Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Photography

I get annoyed at smiling for photos. Bad bad bad bad bad. I hate having to put on a fake face so that in the future sombody can look at the picture and say "Wow, he was happy.
I hate having to look at a camera, when a photo is taken, and have just my face in it, or my torso. I hate these sorts of photos.
Sure, we all want these sort hanging on our wall, showing what we look like when we're happy. Fine. Take one or two good ones, then that's enough! Real photos are of real situations. If you want to set up a photo, a posed photo, that's perfectly fine, but at least make it have ther intention of looking like it's not meant to be set up. When taking a picture of nature, do you trim the trees, paint the mountains and twist the scenery so that it's facing the lens, before taking the photo? No, because it would look like you ruined the scenery. But you might throw some dirt onto something to look like it was more rustic. See, that would look like it wasn't meant to be set up, even if it was.
I hope, if you're reading this, you know where I'm coming from. Real photos are meant to capture a moment, not an artificial assortment in which people stop smiling as soon as the photo is taken. Aargh. Angry.
Below I have put three photos that are examples of good photos. I also have reasons for why these photos are good.
Well, here is a photo of a sandcastle I built once. The waves would have come and washed it away, so I took a photo. Here, photography has been used to preserve something that could otherwise not have been preserved. Good. This photo gets a tick.
Now here is a photo of Ben Chong preforming a smanbastical dunk off Matt Waters' back. This photo captures the time when me and some friends were at Lauren Pinches house, and doing all sorts of different dunks and what not. Silliness and funness of that time captured proporly by photo? Yes. Tick for this one.

Aha! It's Starfish Man! (a.k.a. me) This is almost one of the photos I hate, but not, because of an important fact: this photo does not look like it's meant to be set up. Even though it is obvious that I stood there like that specifically for that photo, it looks like that scenario could have come into place without the camera being pointed at me. This is true. So this photo kills two birds with one stone, one, it captures me at the beach, and memories of that night, and it shows what Starfish Man looked like, for those who would otherwise never know.

See, these are photos with purpose, and goodness. From now on, no more smiling stupidhead photos. Bad bad bad bad bad bad.

2 comments:

B.C. said...

Jono. I like your photos, and I was present at all of them, I think. Definitely two. Maybe not the basketball one. But I might be wrong, I'm getting old and my memory is failing.

Regardless! When I go to take a photo of you, you instantly turn away anyway, presuming I am going to make you smile. This is not true. I am going to take a photo of you at that exact moment in time.

Also. The smiling ones are good. For my reasons, thus:
- It is not posed happiness, hopefully, but a genuine memory of time spent together that provided happiness to us.
- When looking over old photos and reminiscing, happy photos can bring happiness to the present. Of course, you want to see others, but photo viewing, for me, has to sometimes involve people as well, and some of them need to be traditional smily happy ones.
- There are more, but I am not willing to argue and type anymore.

Jono said...

I think happy smily front on face photos are good, don't get me wrong. But they are good 15% of the time. NOT 90%. That is what I gewt angry about. That is why I occasionally don't hate those type of photos. E.g. Vetamorphus photo, photo of everybody at Phillip Island, photos at formals. These are times when happy smily photos need to be taken, as well as otehr types.