We do take something, and we profit by the taking. You should always respect people's feelings and beliefs. There are selfish reasons for this—you don't want to be beaten up or thrown in jail.
But the main point is that people are always more important than photographs. You don't want to abuse people, and doing something against a strongly held belief is abuse. And the photographs would probably not be very good anyway. You may be asked to pay for photographing certain people.
My advice is to comply with such requests. You pay for a postcard when you travel, why not for an image you make? It is usually not much money to you, but may be quite a lot to the people you want to photograph. If you do not want to pay, you can always move on. Wherever you are with your camera, always be on the lookout for those moments when a person's character shines though.
If you have a formal portrait session with someone, make some frames of him while he straightens his tie or while she brushes her hair before the formal sitting. Walk back to the car with her and shoot her on the street. If you are on a spring picnic with the family, look for that moment of bliss when your wife leans back, sated, to enjoy the caress of the warm sun.
If you're on the street, look for the impatient expression on a pedestrian's face as he waits for the light to change. Always be on the lookout for the telling moment. Every person has a story, and every picture should tell part of that story. Portraits are about people. Environmental portraits are about people and what they do with their lives. They are about the kind of house a person lives in and how they decorate it; about what kind of work they do and where they do it; about the surroundings they choose and the things they surround themselves with.
Environmental portraits seek to convey an idea about a person by combining portraiture with a sense of place. Group portraits are hard to do well, and the larger the group, the harder they are.
It's not easy to get a good, telling photograph of one person, and the problems are compounded exponentially with groups. We have all had the experience of trying to get the family or the ball team to pose for a picture.
Just getting all of them arranged so you can see their faces is hard enough. Then, of course, you want an image where everyone looks good—no one's eyes closed, no grimacing. Making group portraits takes imagination, patience, and diplomacy. Use your imagination.
Find a way to relate the group to an environment that expresses something about what kind of group they are. Do it literally, humorously, dramatically, or by complete contrast. Get ideas from them. Our family members are the people we photograph most frequently. We record the momentous occasions and the occasional moments.
Albums full of baby pictures, first steps, Little League games, Halloweens, Thanksgivings, and weddings mark our passage through time. These photographs are our memories made real and are probably the most important pictures we will ever make or have.
You should apply thought and technique just as rigorously, if not more so, to photographing your family as you do to any photo assignment.
There is no better group on which to practice photography. No others will be so trusting or willing to indulge your ever present camera, your fumbling around with lights, and your mistakes.
When you are photographing strangers, you either get the picture or you don't. There is no going back to a fleeting moment. With your family, you can work on getting a similar moment again, and again, and again. The hands of a farmer, a pianist, a baker. The feet of a ballet dancer, a long distance runner, a place kicker. During the s, America went through one of its greatest challenges: the Great Depression. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt attempted to relieve the dire economic situation with his New Deal programs. To justify the need for those projects, the government employed photographers to document the suffering of those affected and publish the pictures. Their efforts produced some of the most iconic photographs of the Great Depression—and all of American history. Stryker was tasked with documenting the need for government assistance by taking photographs of rural farmers at work and at home in their small-town communities, of migrants looking for work and of the effects of the Great Depression on everyday life in rural America.
The FSA photographs galvanized Americans into action. They also wanted to capture the raw emotion behind the drudgery and bring empathy to the suffering of ordinary Americans. The first photographer Stryker chose for his team was Arthur Rothstein. The Dawn of Photography: French Daguerreotypes, — New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Visiting The Met?
Instead of the image reacting with the surface of the paper, thus producing a sharp, clear image, during the platinum process the image is absorbed into the paper.
Difficulties stemmed from frequent spoilage and few tonal ranges. However, inspired and challenged, Stieglitz conducted experiments to prevent spoilage and increase tonal range by adding mercury or uranium. He also worked with the photogravure process, which is described as an intaglio process. Photogravure is a method of reproducing photographs in ink in large editions. A positive transparency of a photographic image is used to control the etching of a specially prepared metal plate and thus the resulting print appears to the naked eye to be of a smooth, continuous tonal range from white to black.
Stieglitz was a thorough and committed scientist and photographer and published his findings in numerous photographic journals. By the s Stieglitz had established an international reputation for advancements in photographic chemistry and producing fine artistic photographs and decided move to New York City.
Stieglitz did not enjoy running a business, but did expand his knowledge of ink printing. While running the company, Stieglitz continued producing his images, experimenting with photographic chemistry by usage of the more well equipped labs such as the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York and the Camera Club of New York and publishing articles promoting photography as an art.
He also worked with the newly introduced hand-held camera. Many photographers rejected the small camera, but Stieglitz believed it to be an instrument worth testing. He made some of the first successful images at night, in rain and snow. Also during this decade he married Emmeline Obermeyer; they had one daughter, Katherine. By the late s Stieglitz had exhibited some of his work he maintained artistic privacy exhibiting only selected work and rarely sold images and received many awards.
However, he remained discouraged with the general disregard for the science and especially the art of photography. In response, he founded the Photo-Secession Group in Along with the other original members, Edward J.
Steichen, Gertrude Kasebier and Clarence H. White, they formulated their mission to secede from conventional expectations and explore the creative potential of photography from both a theoretical and scientific point of view. Needing space to gather, work and exhibit, Stieglitz opened gallery In addition to photography, the gallery was open to and exhibited such paintings by Cezanne, Picasso, Braque and Matisse.
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