twenty-six things

[amanda]

Twenty-six things is a photographic scavenger hunt. I stumbled across the site ( www.sh1ft.org/26things/ ) from another blogger a few weeks ago and, not one to turn down any excuse to lug my camera around a bit more, decided to try my hand at it. I used the same list of twenty-six the blogger used, which was an archived set from September 2004:

frame, glass, arrow, numbers, small, open, fruit, wheel, plastic, cover, natural, saturday,
multi-coloured, home, shadow, sticky, clean, foot, sport, round, group, man made, half, path, full, the end

and came up with twenty-six pictorial interpretations:
beta.zooomr.com/smartsets/17714@Z01/2667

(sorry. i can't seem to fix the link. but a quick copy and paste should do the trick.)

[Jeff]

I really like your photographs, Amanda. Jenn and I looked through everything you put up on zooomr. The thing that I like best about your work is your attempt to rehabilitate the ordinary. (I take it this is why your blog is called exotic yet ordinary.) I think of shots like the soft bubblegum against the grainy brick. As disgusting as ABC gum is, you actually made it look inviting in comparison to its harsh surroundings. Not that I would chew it or anything!

Your cemetery set was interesting. My favorite was “Flower.” While I think I understand your odd angles on some of the wide shots, I’m not sure it worked. Perhaps a bit obvious.

Overall my favorite shot was “Grain Bin.” I am not great at photography criticism, but to my eye, this shot is firing on all cylinders. First, it is part of your project to rehabilitate our ordinary small town hometown. Second, it is an old object no longer in use. Third, it’s an object no one really sees from this angle. Fourth, the composition is dead on. Every space is clearly enclosed yet suggestive of every other. In other words, there is definition and suggestion at the same time, as if the spaces themselves were creative. Finally, the color and focus are just right here. My second favorite shot of yours is Doors. It works for me for very similar reasons.

My biggest criticism of your work, and it is rather small in retrospect, is that sometimes your focus (and color composition) are a little off. The focus problem is the biggest, and I think it really works against some of your shots of reflections, which you seem to like a great deal. I think I see what you are trying to do. You want the viewer to see both parts (or all parts) of the shot. But what winds up happening is that the viewer can’t see anything clearly. Some shots that have this problem are DSC_0069, Home, and Sunflowers.

About the shots from Chris’s movie: I found myself wishing really hard that the good-looking guy had been the villain and the burley man had been the hero. In real life I think that interestingness and goodness vary inversely with good looks. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s a rule I’ve generally found to be true.

Anyway, I am just happy when my friends show me some new way to see the world. For the rest of today I think I’ll have the feeling of seeing through your eyes. Wow, art is cool!

Jeff

[chris]

I finally had a good period of time to sit down and really look at Amanda's 26 Things, and I'm quite bowled over. Not only are there a host of good photographs here, but the sheer variety is astounding. I'm not sure that there is any image that could be put next to any other and draw the conclusion that they came from the same set (with the possible exception of "Frame" and "Numbers"... but even they are fundamentally different). Art scavenger hunts tend to inspire laziness in the quest for fulfilling the list ("oh, they want a square... here's a square... take a picture... let's go..."). Amanda clearly resisted that tendancy, and the results deserve serious comment.

Jeff has started this, but I'm going to try to take it one step further and comment on each of the 26, and then on Amanda's work as a whole. Probably can't do it all in one day, but we'll see...

Before that, though, let me make a couple of comments on Jeff's post. "Grain Bin" is indeed one of the exceptional pieces in her "Postcards" set. It reminds me of an abstract painting I saw in an art history book I have (the name of the painting escapes me). I wonder on the composition though -- thinking purely abstractly, the white area at the top of the image seems to unbalance it somehow, or at least in conjunction with the large "rust-colored" shapes (again, purely abstractly) at the bottom of the frame. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but something does feel unbalanced about it to me.

Next comment: I disagree about the use of selective focus in her images. Amanda's executing one of the most powerful tools in a photographer's toolkit, and I think, overall, she does it well. I think "Home" is a very good image, especially in conjunction with its title. We're given two elements of "home": the physical house/yard, and the family. Maya is framed within the reflected shadows of the yard, almost peeking out around the outward sign of home. And since she's the clear focus (in both senses of the word) of the picture, it's clear what the image is trying to say about which of the two elements is really fundamental to the concept of "home" that the image is trying to put across. And the joy in Maya's eyes says all you need to know about what feeling lies behind the glass.

