Showing posts with label Robin Kelsey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Robin Kelsey. Show all posts

Saturday, January 2, 2021

Tumbling dice

According to my iPad, I did not complete a single book in 2020. I didn't know it kept track of information like that, but in any event, I've resolved to do better this year. I was flipping through one of the books I didn't finish this year, Robin Kelsey's "Photography and the Art of Chance". It's an academic text, and I've started reading it more than once. Maybe this year I can actually stick with it...

How many times would you have to throw three balls in the air and photograph them to end up with an image in which the balls are in more or less a straight line? A few times, probably. You can read up on John Baldessari to see how the results of these studies turned out. I am not being dismissive, I just think there are other meaningful ways that chance and disorder can impact an image. In other words, we're not done yet with this topic. 

Since the time of Julia Margaret Cameron, the material accidents of photography have been used to great effect by some artists. A contemporary example would be Sally Mann. Pulling this off successfully can be a lot harder than it sounds.

Slightly missing focus is a good example, I think. But out of focus blur (bokeh) depends on multiple factors, making it hard to control perfectly in a photograph. So maybe chance can play a role here as well? 


For this image, I photographed the roses with the optically most perfect lens I own, but at its closest focus distance and wide open at f/1.2. I chose where to stand, how to frame, and where to focus, but the arrangement of the flowers and the distance of the vase to the window were not determined by me.