09-FEB-2006
Vantage Point, Protestant Cemetery, Silver Reef, Utah, 2006
If ever there was a perfect example to demonstrate the principle of photographic vantage point, this is it. Normal people might think it odd to find someone sprawled in the dirt of a cemetery, but then expressive photographers are not considered normal people. We see in abstract and incongruous ways, and it often requires vantage points such as this one to make our cameras see as our eyes and minds see. The photographer getting dirty here is pbase artist Tim May. (
http://www.pbase.com/mityam ) Tim and I have made photographs together in New Mexico, San Diego, Mexico, Yosemite, the Sierra, Laos, and we were together for this shot as well, part of a week long joint exploration of Zion National Park and the Mohave Desert. There is an old saying in photography: “where you stand determines what you will say.” In this case, Tim may not be standing, but his image will almost certainly have something to say about the final resting place of one William Shelton. He also gave me a chance to make this shot, which turned out to be not only a powerful reminder of the importance of vantage point, but also a strongly incongruous picture in its own right.
07-SEP-2005
Boardwalk, Plitvice National Park, Croatia, 2005
Sixteen blue and green lakes, stacked one underneath another, are linked by foaming cascades and pounding waterfalls at Plitvice, a Unesco World Heritage site in the Istria region of Croatia. Visitors can get a close-up view from boardwalks that carry them across marshes and along the lakeshores. The lakes flow into each other through a deep valley, with forested hills on all sides. As I walked along one of the hills, I could see one of the lakes emptying into another at the very spot where a boardwalk provided a classic “s” curve from one corner to another. All I needed to do was to wait for a few people to walk through my curve, and this pair soon obliged. From this high vantage point, the unique character of Plitvice becomes evident -- an ever-changing fluid landscape, created by water, gravity, limestone, and time.
18-JAN-2005
Main Street, Huay Xai, Laos, 2005
To express the scale and flavor of this rough and rugged Mekong River town on the Thai-Laotian border, I chose a high camera position. Shooting in late afternoon from the second floor balcony of our old hotel, I was able to define the textures of this dusty little place – from it’s rusted corrugated roofs to its street of packed dirt. I contrast the open space of the street to the well-used trucks that flank it, and waited for a motorbike to enter the frame before taking the picture. Without that motorbike, the picture is not as expressive.
The Face of Burma, Bagan, Myanmar, 2005
This girl takes her appearance seriously. She has carefully painted her face in Thanaka paste, Burma’s traditional makeup, and added lipstick and two flower for accents. Chatting with her (in English!) in the courtyard of a ruined temple, I asked her about her makeup. She told me that she often experimented with different designs. It seemed to me that young children were often much more daring than adults in how they used Thanaka to create the face of Burma. To underscore her bold cosmetic presentation, I chose a somewhat disoriented vantage point, bringing my camera down low to shoot up on her face and tilting the frame as I did so. By doing this, I am able to reorient the image along a diagonal axis. Placing her face in the lower right hand corner, I use this low vantage point make the thrust of the old temple walls echo the flow of the bold yellow patches and stripes of Thanaka she has applied to her face.
31-JAN-2005
Stupa Rainbow, Pakse, Laos, 2005
A dozen stupas – Buddhist gravestones -- merge together in rainbow of vivid colors in the cemetery of a Pakse temple. I noticed that the angle of the sun was creating a stripe of deep vertical shadow on each of the stupas. Although the stupas themselves were spaced several feet apart, I was able to use my long telephoto lens to “collapse” them so that they appear to be closer together. The key to this illusion is my vantage point. I kept moving until I found an angle that brought them as close to each other as possible, yet still reveal each vertical shadow.
