Slightly artistic, slightly autistic.
Sometimes I forget that I have all sorts of nerd stuff pushed to the far corners of my brain. My friend is getting into photography, and while I'm no expert, I knew enough fake my way through a conversation with him and another friend of ours. Luckily for him, he knows people with camera bodies that have compatible lenses with his, so he gets to test new lenses out all of the time.
So anyway, we were going through all of his test photos today; remarking on the wideness of the wide-angle shots, the deep focus of the deep focus shots, the colors of the colorful shots, the candidness of the candid shots... blah blah blah. While I like technical exercises in focus, exposure, and "capturing the moment," I told them about how I prefer stark, low-grain, low-contrast, posed, nearly-flat photography more than anything. I like things with lot of lines, lot of geometry, lots of negative space, sometimes ignoring the rule of thirds, avoiding closeups, and not always having a clear subject.
I said I like things that are less technically artistic because they're sort of soothing to look at.
They said I'm soothed by them, because I'm probably partly autistic. One guy even said, "so, you like pictures that pretty much anybody could take.?" Uhhh, yeah! It's cool when someone does something 'anybody' could do interestingly.
While they take a LOT of pictures that don't follow all of the sensibilities I enjoy in photography, here are some examples from two of my favorite photographers:
Bruce Davidson:
Pieter Hugo:
I don't know what made me want to post about photography, other than that the conversation reminded me that my taste in retardedly simple things tends to cross-over into my other interests.
p.s. If you too nearly have a seizure (in a good way) when you look at those photos, check out more stuff by those guys by clicking on their names. Bruce Davidson has a photobook about midget circus clowns, and Pieter Hugo takes pictures of a bunch of guys who own Hyenas for pets. Sweet.
So anyway, we were going through all of his test photos today; remarking on the wideness of the wide-angle shots, the deep focus of the deep focus shots, the colors of the colorful shots, the candidness of the candid shots... blah blah blah. While I like technical exercises in focus, exposure, and "capturing the moment," I told them about how I prefer stark, low-grain, low-contrast, posed, nearly-flat photography more than anything. I like things with lot of lines, lot of geometry, lots of negative space, sometimes ignoring the rule of thirds, avoiding closeups, and not always having a clear subject.
I said I like things that are less technically artistic because they're sort of soothing to look at.
They said I'm soothed by them, because I'm probably partly autistic. One guy even said, "so, you like pictures that pretty much anybody could take.?" Uhhh, yeah! It's cool when someone does something 'anybody' could do interestingly.
While they take a LOT of pictures that don't follow all of the sensibilities I enjoy in photography, here are some examples from two of my favorite photographers:
Bruce Davidson:
Pieter Hugo:
I don't know what made me want to post about photography, other than that the conversation reminded me that my taste in retardedly simple things tends to cross-over into my other interests.
p.s. If you too nearly have a seizure (in a good way) when you look at those photos, check out more stuff by those guys by clicking on their names. Bruce Davidson has a photobook about midget circus clowns, and Pieter Hugo takes pictures of a bunch of guys who own Hyenas for pets. Sweet.