Chicago & Savannah: Photo-ops
Action
Josh and I in Millenium Park, Chicago.
Cloud Gate at Millennium Park, Chicago.
On September 18th, I was in Savannah, Georgia for the wedding of Jen and Alex. Their wedding ceremony lasted a simple and sweet twenty minutes. The wedding party spent at least one and a half hours before the wedding and half an hour after the wedding being photographed in a variety of poses and groupings. I took this one of Stacey after the ceremony.
Jen and Alex in the back of the trolley that transported the wedding party from the wedding to the reception. With this photo, I was attempting to pay homage to the last scene of “The Graduate.”
Reflection
So what do all these photos have in common? They’re all examples of places and events that facilitate photography as an activity. Millennium Park seems designed to create photo-ops. There were interesting sculptures and walkways with the skyline of Chicago providing a backdrop. Josh and I took more pictures walking around the park for half an hour than we did the two days we were in Ann Arbor. The picturesque nature of the place reinforced photo-taking as an activity. It became a social activity as well, with people offering to take pictures of one another. I also suspect that places designed for photo-ops generate tourism. I’ve gone to places that I’ve recognized from friends’ photo albums and then attempted to recreate their snapshots myself. Soon I imagine people will go to Millennium Park to replicate the delightful pictures Josh and I (and millions of other visitors) have taken there. Relatedly, my photo of Alex and Jen emulates a scene from a movie, rather than a friends’ photo album.
The wedding photos are a variation on the theme of picture taking as an activity in itself. A professional photographer took most of the photos that day, though, so they are of a higher quality than the average snapshot taken in Millennium Park. As much of our visit to Millennium Park was taken up with the activity of taking photos, during the wedding day, taking photos was a significant activity of the day.
Second, the Millennium Park photos and the wedding photos are rather artificial or at least non-representative of what they’re trying to represent. For example, the photos of Josh and I in Chicago don’t really represent what we did in Chicago. While we spent some time with our arms around each other smiling, we did much more than that. Similarly, wedding photos capture an artificial reality created by perfectly fitting gowns, professional hair styling and make-up complemented by scenic locales. The photo doesn’t really capture the love between Jennifer and Alex anymore than our photos with the Chicago skyline capture our travels. Yet, looking at these photos one immediately recognizes “Tourists in Chicago” and “Young Couple Ready to Spend Their Lives Together.”
Question
So if the photos don’t capture an actual moment, but rather an artificial one, why do we tend to frame these photos? What makes something a Photo-Op? How often do you take pictures? Do you consider photography a hobby of yours? Is there a difference between photography as activity, as hobby, and as art?
Josh and I in Millenium Park, Chicago.
Cloud Gate at Millennium Park, Chicago.
On September 18th, I was in Savannah, Georgia for the wedding of Jen and Alex. Their wedding ceremony lasted a simple and sweet twenty minutes. The wedding party spent at least one and a half hours before the wedding and half an hour after the wedding being photographed in a variety of poses and groupings. I took this one of Stacey after the ceremony.
Jen and Alex in the back of the trolley that transported the wedding party from the wedding to the reception. With this photo, I was attempting to pay homage to the last scene of “The Graduate.”
Reflection
So what do all these photos have in common? They’re all examples of places and events that facilitate photography as an activity. Millennium Park seems designed to create photo-ops. There were interesting sculptures and walkways with the skyline of Chicago providing a backdrop. Josh and I took more pictures walking around the park for half an hour than we did the two days we were in Ann Arbor. The picturesque nature of the place reinforced photo-taking as an activity. It became a social activity as well, with people offering to take pictures of one another. I also suspect that places designed for photo-ops generate tourism. I’ve gone to places that I’ve recognized from friends’ photo albums and then attempted to recreate their snapshots myself. Soon I imagine people will go to Millennium Park to replicate the delightful pictures Josh and I (and millions of other visitors) have taken there. Relatedly, my photo of Alex and Jen emulates a scene from a movie, rather than a friends’ photo album.
The wedding photos are a variation on the theme of picture taking as an activity in itself. A professional photographer took most of the photos that day, though, so they are of a higher quality than the average snapshot taken in Millennium Park. As much of our visit to Millennium Park was taken up with the activity of taking photos, during the wedding day, taking photos was a significant activity of the day.
Second, the Millennium Park photos and the wedding photos are rather artificial or at least non-representative of what they’re trying to represent. For example, the photos of Josh and I in Chicago don’t really represent what we did in Chicago. While we spent some time with our arms around each other smiling, we did much more than that. Similarly, wedding photos capture an artificial reality created by perfectly fitting gowns, professional hair styling and make-up complemented by scenic locales. The photo doesn’t really capture the love between Jennifer and Alex anymore than our photos with the Chicago skyline capture our travels. Yet, looking at these photos one immediately recognizes “Tourists in Chicago” and “Young Couple Ready to Spend Their Lives Together.”
