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a photo study: Ian MacDonald’s creative composition in street photography

aphotostudystreetweb

Nikon D750   f/8   1/8s   300m   100 ISO

“He sought out a background with formal qualities interesting in themselves. Often it was a wall parallel to the place of the image, or a space lending perspective with defined graphic lines. Then he waited for figures to come and find their place in this arrangement of forms, in what he himself called ‘simultaneous coalition.’ His approach to composition was like a little theater with a set and actors. One part of what formed the geometric quality of his images was perfectly controlled: the other–and probably the most important-was the result of chance.” (cited: Aperture Masters of Photography Henri Cartier-Bresson)

This week I would like to introduce you to Ian MacDonald, an Official Fujifilm X  Photographer and educator living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. In his first of a series of street composition blogs, he reviews:

What really matters in a photograph

  • Subject 
  • Moment
  • Light
  • Background
aphotostudystreet-3web

Nikon D750   f/2  1/5s  35m   160 ISO

Setting the stage

aphotostudystreet-4web

Nikon D750   f/8  1/8  135m  100 ISO

Street portraits

aphotostudystreet-1web

Nikon D750   f/5.6  1/160   300m  I00 ISO

Detail Shots

aphotostudystreet-2web

Nikon D750  f/8  1/100  68m  100 ISO

I hope you, also, find this to be interesting and informative. As always, I would love to read your thoughts and see your images.  Let’s tag with #aphotostudy.  Until next week…

via Creative Composition in Street Photography – Part One

toddler’s sun hat

street-9b-web

Nikon D750    f/22     1/25    35mm    800 ISO

“Playing with point of view, with the position of the figures and the wide palette of grays, he proved that photography, like painting, is–to borrow Maurice Denis’ famous dictum–‘essentially a surface plane covered with color in a certain assembled order.'”

cited: C Chérous, aperture masters of photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson, pg. 84

a mental image

One of the interesting things about photography is the fact that it’s record of ourselves and our works so often do not correspond to our mental image…  Generally we assume that the difference between our expectation and the camera’s evidence is the result of some kind of photographic aberration.

~Henri Cartier Bresson

citypark2

Nikon D750   f/5.6   1/160s   170 mm   ISO 100

vanishing moments

Henri Cartier-Bresson said that photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and which no contrivance on earth can bring back again. Not even photography can bring these things back, except in the memory of those who knew them, or in the imagination those who did not.

(cited: J. Szarkowski, Looking at Photographs, pg. 124)

shadowstudyweb

Lumix GX85   f/7/1   1/640s   32 mm   200 ISO

Ólafur Arnalds is a BAFTA-winning multi-instrumentalist and producer from Mosfellsbær, Iceland. Ólafur Arnalds mixes strings and piano with loops and beats crossing over from ambient/electronic to pop.