Nuisance - Flash Photography, and Visual Fluency vs. Literacy
(Feel obligated to include this song here. Had this on repeat at 1:45 AM while squeezing words out of my brain. Thx to my friend Bobby for putting me on this song)
Toward the end of last year, I stumbled across this Diane Arbus exhibition(Constellation) in the Park Avenue Armory. Being quite unemployed and lost about my career, I decided to check it out.
It sounds quite embarrassing, but even tho I have been DPing for a while, my knowledge of photography was close to none at the time(you can only use Gregory Crewdson’s name so many times in a creative meeting before you start to feel like a fraud). Frankly, I didn’t even know who Diane Arbus was. And ofc, I was mind blown, image after image, how the medium format perfectly freezes time and captures these folks’ demeanor in such a casual way that makes me feel like I was standing right there, living another life with them.
This image(on the top right) stood out among many, many more. I couldn’t phrase it at the time, but the strange and sometimes ridiculous suburban life seems so alien to me as a person who grew up in a big city in another country across the globe. And for some reason, that feeling brings me peace; in the strangest way, I feel at ease in her work.
Just realized I’ve written this much without even mentioning anything related to the title yet. Anyway, I have fallen into this strange obsession with flash photography recently, that’s what I wanted to start with…
The obsession didn’t come out of nowhere. Martin Parr, Larry Sultan, Lars Tunbjörk, some of my favorite photographers all use flash as their main tool.
A more personal reason I’ve been obsessing over flash came from visual fatigue. When I first got into cinematography, the first thing I learned was “far side lighting”. But as I
If there is a formula to good looking image, then wouldn’t anybody with a decent brain be a great DP? What separates me from them? The job itself exists in this grey area in
If there’s a timeline on one’s progression in mastering visuals/shooting, I think I’m still at the stage of a rebellious teenager. Desperate to be different, yet don’t exacty know what that means, so all I can do is being angry and destroy stuff in my room.
Ok, next thing on my mind,
Nuisance Mooboard
more Nuisance Moodboard
Diane Arbus - A Family On Their Lawn One Sunday in Westchester, New York
Frame from Nuisance that was inspired by the photograph
https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/ke2pc/the_case_for_direct_flash/
a pretty interesting thread that discusses the use/appeal of direct flash. Nothing deep and educational but does get your brain moving.
So Pinterest is kind of a recent discovery for me. For the longest time, I thought it was a platform solely for people to find inspiration for their costumes and apartment interior design, and I didn’t see myself as that passionate in either of those things, so I rejected the app without even trying. And I thought, I have Shotdeck and Instagram, how many more platforms do one need to get visual references? And man, I was so wrong.
Something about this app, the algorithm, it’s like crack.
I would spend hours scrolling on Pinterest, shopping, and picking the next best thing that catches my eyes the algorithm sends me. I cannot lie, it is the most satisfying thing ever, like, capturing a wild Pokémon and storing them in your pocket. The act of saving reference is very funny. In an industry where people feel so strongly about copyright and ownership (all rightfully so), the process that gets you to the end goal seems to be quite like the wild west and unregulated. Pinterest, Frameset, Shotdeck, Instagram, you can be bombarded with hundreds of amazing work in a single day on these platform but end up not remembering a single artist’s name.
Which is frustrating because references do matter.
But references without lived perception become decorative.
I know how to recognize images I like. But do I actually see?
