The second training method

Imagine you're on a street corner looking for photos and you see a man standing by you. The words on his shirt are a perfect anagram of the words on a poster nearby. You line up to take the photo but then you realize that's not it. If you walk a little to your left the cursive script of the T-shirt becomes a match for the dread hairdo of the lady behind him. But wait. That's not it either. It's the loose hang of the shirt below his crotch. If you look at it in just the right light it makes him appear to float above the people around him. That's the photo. Or is it? There's a photo there but where?

Street photographers often encounter ambiguous situations. The exact same scene can be several things depending on how it's shot. It's hard to tell what's important but you need to decide quickly, and sometimes the situation isn't even clear until afterward looking at the image when something appears that you didn't notice on the scene.

Getting a sense of which patterns are important and which ones aren't is a difficult skill. The best method of skill training is of course to go out and do it. Make street photographs, lots of them.

I think the second best training method is the game SET. Twelve cards are laid out and the situation is ambiguous. You need to find patterns but you don't know which ones to look for. Seen one way a card fits a certain pattern. Seen another way it falls into another group. It's only after being solved that the right pattern becomes clear. You don't know what to look for until after you've found it.



Does this sound like street photography? The skills are remarkably similar, and in fact they cross over. During periods when I'm playing a lot of SET I tend to see photos better, and vice versa. I think SET belongs in every street photographer's bag.

SET can be played solo, with a partner, or in a group. It fits in your pocket. It's highly addictive. It might make a good gift for that special photographer friend this holiday season. Or if you're stuck at your computer, an online version is here (Play advanced version 4 for best results).

Old New Topographics

It's hard to overstate the historic influence of 1975's New Topographics show at George Eastman House. The show crystalized a seismic shift in landscape photography which is still reverberating more than three decades later. What's more, the show was amazingly perceptive in predicting future stars at a young age. Adams, Baltz, The Bechers, Deal, Goehlke, Nixon, Shore, Wessel. All have gone on to become superstars but at the time they were what we nowadays would call emerging artists. To collect them all in a bunch back then is like having a rookie card with Williams, Dimaggio, Robinson, Mantle, Musial, and Satchel Paige all in one.

As has happened with other cultural artifacts from the seventies, the thirty year itch is now beginning to kick in. A newly curated retrospective is on its way around the world. Blogs are beginning to give shoutouts. At the end of the month, Steidl will publish a book dealing with the show and its aftermath.

New Topographics, Baby! Coming to a gallery near you...
The original show catalog is long out of print and it will cost you several hundred dollars to track it down. For those unable to find a copy, Steidl's new book will indeed be welcome. The only risk of the new publication is that, as with so many new constructions from music CDs to buildings to photobooks, there is a danger that history will be paved over in the process of reinterpretation. For those curious to see it, here is the original catalog in its entirety.

What To Do? #51

151. Chicago El, 2006

152. Chicago El, 2006

153. Chicago El, 2006

(WTD? is a weekly installment of old unseen b/w photos)

Subject matter? Yes, it does.

These photography tips by "Thomas: professional photographer" are hilarious. As with all great satire the closer it models reality the funnier it becomes. In this case, the Thomas photos look very much like actual examples of fine art photography.

Left: Songs of Sentient Beings #1595, 1995 by Bill Jacobson,
Right: Self portrait by Thomas

from The Sky Book by Richard Misrach

Sunset From My Rooftop by Thomas
OK, granted the second example might be stretching it. But anyway, contemporary photography is such a ripe target for parody I'm surprised not to see more sites like this. Come on all you photographers. Why so serious? It's ok to laugh at yourself once in a while.

Thanks to Richard for the tip.