Saturday, May 09, 2009

Photography Preference

Recently, Dad and I shared photos of our recent trips to Beijing and Bali respectively. After a few minutes of looking at mine, he exclaims why none my photos had "humans" but scenery after scenery.

In stark contrast, 99% of his photos had pictures of everyone in his tour group. Never mind that pictures of the people took up 80% of the photo with a few slivers of the background to give you a hint of where they were posing in front of. "You'd want to take proof that you were actually there at the Forbidden City".

True. I mean, how can I lay claim via photographic evidence that I was actually in Bali?

However, I still prefer scenery photos. Maybe I'm reading too many photography newsletters and taking it as an "art" rather than photos for memories sake. Maybe for our next outing, I'll attempt to incorporate ourselves into the photos.

My boss concludes me as having low self confidence by not wanting to see/show photos of myself when I went through the photos at work. Probably. I wince when I see photos of myself, just like when I listen back to my recorded voice.

So just out of curiousity, what types of photos do you normally take?

5 comments:

grace said...

Well, if you are the photographer, it is less likely for you to appear in photos. I usually take more scenic ones but again, lately I have been including myself in some of them, just to say, "Hey! I've been here!"

ron said...

haha I'm the same - I don't like "humans" spoiling the photo. When my Italian language class was touring Venice once I was entrusted as the photographer. At the end of the trip when the teacher took the camera back and looked through them (transferred to cd so that everyone in the class could have a copy) she commented "there is hardly anyone from the class in the photos - they're all scenery!" Funny, I didn't pick that up at all when I was photographing!

Kelvin said...

I wouldn't read too much about what your boss said to be honest. There is no right or wrong way to photograph; it's a combination of your purpose and preference. I take pictures for memories. Sometimes it's to capture how beautiful something was to me, sometimes it's to remember the people that I was with. My natural tendency is take pictures of scenery because it's usually easier. Scenery doesn't move. Taking people shots are hard - which is why I think Grace's photos are particularly impressive. It's capturing a particular moment or expression that when you miss it, you miss it. I've been trying a bit harder to capture some people pic more these days.

jo said...

kelvin, i completely agree! i can stand at a particular spot and keep snapping until i'm happy with the shot and the scene won't really change in front of me.

taking photos of humans are the hardest and like you said, grace takes fantastic shots of people's expressions. i tried a few but can't seem to quite catch the essence of the person.

grace, that's true too. i'm just not comfortable leaving my camera/photo in the hands of someone else. hahaha... so controlling.

ron, so did they superimpose photos of the students in your venice trip?

ron said...

No! It really wasn't totally my fault coz they started walking in groups etc and some were shy when I took pics. Besides the buildings and faded look of the entire city totally captivated me (even if I'd been there once before back in '02 with Orsino!)