03-NOV-2014
Best in the world, Chandler, Arizona, 2014
While dining in a local barbeque restaurant, I photographed a poster-like banner hanging just behind me. It modestly proclaims the food that I was enjoying to be “Best in the world.” To emphasize the meaning of this proud boast, I brought my camera down to a low vantage point, and using a wideangle lens turned vertically, I shot upwards to stress the thrusts of the surrounding diagonal wall and metal posts, helping the banner try to live up to its boast. I tilted the camera slightly to energize the diagonal flow of the image, and crowned the scene with a pair of diagonally tilted spotlights to echo the position of the surrounding diagonals. A small pig floats in the background, lending context to the nature of the restaurant itself.
09-FEB-2013
Stairwell, Koresham Utopian Community, Estero, Florida, 2013
I made this image in a home frozen in time. Climbing to the top of it stairwell, I shot down through a maze of hand carved wood surrounding three embroidered pillows resting upon a wooden bench. Those who lived in this self contained spartan community made everything by hand in their own factories and shops on the grounds. The ghostly rhythmic flow of stairs and railings that bore through this image reminds us of those who once lived and worked here. My high vantage point creates that flow and rhythm that speaks of the Victorian age.
15-FEB-2013
Press Conference, Georgia State Capitol, Atlanta, Georgia, 2013
The corridors of power in Georgia’s State Capitol building all lead to the vast rotunda under the capitol’s golden dome. I climbed to an upper level and photographed a press conference in session from virtually straight overhead. The setting composed the image for me – the marble steps leading down to the center of the historic rotunda stop just short of the official who is addressing the press and other dignitaries. The audience, carefully aligned in three neat rows of chairs, listens attentively. My vantage point abstracts the entire conference, avoiding identity and instead stressing conformity. Everyone seems equal here, except for the primacy of the speaker himself. My vantage point also highlights the press release itself – at least 15 copies of it can be seen resting on chairs and in the hands of the participants. The ink-on-paper and verbal communication here might seem incongruous in an age when information is generally transmitted digitally. Yet when viewed in the context of this historic 1889 building, the papers and the speeches seem right at home.
23-JUL-2011
Consultation, Ipswich, Massachusetts, 2011
I found this pair of cherubs deep in a consultation. They were partially hidden in the shrubs bordering a suburban Boston home. I shot straight down on them, in the process turning my viewers into eavesdroppers. If we let our imaginations roam, we might hear snippets of their conversation. They could be talking about the berries they seem to be picking, or that small monkey pulling at a cherubic leg.
17-DEC-2010
Cruise Terminal, Rio de Janeiro, 2010
I was standing on the top deck of a cruise ship, moored at the pier prior to our departure. There were other cruise ships at Rio’s port as well, and one of them was in the process of taking on passengers. I shot down on them as they emerged from the shadow cast by the shed of the terminal, capturing their energetic body language as they moved diagonally towards their ship. The shed creates a complementary diagonal thrust. By shooting down on the scene, I am able to shoot unnoticed and draw the diagonals together in my frame. The late afternoon light abstracts both terminal and the passengers, silhouetting everything. I converted the image to black and white to intensify the abstraction.
20-MAR-2008
Painted elephant, Amber Fort, Jaipur, India, 2008
Dozens of elephants still walk the walls of this historic 16th century fort and palace. They were painted in brilliant colors on this day, possibly in commemoration of Hoi, the Hindu spring festival of colors. I was able to make this picture from an upper story of the fort. I noticed a steady stream of elephants carrying tourists on the road that ran along the top of the fort’s wall. I waited until an elephant without tourists came along, so as not to distract from the colorful decoration. I caught the multi-hued trunk from high above in all of its incongruous beauty. It is the high vantage point that makes this picture tell its story.
17-DEC-2007
Preparations, Ambassador Pagoda, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2007
Early morning finds crews of temple volunteers polishing the ceremonial brass figures that adorn Hanoi's Ambassador Pagoda. I stood on a balcony overhead and shot straight down on a woman who was looking up at her work. The most effective way to photograph any person at work is head on, rather than from the side. Side vantage points are always passive instead of active, and invite confusing mergers in the background. If a person is looking down at their work, the photographer should get down and shoot up, even if it means getting on the floor. And if the person is looking up at their work, it is best to seek a higher vantage point, as I do here, and shoot down on it.
