journalism

On Photography – 50 Years Later

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If you don’t like what you see in front of your camera, you can often wait a few minutes and a better picture might come along. These two skyline pictures were shot less than 20 minutes apart. In those few minutes, the wind blew in the clouds and the automatic lights in many buildings turned on.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

It’s the 50th anniversary of the publication of US author Susan Sontag‘s essay Photography (link to PDF) which was later re-edited and renamed “In Plato’s Cave.” This renamed essay became the first of six essays in her book, “On Photography.” In Plato’s Cave is probably the most well known of the six essays.
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Sky High Photography

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Cameras have a changed a lot over the past hundred years. They got smaller and lighter, became more electronic, film gave way to digital sensors, and we now have flying cameras commonly called “drones.”

Aerial photography started at least as early as 1858 by Gaspard-Felix Tournachon (aka Nadar) who photographed from a hot air balloon in France. But most photographers didn’t have a hot air balloon handy so they had to find other ways to get a high camera angle:

Circa 1909. (US Library of Congress)

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Reminiscing (Part Eight)

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(My last post reminiscing about old pictures.)

One of the many good things about working for a newspaper was the variety of assignments. Each day brought different photography work and each day you met new people.

A few examples:

• I shot an Aerosmith concert on January 6, 1990. That was followed by two hours of standing in January winter weather photographing a late-night fire at the Polish consulate in Toronto.

• On June 24, 1996, I photographed a story about a group of homeless people. My next assignment was at one of Toronto’s most expensive hotels where an International Olympic Committee executive was being feted.

• I photographed Stephen Hawking at the University of Toronto on April 27, 1998. After this, I shot a rock concert by the Deftones.

• My assignments on October 29, 1999, were to photograph the Prime Minister of Hungary and then photograph a real witch (no joke) for a Halloween story.
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Reminiscing (Part Seven)

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Irish actor Pierce Brosnan.

There are a few reasons why a photographer will shoot or crop a portrait very tightly:

1) Cut off distractions in the foreground or background. Sometimes the subject themselves might be wearing a distraction like text or logos on clothing, a shirt with an ugly colour or loud pattern, etc.

2) Dramatic effect. A tightly composed portrait emphasizes the person’s eyes and facial expression. An otherwise routine portrait can be made more attention-getting by cropping tightly.

3) Graphic effect. A tightly composed portrait can sometimes produce interesting lines or shape.
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Reminiscing (Part Six)

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Yet another post reminiscing about some old photos.

The pictures below were shot during various press conferences which were also recorded on video. But the moments captured in these pictures are not noticeable in the videos.

The power of photography is that it can capture and isolate one moment forever. Video flashes by at 30 frames per second and your brain barely notices any of those frames. Your brain doesn’t actually see video or motion but rather it sees in a series of still images and remembers only key frames.

 

This press conference had name tags placed in the seats. While waiting for people to take their seats, US actor Tommy Lee Jones briefly held up his name tag.

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Reminiscing (Part Five)

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Another in my series of reminiscing about old photos but this one includes a public service message :-)

Working for a daily newspaper meant photographing a lot of fires: house fires, vehicle fires, factory fires. Newspapers like fire photos because the colour grabs people’s attention.

Thankfully the number of serious fires has gone down over the years due to better built homes and sprinkler systems. But fatal fires still occur despite the existence of smoke detectors.

 

This truck was traveling on Highway 401 in 1995, near Pearson Airport on the north-west corner of Toronto, when it struck some metal pipes that fell from another truck on the overpass in the background. The gas tank ruptured and the truck exploded.

I was on the highway only two kilometres away so I arrived in minutes. It surprised me that no one on that busy highway bothered to stop and help. But this is normal for Toronto.

There was a guy sitting on the guardrail, perhaps five metres ahead of the burning truck. He had his arms around himself and was hunched over in a ball. He said he was the driver, no one else was in the truck and he was unhurt. But it was obvious he was in shock. I helped him move further away from the truck and sat with him until emergency services arrived.

Several months later, a firefighter mentioned that the guy gave up driving.

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