Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama by Walker Evans [public domain]
Created 31 December 1935

Welcome to the second Saturday photography post. This is a weekly series for anyone who is into photography at any level from beginner to advanced. Use the comments to discuss anything in the post or anything at all about photography - however tangential. Also feel free to answer ask any questions or to post your own pics in the comments.

Scheduling note: From next week Saturday Photography will become Friday Photography and will be posted at around 5PM ET

A Bit of Photography History

Here are some documentaries about some of the photography greats. These are all people who have really impacted the art of photography. They presents a very selective look at the history of photography - it is not definitive but rather a jumping off point for further investigation.

Ansel Adams. Probably the most famous landscape photographer in the world..
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdCq-1MJmHw]

Dorothea Lange. Lange was a documentary photographer famous for her depression era work. She was one of the photographers who worked on the Farm Security Administration’s photography program. Two others were Walker Evans and Gordon Parks.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrODn0f1z0g]

Paul Strand. Ansel Adams is probably the best known American photography but Paul Strand is the most important in my opinion. He led photography out of pictorialism and into modernity. Of course many others were involved but Strand’s vision was the clearest.
[Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv03l46FSvU]

Strand was also a film maker and Manhatta is his best known work.
Paul Strand Manhatta
[Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gORE97onDbA]

Stieglitz, Steichen and Strand
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3Cy1wUREvo]

This is long but worth the effort. Alfred Steiglitz was a photographer in his own right but he is best known as a gallery owner and for his promotion of photography as an artform in its own right. He embraced modernism and championed Strand and other modernist photographers. While Strand may have been the most important photographer Steiglitz was the most important in terms of promoting and establishing photography as an artform in its own right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Stieglitz

Steichen was a contemporary of Stieglitz and Strand and was a photographer, painter, and art gallery curator and museum curator.

Making Photographs

This week I want to take a quick look at composition. I am not going to go into great detail about all the various rules and guidelines that are out there but rather will focus on one which can be stated as follows:

Make sure that your photograph has an obvious main subject and make everything else in the photograph enhances the main subject.

This is the single concept that takes someone’s images from snapshot to something more.

Sometimes the main subject will be obvious. With headshots it is almost always best to treat the eye nearest the camera as the main subject. Landscapes though, are much more problematic. We see a beautiful landscape under a great sky, grab a photo, and the photo just looks bleh. Usually this is because the photographer has not chosen a main subject - a main point of interest. This is why good landscape photography is really hard.

How do we go about enhancing the main subject? When taking the picture remove everything from the frame that is irrelevant to the main subject. If you want to photograph a flower one option is to move other flowers out of the frame so they are not competing with the main subject - the flower that you chose. An even better option here would be to focus on the subject flower but blur the surrounding flowers. (the abstract patches of color will enhance the main flower without distracting from it) You just need to make sure that none of the other flowers are the same distance from the camera as the subject flower. Blurring is much easier with a DSLR or mirrorless camera than with camera phone or a point-and-shoot (due to the differences in sensor size).
Some quick pointers here
Some useful tips here

Now I am going to completely contradict myself. Some of the most famous visual artworks, including photographs lack a main subject. Below is a short essay on that topic:

Decentralized Composition

Some time ago I took a course that was geared towards those wanting to be professional photographers. The course had a number of rules which had to be applied to every photographed submitted for appraisal. The first rule was that every photograph has to have an easily identifiable subject. This rule is a fair one – in the world of commercial photography it is very hard to make money from a photograph without a main and easily identifiable subject. There are, however, exceptions to this and some of my favorite commercial photographs lack a single point of focus. Even so, if you want to make money from your photography you need to know how to make the subject obvious. Of course not every photograph taken is intended for the commercial market and this gives the photographer freedom to try other approaches.

As you have no doubt gathered a decentralized composition is one that doesn't have an obvious subject. To put it another way, it is one where there is no single resting place for the viewers eye. These type of compositions often, though not always, have the appearance of a pattern. Rest of the essay

Some useful links

http://petapixel.com/
Posts four or five pieces a day about everything and anything to do with photography. The comments and short pieces can be entertaining.

http://photo.net/
Huge site that covers just about everything in its forums. This covers the more serious end of photography. I check in here if I am looking for thoughts on aesthetics or the history of photography. A lot of very knowledgeable people and the galleries are excellent.

https://www.ephotozine.com/
Another big site. Lots of reviews and good technical information

http://www.dpreview.com/
This one is a gearhead’s paradise. If you are looking to buy equipment this one is well worth a look. The forums are pretty good too.

Thanks for reading and please comment, post photographs, ask questions or add links that you like. Next week I want to highlight some photographers from more recent times and take a look at cellphone photography.
Have a great weekend
- Steve.