civilized ku # 123 ~ empty space filled with details
Monday, November 10, 2008 at 08:57AM 
Recently vacated parking spot ~ Philadelphia, Pa. • click to embiggenLast weekend it was Montreal. This weekend it was Philadelphia / South New Jersey. Later this week, it's NYC (for the opening of Aaron's show). I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round that won't stop.
In any event, everywhere I go, there I am and with cameras at the ready, there's always something to grab the eye.
A picture should draw you on to admire it, not show you everything at a glance. After a satisfactory general effect, beauty after beauty should unfold itself, and they should not all shout at once . . . This quality [mystery] has never been so much appreciated in photography as it deserved. The object seems to have been always to tell all you know.. This is a great mistake. Tell everything to your lawyer, your doctor, and your photographer (especially your defects when you have your portrait taken, that the sympathetic photographer may have a chance of dealing with them), but never to your critic. He much prefers to judge whether that is a boathouse in the shadow of the trees, or only a shepherd's hut. We all like to have a bit left for our imagination to play with. Photography would have been settled a fine art long ago if we had not, in more ways than one, gone so much into detail. We have always been too proud of the detail of our work and the ordinary detail of our processes. - Henry Peach Robinson
IMO, the ability of the medium of photography to capture details is a big part of what it's all about. The medium's ability to do so is so much a part of its intrinsic and inimitable relationship with the real. But, that said, if your pictures are all about the details, maybe you should consider a career in CAD (computer aided design).
Reader Comments (1)
I can relate to that, I am now writing this from Cocoa Beach Florida. Wifey and I had to come down here on family business, it seems the mobile home was damaged more then we were told from a storm this past summer. My son found it when he came back to go to school. So we are here to buy another one and possibly take his dog back home to NY if the parks don't allow BIG dogs. But also we will try to turn this into a pleasure trip with plenty of photo ops.