Question
So if the photos don’t capture an actual moment, but rather an artificial one, why do we tend to frame these photos? What makes something a Photo-Op? How often do you take pictures? Do you consider photography a hobby of yours? Is there a difference between photography as activity, as hobby, and as art?
4 Comments:
At 12:17 PM, Jen said…
I actually tend to like non-posed photos the most.
Alex takes photos every day. He has a photo blog he started recently - shots of the ordinary really. http://hepcatdaily.blogspot.com
Why do we frame photos that don't represent reality? Not sure - maybe it's how we want reality to be, or how we want to remember a moment. Maybe we understand that it's really just a symbol of the event, like a stick figure is a recognizable symbol of a person, though it in no way truly represents a person.
And like you mentioned ... you can look at a person's photo, and then go to the place and instantly recognize it. It's a way of making the world a little smaller, and feeling closer to a person because you get to see the world in the way they see it ... different people choose to frame photos different ways, or to take photos of different things. It's a window into our brains.
I keep meaning to learn how to use my camera . . . with all the neat settings . . . but I never got around to it.
At 8:01 AM, brooklynzoo said…
yay travel log! i'm looking forward to reading your stories. i find that some of my favourite photographs, and the ones that people comment on most ("oh, that's a nice photo!") are really random ones that i take, for example, while riding my bike. digital cameras change everything. now i take my camera with me everyone, taking hundreds of photos without worrying about using up film/cost of film. it is funny how tourists will head to certain famous spots, just to get the photo. and so many of them do it...traveling quite some distance, only to stay at the famous spot for a short moment, time enough to get the photo and stare for a while (traveling to the big red rock in the middle of australia really made me think about this). it's like we want to add these photos to our collection, then when looking through them people will recognize the spot. some of the other more abstract photos that we take, like of neat patterns in the sidewalk, aren't place-specific....they wouldn't be recognized as a certain location, they could be taken in any city. but what gets me the most about photography, is the tradition of professional family photos. often with fake backgrounds, and cheesey fake poses. i would always cringe when my mom decided that it was time to go to Sear's for a new family photograph. being the youngest, i always had to be in front (chin up, shoulders back, usually someone's hand rested on my shoulder). then my family and all our relatives would exchange these, mailing them to each other, showing that we all had these good families. i remember my friend's family decided to all wear matching clothes - their theme was "jeans", so they all had on jeans, and jean jackets. hah. my family wasn't cool enough to come up with a theme. but i remember my mom putting blush on my cheeks before the photo when i was a lil kid - ewww.
At 8:01 AM, brooklynzoo said…
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
At 12:40 AM, Justin said…
My first attempts at writing this came off sounding like Marshall McCullan minus the cool layouts that were way ahead of his time. Most of what I plan on writing seems to be colored by spending large chunks of time and close quarters with my friends who are art gallery owners schooled in Buhdism.
To have a true moment documented someone must have removed themself from it. The artificial picture is more of a prossess to make a shared memory than true documentation. Unless an AP press photographer has been employed (my friends did that for their wedding and it worked real well) a certin artificialness and ego of the photographer and the subjects is going to be aparent in the picture. The artificial picture is almost about taking the picture and not the final output. First of all, we like to look at ourselves, vanity in moderation is a good thing. Prepairing for having a picture is all about you for that moment. You get to choose to affect somthing. It is a safe moment for light experamentation and reflection. The act of using a camera is fun also, you have to think within some limitations for field, take in the colors and light, figure out what you can change to make it better and then get it all together at just that right moment. There is the joy of doing somthing for everyone involved.
I'm not sure when a photo-op really is besides an aestetic point to share a memory. There are a lot of people I know that take obsessive amounts of pictures, to the point where I don't bother with a camera if they are there. A lot of the pictures are lit badly and have minimal composition but still capture somthing and are interesting. My favorate pictures of my self are the ones where I am working on somthing and they ask me to look up. There I am sharing a moment with them as I warm up playing tuba or fix a set of fire fans. Second to that I like the pictures of me doing somthing cool. There are many pictures of me playing music or spinning fire. I'm doing my thing and can't be stopped so the composition is usualy off being blured or the lighting is bad. The pictures arn't as engaging as when I'm sharing a brief moment with the photographer.
I don't consider my self to be a photo hobbyist. It never occures to me to have any pictures taken with my friends and loved ones, everything else that catches my eye just comes off as kind of random and abstract if not dull when I do take pictures with out a defanit subject. Also I'm afraid that I will end up like my mom with albums full of pictures of my cats. I do have a friend who takes almost William Wegmanesq picures of her dogs so not all obsessive pet pictures are a sign of crazy...
Art, in my defanition is both in the prossess and the understanding. So yes, hobby pictures are defanitly art. The end pieces can be transforming, imbued with meaning and the compositions can be analised critcaly with the standard tools of balance, color and contrast. Or I can look at the grainy, low light picture my mom took of one of her cats sitting on a book and understand what she was seeing in it and enjoy that just as much.
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