14-SEP-2007
View from the wall, Pingyao, China, 2007
Pingyao is one of the few cities in the world still encircled by its original ancient walls. The walls date back to the Ming Dynasty (1370) and can be walked in their entirety within a half-day. They over an excellent vantage point for photography – we can look down on people going about their daily lives without them being aware of us. The high vantage point here allow me to contrast Pingyao’s large cyclist population to its relatively scarce presence of cars. It also stresses the bikes and their riders by making their shadows easily visible.
30-SEP-2006
Cattle-drive, Henry, Idaho, 2006
Our van was held up for fifteen delightful minutes by a cattle-drive right up the center of the highway. Most of my shots were made through the open door of our van as these cattle flowed past us, but early on, when we first spotted them coming at us from a distance, I was able to spend a few precious seconds shooting from the middle of the highway. I took the lowest vantage point I could, lowering my camera to almost pavement level and looking down into my flip out viewfinder at the on-coming herd. I placed the double yellow line at the lower right hand corner of my frame, so that it would lead the eye into the heart of the herd. They were coming at me up a long slope, and I shot just as they reached the crest. The yellow line rises and then begins to fall as it vanishes into the herd. Cowboys on horseback drive the cattle from the rear, and traffic backs up behind them. My 420mm telephoto lens collapses the distance between these elements, and makes the distant field seem as if it is an earthen wall at the back of the image. This photograph is essentially a product of my own perspective. It is far more expressive than any of the images I made by shooting down on the cattle from our van as they passed us by, because my ground level perspective vicariously puts the viewer directly into the path of the oncoming herd.
11-JUN-2006
Metallic man, Gardner, Oregon, 2006
A local sculptor stores this life sized bronze figure just behind his gallery. It’s not ready for public showing, but it certainly makes a surreal focal point for this image. The key is my vantage point. The sculpture stands at the corner of the building, which allowed me to move behind it and link it to two separate walls at the same time. I abstract it, and at the same time pose a question: if it could move, which way would it go? He seems hemmed in by the stuff that stands behind him on the left. But the dolly that was no doubt used to get him where he is, stands waiting for him on his right. The rear vantage point intensifies the incongruity of his placement, and implies a potential future course of incongruous action.
08-JUN-2006
Phantom, Cape Disappointment, Oregon, 2006
In 1898, the North Head Lighthouse was built just north of Cape Disappointment -- a storm-swept graveyard of sailing ships. It is still in operation. Do shipwrecked ghosts still haunt this lighthouse? If so, could this be one of them? Using the image stabilization feature of my camera, I was able to hand-hold this image at one full second in the dark stairwell of the lighthouse as a fellow photographer, unaware of my presence, came walking up the steps. There is some minor blurring of the stairs and wall, but it supports the central point of the image: movement in time. When my fellow photographer saw me, he stopped in his tracks and looked up, blurring only his face. He graciously apologized for “ruining” my picture. Yet he gave me exactly what I wanted. A phantom. It is the face and the shadow coming out of the body that gives up the ghost here – a function of my high vantage point.
27-MAR-2006
Tourinji Temple, Ishigaki City, Okinawa, Japan, 2006
Ishigaki, the southernmost city in Japan, is relative remote and tranquil, with a population of only 46,000. It overflows with lush plantings, such as at this neighborhood Buddhist temple. Using a wideangle lens, I placed the camera virtually on the ground and then tilted the lens slightly upwards in order to make the leaves flow into the beams under the temple roof. The design of my camera made taking this difficult vantage point very easy – it offers a flip up viewfinder, which allowed me to make this shot without having to burrow into the ground.
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.
17-APR-2004
Living Umbrella, Villa Montezuma, San Diego, California, 2004
I use one of San Diego’s most unusual buildings – an eccentric mansion dating back into the 19th Century – as context in this shot featuring a huge old Palm tree. The tree is so large that it seems to envelope the Villa, as if it was protecting it from the rains. It is virtually a living umbrella, and to make that point I use a 24mm wideangle lens, move almost to its base, and shoot straight upwards.
