In looking through a friend’s Flickr gallery of photos from a recent family wedding, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of images, some of which had the faces of the subjects severely underexposed because the camera metered on the background light. Why, I wonder, were those pictures included in the gallery? I understand that many people simply dump the contents of the memory card from their camera onto the website; however, I am less likely to find the pictures that photographer really wants me to see if I have to slog through tens or even hundreds of mediocre images to separate the wheat from the chaff. I soon tire of the chore and might never see the “keeper” images.

I have also seen edited photo galleries where someone will post two versions of the same shot. Maybe one is cropped a little bit more, or one is black and white and the other color. I become confused: what is this photographer’s vision? Which image best conveys your sense of the subject? By seeing both versions, I don’t know which is the best effort and which the throwaway, and that steals the thunder from both of them.

One commentator to Magda Indigo’s blog post suggests that there should be a web site where people post only their greatest images. In my view, your audience would be well served if you treated whichever website you use to share your photos as just such a forum, one in which you post only those images that you feel to be among your best photos.

You may read Magda Indigo’s thoughts on this subject by clicking -HERE-.

I wanted to see more of Sam Jones’ work so I did a Google search on his name. I don’t know if it is the same Sam Jones (see the reader’s comment below), but I came across the website of a certain Sam Jones and looked at her work. I was struck by the way she does her head shots.

If you log onto Sam Jones’ website by clicking –HERE– and look at the bottom row of photographs, you will see three head shots. The second photo in the row is a color portrait of a woman, and Jones has included her entire head in the photograph. The last two images in the row, on the other hand, are head shots in which the top part of the subject’s head is cut off by the frame.

I have seen other photographers make similar compositions and I generally find such pictures disturbing.

Not to be dogmatic, however, in the photograph I call “Deep Thinker”, reproduced above, the subject’s whole face is not shown. In that instance, it was not possible for me to include the whole face, because “Deep Thinker” is a photograph of a child peering out from the small round window in a concrete castle on a playground, and in any event, I think this photo is successful with the close focus on the subject’s face.

In my view, with a traditional straight-on head shot, a composition I generally find dull in any event, to cut off the top of the subject’s head robs the image of closure.

To see my other portraits, click –HERE–

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Jeff Gatesman comments:

“Interesting dichotomy, using an image you shot with the head cut off at the top to illustrate how you don’t like that form of cropping. You explain why you cropped the child so close when, in fact, I think it is very powerful the way it is, without explanation. The emotion of this photo is all in the eyes and a little in the mouth; there seems to be no reason to include all of his head. The highlights of his face surrounded by the dark edges creates a moody kind of power. There is also a shallow depth of field here that I like.”

You may view Jeff’s photographs by visiting his website www.gatesman.com

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Another reader comments:

“The Sam Jones you’re interested in is at www.samjonespictures.com. He recently released a photo monograph “the here and now”. I am a wilco fan, and he shot and directed the wilco documentary from a few years ago — that’s how I got into his work!“

The reason I used Renaissance Acrobat in the article is that it served to illustrate my point about the limitations of digital cameras with respect to one’s ability to create an image with a short depth of field. I find Country Store, the other image in that article to be a much more compelling photograph.

I write this post because I am ambivalent about Renaissance Acrobat. I strive to show only my best work on this website and in my online Photo Gallery. I endeavor to create photographs that are emotionally compelling. I feel that Renaissance Acrobat falls short of this ideal. Nevertheless, I will retain the Renaissance Acrobat image on the overflow page of the post as an example of the point I was making.

The image in this post, Boys at Play, is a scan of a black and white photograph I created in a traditional wet darkroom. The negative for this image contains much more visual information than the print, however I used an Ilford Mutigrade filter on my enlarger which had the effect of creating the more posterized image you see here. I suppose one might be able to create a similar effect using the posterize feature in photoshop, but I don’t know if that would yield the same result with this image as I obtained using traditional photo processing techniques.

Given the posterized nature of this picture, one might argue that it is not a technically perfect representation of the subject. Nevertheless, for me, it is an effective photograph because, without fail, I have an intense emotional reaction every time I view Boys at Play.

The same can be said about “Robert Capa’s shots of the Normandy landing”, to give but one of the examples pointed out by Paul Indigo. Capa’s photograph of a soldier wading in the ocean towards the shore is blurry and grainy and by no means a technically perfect image, but it is one to which I have a strong emotional response. For me, this photograph successfully captures what it must have been like to be that soldier in that circumstance.

With Boys at Play my response is something akin to dread. But, being the father of two sons, I know that boys (and their dads) often engage in rough play, play that to an outside observer may appear to be something more sinister. I believe that Boys at Play is a successful image insofar as it captures the sinister-looking nature of the interaction between two boys.

You may view a larger version of Boys at Play by logging on to the Surreal Portraits Gallery at my online Photo Gallery at www.wmgphoto.com by clicking –here–

To view Paul Indigo’s blog post Great images may be techically flawed, click –here–

Robert Capa’s most famous Normandy landing photograph can be viewed –here–

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Paul Indigo comments:

“Interesting article and I appreciate the way you share your personal feelings about Boys at Play. The emotion in the image hits you straight away and photography is after all about communication, not slavishly following a set of dogmatic rules. I suppose the idea that you and I are trying to get across can be summed up in a simple question: ‘Do you want to be the best rule follower in the world or the best visual communicator?’”

Morrie Camhi has observed that: “There’s a sort of sickness that seems to have pervaded photographers. We talk photography to death! We get essays written about our work that precedes the pictures . . . . Then the photographer writes an artist’s statement. Then a critic writes an interpretation of the photographer’s statement, [] the introductory essay, and the pictures. . . .”

“Good God! By the time we’re through, the joyousness of the photograph has often gone. There’s so much esoteric hoo-haa talked about photography — particularly by critics.”

– Morrie Camhi, as quoted by Peter Adams in LensWork, No. 41, Jun-Jul 2002, at p. 59.

You may consider this web site my contribution to the esoteric hoo-haa. If you prefer just to see the photos, you may skip the words and go directly to the Gatesman Photo Gallery.