15-OCT-2004
Pioneer Cemetery, Yosemite National Park, California, 2004
In Yosemite’s Pioneer Cemetery, I found the 1867 grave of John Anderson, who has surely become by now part of the root system of this giant redwood tree. This connection prompted me to place my 24mm wideangle lens virtually on the redwood itself and using it to fill half the frame as a diagonal anchor, I shoot straight down on the gravestone. This vantage point forever links both Mr. Anderson to this tree – an incongruous pairing. (Another incongruity is the gravestone’s graphic description of Mr. Anderson’s demise. A horse killed him.)
04-SEP-2004
A slice of Baixa, Lisbon, Portugal, 2004
I used a 245mm telephoto converter lens to reach out and compress a slice of Lisbon’s Baixa neighborhood from the top of the Elevador de Santa Justa, an iron elevator tower built around 100 years ago by one of A.G. Eiffel’s apprentices. The buildings running across the middle of the picture display laundry, umbrellas, satellite TV dishes, and windows of every description, and are typical of the 18th and 19th century architecture that gives the city its great charm. The more I study this image, the more I realize how critical my vantage point was. In order to reach across those rooftops, I had to be high – very high. I was not shooting down from the elevator tower, as much as I was shooting away from it. My height allowed me to juxtapose the mass of red rooftops in the foreground and that solid wall of wonderfully mismatched 19th century homes on the side of a hill beyond them. It was my camera position that made such juxtaposition possible.
28-AUG-2004
The long walk, St. Peters Port, Guernsey, UK, 2004
It's early Sunday morning, and St. Peters Port is bathed in the sound of pealing church bells. A nun begins her long walk through its empty streets to attend services. To set the stage for her long walk, I chose a vantage point well down the street from her. I used a waist level camera position as well, and brought the bottom of the building closest to me into the lower left hand corner of the picture. Shot from this vantage point, the wall gets progressively smaller as it recedes into the distance and leads us to the distant nun.
03-JUL-2004
View from the bus, Hong Kong, China, 2004
I.M. Pei's Bank of China dominates a skyline that has few rivals in China. Only Shanghai's new Pudong district is comparable. I shot this film on a gray morning from the window of a moving bus. It is virtually a black and white image, but for the tinge of color reflected back to us in the Bank of China's windows. (The building's sharp angles point at other banks, which is said to create bad "feng shui.") Using a 24mm wideangle converter lens and the flip-up rotating viewing screen on my digital camera, I was able place the camera against the bottom of the window and point it almost straight upwards, which accounts for the powerful distortion which gives this image its thrust and power, echoing the nature of the skyline itself.
27-JUN-2004
Student, Special Needs School, Lhasa, Tibet, 2004
We visited the only boarding school for children with special needs in all of Tibet, and spent a hour or so in its classrooms. I will never forget the face of this student as she looked up from her work at me. To make this photograph, I placed the camera down on a desk, and used my flip-up rotating viewing screen to frame my shot. The low vantage brings us down to the child’s level and makes her expression all the more poignant.
16-JUN-2004
Urn, Forbidden City, Beijing, China, 2004
Huge brass urns still stand outside of the palaces within the Forbidden City. They once held water used to fight fires. I moved in as close as I could to the fierce head holding the ring on the urn. Over the last 500 years, this urn has acquired a gleam from where fingers have stroked the brass head, as well as thousands of scratches, which testify to the durability and longevity of this once pragmatic piece of fire equipment. The closeup vantage point stresses both.
01-JUL-2004
Visitors overlook, Three Gorges Dam Project, Sandouping, China, 2004
A pair of tourists make their way down the staircase leading from the viewing platform at the Dam project’s vistors center. I wanted to stress the height of the overlook by emphasizing the long walk down. To do this, I used my 24mm wideangle converter lens, and took a vantage point placing the camera’s lens right next to one of the hand railings. That railing is the key to this photograph. Its emphatic thrust make it seem as if the stairway is extremely long. Yet these people are only a about a dozen steps above me. The low sweeping vantage point has created distortion that makes my point. The camera is not communicating truth here. Rather, it communicates a feeling that essentially suggests an idea, rather than recording a fact.