole new process for me to think about in composition. Thks John--hope you are enjoying your St. Pats Day.

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by lhdvies

I feel very much like this. I thought maybe I was the only one. My word, I remember an art class (a long long time ago) when we actually studied something about 3 teirs or somethng similar to it. Can you believe I never once thought of utilizing that in photography?(OK so you can HeHe) This post has just opend up a whole new process for me to think about in composition. Thks John--hope you are enjoying your St. Pats Day.

Enjoying it, by backing up 77 gigs of photos, writing my new (unpaid) column for the paper on the Vexillology of the flags I fly and checking gear for the covering the KKK in Stephenville at 4pm and just blew out a Mach1 charger by pluging a 47 volt power brick into it.

It got me to thinking more to about how to do this in large landscape or urbanscapes. It also got me to thinking about when my 21mm gets here about shooting down from a height for street work. If you look at the Breugel painting, the point of view is from a hill or a height. Got me to thinking how to do this with a camera. When working the street we all to frequently visualize from eye level. I've got to go back and look at Winogrand's later L.A. work where he was shooting from tops of stairs and freeway ramps down on the street.

[lhdvies]

Excellent thoughts-I have to get out to Dublin soon to get some of your thought process on these things first hand. I was going to do the KKK thing but just couldn't make it. I'm leaving tommorrow for northeast Tx. Northern La. then up to South Central Il. via Memphis, so I have to get on the stick today do washing and get packed.Thks again.