ku # 521 ~ POV
Monday, June 9, 2008 at 12:11PM 
Blossoming bush • click to embiggenFor whatever reason of late, I have been "seeing" a lot of possibilities lately, photography-wise. I attribute most of this awareness to just the change in seasons. Spring and the life it brings is busting out all over - it's quite a change from the monochromatic paradigm of winter.
All of the possibilities that I am seeing, I see as series of pictures - i.e., bodies of related work. In a way, this comes at a bad time for me in as much as I am fully committed to my decay & disgust and picture windows work - not to mention shaving a few more strokes off my golf handicap - 6 is better than 8). I really don't have the time for a new series or two. So, maybe I can pass along a few ideas for those of you looking for something to sink your teeth into.
The Art world is always looking for a fresh or new and interesting take on things. Sometimes that means a body of work gains attention even though, over time, it will not possess much staying power. Usually that is the case because the 'new take' owes more to technique than content. But, often enough, someone will come along and adopt/adapt the technique and match it to good content and something really worth looking at and considering emerges.
In any event, if I had the time, I'd be putting a ladder (instead of the usual canoe or two) on my car's roof rack. The idea of picturing any number of referents from an elevated POV seems worth trying. To my knowledge, this approach is somewhat novel and, IMO, there quite a few "things" that could be interesting to see, in a series, from that POV.
A POV that is rarely explored - photographers in droves have squatted and/or put their cameras at ground level but only a handful have reached for the sky. And I don't mean picturing from rooftops or upper floor windows. What I mean is an elevated perspective that is visually just a little "off" from usual waist to eye-level height that is so common.
As for what to picture, if anyone likes the idea, pick what interests you .... but .... it's worth keeping this little bit of timeless wisdom in mind:
Everything has it's beauty, but not everyone sees it. - Confucius
Now that I think about, a 10 ft. ladder and a canoe can easily fit on my roof rack.
gravitas et nugalis
Featured Comment: several commenters mentioned that St. Ansel had a car top camera platform from which he pictured various scenes - a fact that I know to be accurate. One commenter, Tom Frost, suggested that therefore picturing from an elevated POV was not "new".
my response: Let me be more precise re: elevated POV - Adams, I'm sure amongst many others, did picture from an elevated POV but what he did not do is create a body of work that specifically focused on that technique. Nor did he, as my picture entry from yesterday suggests, elevate his POV in order to picture in a downward direction - a semi-bird's eye POV.
What I was suggesting was/is simply this - a slightly elevated POV with camera pointed downward towards near/close-in 'intimate' scenes / objects. A sort of look at what's at your feet if you were 10-12 feet tall kind of thing.
FYI, I am not claiming that this idea is "new" in the it's never been done before sense of the word. What am suggesting, though, is that I am not familiar with any bodies of work that specifically exploit this technique - which, of course, does not mean that they don't exist, just that I am not familiar with any.
Victor Bloomfield's link to Dave Beckerman's camera elevation doohickey thingamajig and his pictures using it are much closer to the idea I had in mind. Thanks Victor.
And, thanks for all of your comments and feedback.
Reader Comments (6)
I believe you are correct on the change of seasons, I can go back to the same location every week and see a different shot.
This elevated perspective is just what Dave Beckerman has been doing recently in his B&W Photography blog about New York City. See
http://beckermanphoto.com/2008/06/06/b-ball-96th-street/
Last year when the Misses asked what I wanted as a holiday gift I quickly replied: "A scissor lift." Self-propelled, about 20 feet high, knobby wheels, and a camera platform should do it. Maybe this year.
That's funny; I've been thinking about putting a step ladder on top of the car for a while now. In fact in the recent series I've been doing on mankind's attitudes toward the landscape, Sagrado/Profanado (Sacred/Profane), I climbed a couple of time up onto "the Ansel", otherwise known as my car's roofrack, to get a shot. It just seems like lately I keep thinking "If I could only get up a few feet higher it'd be a better shot".
Ansel Adams had a platform mounted on top of his big blaster International. The picture, I think it's called Clearing Storm, Mt Williamson (big rock in foreground, Sierra peaks wreathed with clouds) was taken from there. Google "Ansel Adams car" and at least a few on the first page, including a link to the NY Times, will bring up pictures of the big poseur you love to disparage doing what you think is new.
I've dented the top of my car more times than I'd care to let the insurance people know.
It's certainly not new, but I've been putting my tripod on top of a plywood platform on top of the roof rack on top of my E250 van for several years now - when called for in my courthouse series - which puts me up around the 12 foot range. But it was only about a month ago that I was prodded by a "client" to get a more elevated view, so added a mount on the top of an 8 foot step ladder so I could attach the Linhof. The problem is, once you've gotten that high, you want to get a little bit higher still. Maybe a 10 foot or 12 foot, as you suggest? I'm still working on a mount to clamp onto the 28 foot extension ladder hanging in the garage.