Working Notes: a commonplace notebook for recording & exploring ideas.
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Photographs

• Sam Abel, Life of a Photograph

  • "Compose the picture, and wait"

    • "To compose": Locking down composition, exposure, focus.
    • Slow down time.

  • "Take a low angle"

  • "Look for maximum impact"

  • "Look for strong graphics"

  • "Keep the sun behind you"

  • "Bad weather makes good pictures"

  • "Setting first, subject second"

  • Elements of a good photograph "The photograph seems inevitable" "Harmony"

    • The Setting Begin on the back layer and step towards in visual layers
    • The expressions
    • The gesture Shoulders above horizon

  • Micro-composition For it to rise up, and have a life. Look through the tiny details about clarity. "Nothing touches" Looks for the one element closing out the composition.

  • Macro-composition Overall, edge to edge, front to back content of the image; what you choose to photograph. Back to front Setting first, subject second.

  • Be wary of only assignments that are meaningful.

  • "I like to see life as it gives me, and not arrange"

  • Good picture: "stopped and gave it my attention"

    • making pictures that are inevitable

  • A few feet of height will make everything better

  • "It's that one thing that gives life to the photograph"

  • Get to know sections of a place and wait.

  • Taking photos from the back doesn't invade their space.

  • "The photograph that will have a long life will not be able to be memorized."

  • It has to be right in the camera to be photography.

  • "Perfection is not the dieal: Goodness, Justness, is the ideal."

  • Link a still life and a landscape to give them life.

  • "Improvement is not photography, seeing is photography"

  • "Photography is about seeing and being in life"

  • Layering

    • Start with the back layer, if nothing happens, at least you have it.

  • Relying on internal framing

    • Still life and landscape merged together

  • Look /through/ surfaces

  • Misc He's 73 years old.

— Kunal