18-APR-2004
Keating Building, Downtown San Diego, California, 2004
My low, close-in vantage point does two things to make this image work more effectively. By walking in and shooting up at the name of the man who built it, I give the structure its identity. My vantage point also allows me capture the glare of the sun in a window, which makes this historic building in San Diego’s old Gaslamp District seem to wink at us.
14-DEC-2003
From the Cloud, Willemstad, Curacao, 2003
This image of a marble angel hovering over a sarcophagus in one of Willemstad’s cemeteries is vantage point driven. An angel presumably comes down from on high, requiring a photographer to get low and shoot up at it. Even more important is the relationship between this angel and the passing cloud. The shape of the cloud suggests a wing, or an arm that is raised in the same manner as the angel’s arm. I took many versions of this shot from this low angle, tilting the camera diagonally to create a corner-to-corner flow and aligning the angel’s arm with the feathery cloud overhead.
21-DEC-2003
Fin Flipper, Manta, Ecuador, 2003
Ecuadorian fishermen were unloading a cargo of freshly caught Tuna on a pier just across from our cruise ship – an ideal opportunity for a photographer to express ideas about how people feel about their jobs. I have been teaching corporate communicators how to do this for the last 35 years, so this task felt like a homecoming of sorts for me. This man was transferring these fish from the frozen lockers on board the fishing boat to a waiting truck. They were still steaming as he flipped them into a big net and sent them on their way to market. Once again, vantage point is the key to a communicative image. I watched the angle of the fisherman’s arm carefully, and it formed a v-shape similar to the tailfins of the fish whenever he would flip one of them. To relate the shape of his arm to the shape of those fins, I had to get down low and shoot up. This vantage point also creates backlighting, making the fins appear to be translucent, and at the same time abstracting the face of the man to place the emphasis purely on his body language. My low camera position also pulls the viewer into the action of the picture. Instead of just passively observing this fellow at work, we all become part of the cargo itself.
06-DEC-2002
White Rhino, Tala Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 2002
The most common vantage point in photography is a straight on shot from the front. It works best when confrontation is the point of the picture, as in this shot of a rhino giving me the once-over. But I am not the only one caught in its stare. You are, as well.
04-AUG-2002
Sunrise at Ittigran Island, Chukota Peninsula, Russia, 2003
These early risers enjoying a sunrise in Russia's Far East are abstracted twice because of my vantage point. I choose to shoot into the sun, which will make anything in front of me become a silhouette. I turn this couple into symbolic travelers, rather than specific individuals. I also shot them from behind, concealing their indentity once again. My rear vantage point puts you into the same situation as these subjects. You can share their experience as they watch the sun comes up on one of the world's most remote islands.
Dance performance, Tymlat Bay, Russia, 2002
I photographed this spirited and colorful dance performance in Tymlat Bay's cultural hall from the perfect vantage point. Others in the audience were shooting for their seats, or found a spot in front of the stage. I elected to sit off to to one side, on the steps to the stage. I placed my camera on the floor of the stage itself -- giving the viewer as low an angle of view as possible. This vantage point allowed me to contrast the flowing motion of the dancers to the intensity of the dance master, who watches every step from the wings with much authority. It also helped me weave together three levels of meaning -- the blurred foot in the foreground conveys energy, the dancers in the middleground establish context, and the intensity of the boss watching in the background is the point of the picture.
17-APR-2003
The Waltz King, Vienna, Austria, 2003
This gilded statue of composer Johann Strauss II draws hundreds of tourists. Most of them simply want to make pictures of their friends and family standing in front of it. My own photographic objective was different -- I wanted to make a point about Strauss and his music. Since the sun was behind the statue, I had to move behind it to stress the glitter of the gold. This rear vantage point also made the statue more symbolic and less descriptive. I moved as close and low as I could, aiming my camera towards the clouds to make the arch over the statue work as a frame within a frame and help thrust Strauss towards the heavens. The spirit of the Waltz King and his music will always float over Vienna. And that's the point I tried to make with this picture.
15-APR-2003
Pilgram's Pulpit, Stephansdom, Vienna, Austria, 2003
Medieval master craftsman Anton Pilgram's intricate Gothic pulpit soars towards the ceiling of the Stephansdom because of where I chose to stand. I did not choose this upward vantage point because it was "different" or "interesting". Rather, I chose it because I wanted to make a picture that best integrated the pulpit with its setting.
