Tight

I’ve received several comments from several different sources over the last couple of months about some of my photographs being shot too tight. Sometimes I fully agree. At other times I’m not so sure. Take this one for example. Personally I really like the fact that the two main characters don’t quite fit into the frame (and I especially like the policeman’s foot not being there). It lends a certain character to the shot that I feel would be lost if they we both completely in shot. The things I don’t particularly like about this picture are the space over their heads and the fact that the background is in focus. The latter fault is one of the pitfalls of a point-and-shoot camera, and there’s not a lot that can be done about it, but if I really had to change something about it’d be the loss of some of the empty space above their heads. Funny also that the classic faux pas that nobody picked up on this one is the lamppost growing out of the cowboy’s head. Oh well. I’m always interested to hear criticism, but sometimes it seems to me that there’s no reason for the criticism other than that’s sort of what’s supposed to be said. I realise that as a still relatively inexperienced photographer I have little defence for my work, and that one of my main objectives over the next few months of the course is to produce a body of work that pushes all the right buttons. The late saxophonist John Coltrane continues to be criticised in many circles for his later work because to them it sounds like he’s simply making a racket. Firstly, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with a racket, but for me the thing that makes John Coltrane ultimately listenable is that he spent years playing his soprano and tenor saxophones in a more traditional way and was by all accounts one of the finest saxophonists around. It’s back to the old cliché again of not being able to break the rules if you don’t know what the rules are, and I suppose one of the main reasons for doing this course is to learn what the rules are. I’m very serious about this, even to the point that I really want to learn how to shoot classic, almost boring photography, which will provide me with both a base and a reason to branch out. I’m waffling again, but I do just want to get this down and on the record. If the tightness of my photography is my trademark mistake then so be it. There are other mistakes in my work, and sometimes I see them as the humanising factor of my photography. I need to work harder on my mistakes until I’ve got them all absolutely perfect.