Categories
Musings

Quiet Simplicity

Or minimalism by another name, a name that for me better captures the value of an uncluttered photograph. Minimalist is descriptive and too often a goal in itself. But what if we try to describe the effects of such photographs, thinking more about the viewing experience and less about the composition? What is it about […]

Categories
Musings

Minimalism or Not

I know I am supposed to like and to produce minimalist photographs. Dominant, singular subjects against a diffuse and often homogenous background are striking. Particularly if black and white. There is no denying that the photographs of Michael Kenna, e.g., or Hiroshi Sugimoto’s still life and abstract work, some of Fan Ho’s street photography, again […]

Categories
Musings

In Praise of Chaotic

Minimalism. A dominate subject. High contrast. Rule of thirds. Composition. Complementary colors. Symmetry. Leading lines. Framing. There is a smörgåsbord of rules I can choose from to guide my shooting, to shoehorn my photos into a recognizable and recognized style. But what if I don’t want to. What if I want not just to “break” […]

Categories
Musings

Lonely Building (redux)

I really want to like this photograph, but something about it bothers me. It has nothing to do with what’s in the frame and everything to do with what’s not in the picture. Or more precisely: What bothers me is what I had to do to get rid of something that was in the original […]

Categories
Musings

Lonely Building

I was wandering the city that overcast Wednesday afternoon. While not empty, as it had been in the early months of the pandemic, it was not bustling in any normal way. Most offices in the city remained closed or only sparsely staffed. So I took the chance to look for scenes that would capture the […]