And last comment for now: regarding the shots from Indian Girl, you've touched on an aspect of casting that I agonized over for a while. I really had only a few choices for the actors for that segment, and it came down to: do I want to cast to type (i.e., well-dressed fellow is the good guy, etc.), or do I want to cast against type? In the end, I chose the former, and part of me wishes I hadn't and maybe found some way to surprise the viewer with their own expectations. Maybe next time.

[chris]

And now... to overanalyze these photos to death. 8^) I'm trying to look at these photos (for the most part) outside of the strictures of the 26 Things list; i.e., I'm trying to look at them as individual images, not as "answers" to an assignment. Let's go in the order Amanda listed for the 26 things:

frame, glass, arrow, numbers, small, open, fruit, wheel, plastic, cover, natural, saturday,
multi-coloured, home, shadow, sticky, clean, foot, sport, round, group, man made, half, path, full, the end

Frame: I believe this was from the "Postcards from Cowtown" series. First off, it's compositionally sound in that we're not straight on dead in the middle -- you've put the frame toward the left third of the image. The colors are really what stand out about all your "bricks of Pawhuska" pics -- those reds are not quite natural, not quite unnatural. They're stylistic... and cool. Keeping the grass at the bottom keeps it from being a solid abstract mass of red; I think that's a good thing in this case.

Glass: What in heaven's name is that? Well, whatever it is, by the choice of framing, it looks like a floating glass ball, which is very cool. There are several compositional principles at work here: first is the simple notion that whatever's in focus will draw our eye first, regardless of its position in the frame; second is the balance of the photograph, which is saved from unbalance by the fuzzy cat on the left side. But we are definitely drawn to the right side of the frame; just as the cat's gaze seems to be drawn for some reason to the ball (or at least in its direction), so is ours.

Arrow: This is so "Last Picture Show." Here we see black and white (toned a bit sepia) really capturing the aging of something. The image is an almost confusing melange of shapes. It's interesting that (at least to me) the parts of this picture that really stand out are the star and the arrow, and that the reason they stand out is because they're covered with dots (abstractly speaking). I might have framed it a little tighter -- I think the bare white sign at the bottom distracts from the rest.

Numbers: What an interesting image. It's just a wall with numbers, but in this image, there's more: first off, we have line after line, all converging far past the left edge of the frame, suggesting that the numbers go on, and on, and on... And the minimal simplicity (along with the aforementioned natural/unnatural reds) of the image makes it almost other-worldly. And what the heck are these numbers for? Parking? I don't know, what is evoked for me is almost something out of an Orwell novel... order for order's sake.

Small: Girl, cut those fingernails. This is one of the more basic of the shots, and probably one of the few where Amanda went the "finish the list route," but then I could very well be wrong. That said, I think the picture does find the right balance between making the dinosaur head too small in the frame (thus making it tough to see what you're holding) and making it too big in the frame (thus negating the intended theme of "small").

Open: An exemplary example of "framing within the frame." It really gets across the idea of "open" in two ways: first, you can't fully suggest openness unless you show the "container" that's being opened (in this case, the house or whatever she's in), and by having it occupy the top third of the frame, the enclosure is really well invoked; second, the blackness of the inside contrasts very well with the brightness of the outside -- seeing any detail of the interior of the building would have made for a completely different photograph. On a picky note... that one tiny horizonal rectangle of blue over the door (the upper left hand corner of the door-frame) annoys me.

Fruit: Very nice -- colors, focus, lines (i.e., lines suggested by the borders between the different fruits). And I really like how the background is more uniform (even lines of red, orange, green...) than the foreground, where the pattern is broken by a box, and a not-as-organized pile of red, yellow and green.

That's enough BS for now... more later...

[Jeff]

Hey Amanda,

I hope my comments from the other day didn’t sound harsh. I meant them to be flattering! I love your work. Numbers is my third favorite of your pictures. I love the suggestion of stratification there and the implicit reference to intellectual strata. Great stuff. I even think that your selective focus technique works in the photograph called “Round.”

Anyway, if I sounded callous, I apologize. I grew up in an emotional warzone, so I tend to be a little numb and always misjudge how my remarks will be taken.

Jeff