Its really about how you frame and what you decide to focus on. How you balance the light. Where you keep the highlights. How much darkness you allow into a situation. How sharp you make the shadows.How you allow the room to fill with light, more importantly what kind of light. Are you drawn to the harsh noon light or the very gentle full moon light. Most importantly your vantage point. The slightest shift in perspective alters the frame.
In Photography and in life too.
Who you allow in and what you leave out. That sort of makes the picture of your life and the photograph. what is revealed and what is withheld.
He is an architect but to me he is a great artist, he made frames around life. Frames that had to be experienced in situ, that were impossible to fix in photos.The reflections of the pillars on black floors in the afternoon light could reduce one to some very old tears. In bricks and mortar too it seemed to be about what he revealed and what he concealed. And the more you lingered the more the building revealed itself. The more time you gave, the more silence you made room for, the more the space opened up. And actually portraits too.
People take time to reveal themselves when they are being photographed.Often dependant on where and how you entered. People can sort of smell what your intentions are and they respond to those. And your intentions come from what you carry in your head. No getting away from the books you read, the conversations you follow, the experiences you bring to yourself, the people you engage with, the people you disengage.
How you frame and what you focus on and what your vantage point is then the key, for photography, and perhaps life too. So photography just a metaphor for life. Perhaps that is what photography is for me.
372 thoughts on “Frame and focus – Photography and life.”
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