14-FEB-2000
Buddhist temple, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2000
My low, upward vantage point allowed me to pull the golden spire, the statue, and the towering umbrella together into a single cohesive unit. Using a digital camera, I was able to instantly view each picture and adjusted my vantage point slightly to eliminate confusing mergers of foreground and background subject matter. It took a number of shots to get just the right spacing between the figure at center and the huge umbrella overhead. Then I noticed rays coming out of the figure's back overlapping the spire at left. I just shifted the camera a bit to the right and made the picture you see here.
15-JUL-2002
Caribou Antlers, Paxon, Alaska, 2002
I used another low angle upward vantage point to make these antlers seem to grasp the clouds floating overhead. I kept changing my position ever so slightly until the antlers and clouds came together in my viewfinder.
28-APR-2003
Gargoyle, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic, 2003
It may look like an easy picture to make, but it took many tries to position this gargoyle, and the Cathedral's Rose Window behind it, where I wanted them to be. Since these subjects were higher than I was, my low angle, upward vantage point was a given. I was determined to launch the gargoyle into the frame from the lower left hand corner, and make the curve of the Rose Window spin into the frame at the upper right hand corner -- giving this image dual diagonal thrusts which pull the eye through the picture. Many shots and a sore neck later, it all came together.
28-APR-2003
Rooster Weathervane, St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic, 2003
Sometimes you must climb up and shoot down to make a photograph work. It took 800 steps to reach to the top of St. Vitus Cathedral's bell tower -- the view over Prague was fascinating. However making "postcard" views and vistas do not interest me. I need something else in the picture as a symbolic counterpoint. I saw a rooster weathervane rising above the red tile rooftops slightly below me, and instantly knew that it would become the subject of my picture, with the view as its context. A lone person walks in the square below near St. George's Convent -- the oldest in Bohemia. The tiny size of that figure tells us how high we really are. I adjusted my vantage point slightly to position the rooster weathervane so that its open beak becomes the pivot of the picture. Behind it, a series of roof lines lead our eyes to that tiny figure in the square, as well as to the Convent. It was only a small shift in space, but it helped me coherently link the rooster to its domain.
06-DEC-2002
Giraffes, Tala Game Reserve, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, 2003
Sometimes we can't choose our vantage points. Our vantage points choose us. Such is the case when we must shoot wildlife from safari vehicles. Because of their long necks, most giraffes photographed from vehicles must be shot against the sky. They are so tall that it is almost impossible to shoot them against a solid background of trees. On my fourth visit to Africa I finally was able to make the giraffe picture of my dreams. I did not find it. It found me. We came upon a large gathering of giraffes grazing on the treetops along a forested hillside. Without moving my position, I made this image, which I call "Return to Eden".
10-SEP-2003
Campo Santo, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2003
One of the most historic ranches in the American Southwest, Santa Fe's El Rancho de las Golondrinas offers insights into the town's Spanish Colonial culture. The ranch's windswept cemetery -- known as a Campo Santo-- and its old Penitente Meeting House, took me back in time more than any other place I've visited in New Mexico. To capture the essence of the scene, I placed my camera and its 24mm wideangle converter lens on the ground only a foot or two behind a teetering wooden fence enclosing a 19th century grave, and moved my position a few inches to the right to include the old Meeting House in the background. This low vantage point also emphasizes storm clouds that would soon sweep the area with much needed rain.
A Tiger’s Fury, Bandhavgarh National Park, India, 1990
We found him deep in an Indian forest, just after dawn. I was looking straight down into the jaws of an angry killing machine -- a twelve year old male Royal Bengal Tiger whose bared fangs were less than 15 feet away. It would be the only tiger we would meet face to face in two weeks of tracking them through the jungles of India's game parks. I burned through two rolls of film during the ten minutes we spent with him. This is the most terrifying image I have ever shot and my high vantage point provides the most menacing angle. Fortunately, I was safely perched on a wooden platform strapped to the broad, high back of an elephant. And no animal, not even this furious tiger, would dare to challenge the bone crushing potential of a huge pachyderm. The light was quite low, and in spite of my 400 speed Fujichrome film, the combination of a slow 1/15th of a second shutter speed and my telephoto zoom lens, produced a slightly blurred image due to magnification of camera shake. This slight blur adds a touch of panic to the image, strengthening its frightening impact.