What’s Your Preference?

Nathan deGargoyle · #1 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 09:15 PM

Early morning station - We're going to London

ExposureTime - 1/25 seconds
FNumber - 4.50
ExposureProgram - Manual control
MeteringMode - Multi-segment
Flash - Not fired
FocalLength - 32.00 mm

Then cropped and played with in GIMP

Sime · #2 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 09:25 PM

"welcome to London"

[I know... just getting in early!]

Colm Noonan · #3 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 09:26 PM

Hi there Nathan,

Nice depth to this shot, I'm still waiting for the lady to walk away from the camera. It's like a "moving still image".

wulf · #4 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:01 PM

I notice that the image is aligned so that the train is upright but verticals are increasingly skewed towards the left of the picture. Was that a conscious decision and, if so, what was the thinking behind it?

Wulf

Nathan deGargoyle · #5 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:20 PM

@Wulf:

A critic writes: This seminal image from deGargoyle is a savage critique of the Brown Britain years. The young woman is having to leave the North and travel to where the work and money is, every facet of her pain shown in her posture. The collapse of so******t values is shown by the verticals in the centre falling away the further you get to the left. The fact that the train has one door open but far away along the platform symbolises the difficulty of leaving home to find a (we hope) better life. This was the first of deGargoyles photographs to mark him out as the premier photojounalist / social commentator that we know him (or her) to be.

A photographer writes: That's my daughter and grandaughter witing for the London train as we went for a weekend in London.

Sometimes a photo is only a photo.

Nathan deGargoyle · #6 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:27 PM

Sorry, just listened to a critic saying that Gare St. Lazare, Paris, 1932, Man Jumping a Puddle, Cartier-Bresson is predicting the Second World War because there is a broken hoop in the foreground and a Jewish name on the wall so the jumping man must represent Europe jumping into an unknown future. And if any of that was in C-B's mind at the time I'm Adolf Hitler.

Nathan deGargoyle · #7 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:32 PM

And in answer to your perfectly sensible question that triggered my rant, No it wasn't intentional, I think it's a perspective thing. If I hadn't cropped the original it probably would show on both sides. I'll go and find the original and post it so we can have a look.

Nathan deGargoyle · #8 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 10:45 PM

And the carriage on the right has a major verticallity problem, but then it was early on a Saturday.

inkista · #9 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 11:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nathan deGargoyle

Sorry, just listened to a critic saying that Gare St. Lazare, Paris, 1932, Man Jumping a Puddle, Cartier-Bresson is predicting the Second World War because there is a broken hoop in the foreground and a Jewish name on the wall so the jumping man must represent Europe jumping into an unknown future. And if any of that was in C-B's mind at the time I'm Adolf Hitler.

Had the exact same thought.

Still, The Genius of Photography has been a pretty good documentary notwithstanding those kinds of "critiques." It had never occurred to me the upside-down inversion of a viewcamera could have an effect on composition until they brought up the issue.

Nathan deGargoyle · #10 (**permalink**) 11-12-2007, 11:21 PM

First one of these I'd seen, but that bit really bugged me.

The one intereisting idea I got was that C-B didn't go looking for the shot, he found the space for the shot to happen in then waited for it to happen. That sort of patience has to come from using film rather than digital surely?