Creating an image. Second element. | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Our world is bound­less, mul­ti­fac­eted, and we are con­stant­ly sur­round­ed by space with dif­fer­ent mean­ings. But, for rea­sons unknown to us, so many pho­tog­ra­phers cre­ate work with­out con­sid­er­ing what sur­rounds the mod­el. The pho­tog­ra­pher’s nor­mal thought process is, “I’ll put the mod­el in front of this building/archway/bed/park/whatever, because such a solu­tion looks pretty/compositionally advan­ta­geous.” It so hap­pened that every­thing around us car­ries infor­ma­tion, and in pho­tog­ra­phy it’s a sin not to use this to enrich the con­tent and build the con­text of the frame.

The only thing that does not car­ry infor­ma­tion in the image is empti­ness. Usu­al­ly empti­ness is expressed through block­ages in black and over­ex­po­sure. Indeed, in the first case, the view­er does not see what is in the frame, and in the sec­ond he sees that there is noth­ing. How to stream­line the rest of the infor­ma­tion­al chaos of the image? Pret­ty sim­ple.

Space

To con­trol the con­di­tions in which the char­ac­ter is locat­ed, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er must con­sid­er the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

1. Tex­ture.

Depend­ing on the mate­r­i­al sur­round­ing the per­son por­trayed, we can reveal in more detail the state in which he is. Here it is nec­es­sary to choose a def­i­n­i­tion, which is sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred in the mind of the view­er to our hero of the frame. For exam­ple: a space of con­crete and glass cre­ates a cold, hard atmos­phere; wood­en — warm; space with a bunch of pil­lows or feath­erbeds — soft, ten­der; etc. Tak­ing into account the tex­ture of space, we can either build a har­mo­nious state of the char­ac­ter (hard in hard, gen­tle in ten­der, etc.) or cre­ate a con­trast: a cute lit­tle girl dressed in a light cot­ton dress with a soft toy in her hands and a com­pas­sion­ate emo­tion, placed in a cold / wild / hard space, will cre­ate a con­trast between the image and the envi­ron­ment, there­by high­light­ing the state of the char­ac­ter more clear­ly.

2. Time of cre­ation.

All peo­ple have a sense of “habit”. Those things to which we are accus­tomed, we expe­ri­ence a calmer atti­tude than to things that are new to us. Every­thing new must first be stud­ied by a per­son in order to be able to “feel” lat­er. That is why we per­ceive wood­en hous­es more warm­ly than new build­ings, although we under­stand that mod­ern tech­nolo­gies in con­struc­tion allow us to achieve a warmer and more reli­able space than build­ings made of wood using the tech­nolo­gies of the past.

By cap­tur­ing the por­trait dressed in a busi­ness suit against the back­drop of build­ings from the Sovi­et peri­od, we cre­ate the image of an ordi­nary office work­er who is going to work to feed his fam­i­ly. But if we show the same per­son in the same clothes against the back­drop of sky­scrap­ers, then we cre­ate a tougher char­ac­ter who earns big mon­ey and does seri­ous busi­ness.

Of course, there can be many inter­pre­ta­tions here depend­ing on the infor­ma­tion details entered into the frame, but the main thing to remem­ber is that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er must take into account the time of cre­ation of the space (epoch) and every­thing con­nect­ed with it in the mind of the view­er.

3. Sphere of use.

Often, pho­tog­ra­phers choose a shoot­ing space based on the fac­tor of acces­si­bil­i­ty, geom­e­try, pos­si­ble light­ing, col­or, or sim­ply aes­thet­ics, com­plete­ly for­get­ting that it is pos­si­ble to con­nect the cre­at­ed image with its sur­round­ings in mean­ing. Many spaces of our real­i­ty car­ry a cer­tain func­tion­al­i­ty: in some peo­ple live, in oth­ers they eat, in oth­ers they read, watch movies, and much more. For a deep­er and more reli­able con­struc­tion of the image in the frame, it is rec­om­mend­ed to select a space cor­re­spond­ing, let’s say, to the char­ac­ter’s pos­si­ble habi­tat.

Har­mo­ny is achieved sim­ply: it is only nec­es­sary to log­i­cal­ly cor­re­late the char­ac­ter with where he should be. It must, but it can­not. We can come to a glam par­ty in a tail­coat, which, of course, will look strange, but in order to achieve har­mo­ny in the visu­al image, it would be bet­ter for us to be at the soiree of a sec­u­lar soci­ety.

The con­trast is con­firmed by the ratio of the action of the char­ac­ter and the space where he is. If a pho­tog­ra­ph­er cap­tures a per­son mak­ing a fire and dressed in bag­gy clothes, hid­ing his face, in some dark alley, then an image of a social­ly dis­ad­van­taged hero who only wants to keep warm is cre­at­ed. But if the same char­ac­ter starts a fire against the back­drop of the city admin­is­tra­tion, then an image of an “anar­chist” going against the sys­tem is cre­at­ed.

All the above exam­ples are aimed at mak­ing you, dear read­er, under­stand that if you change even one detail in the frame, the whole sto­ry can change for the view­er. And, if the pho­tog­ra­ph­er does not spend enough effort and knowl­edge on think­ing through and cre­at­ing a char­ac­ter, then the sto­ry cap­tured in the frame may not be read at all. Which, alas, is what hap­pens to most of the visu­al con­tent on the Inter­net.

The ques­tion aris­es: what should be para­mount — space or char­ac­ter? Over time, each pho­tog­ra­ph­er will be able to answer this ques­tion for him­self, because some­one is more inter­est­ed in real­iz­ing the per­son­al­i­ty of the per­son being por­trayed due to the type, facial expres­sions, clothes and his actions cap­tured, while oth­ers are more inter­est­ed in reveal­ing the char­ac­ter due to the real­i­ties sur­round­ing him. But ide­al­ly, it is bet­ter not to sep­a­rate these con­cepts, since the view­er per­ceives them insep­a­ra­bly and, prac­ti­cal­ly, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.