Stephen Shore’s The Nature of Photography Response

I agree with Shore when he states that framing acts as the end of the photo. It is completely up to the photographer to decide what to frame and what they are trying to state in the photo by creating a specific frame. In my own work, framing is constantly on my mind. In the instant I am taking the photo I have to quickly decide what I should include. A lot of the time, especially when photographing bodies I like to make the subject a tight frame. I do this because I want the viewer to try and figure out what body part I am depicting. I focus a lot on stretching and altering the body so framing works in my advantage when I do not want the viewer to know what they are looking at. Additionally, when not focusing on altering the body I still like having tightly framed shots. I think this has a lot to do with photographing my friends on campus. There is a lot I want to leave out in the background because it is so recognized as a college campus. Also Purchase College does not have the best scenery to photograph in.  Below is a photograph I took this semester.

I chose to tightly frame this photograph because I really wanted to focus on the texture of the coat. With the background included, which happens to be a dorm bathroom, the emphasize on texture would be completely lost. I also felt that the figure in the picture did not need to be photographed because that is not what I am focusing on. 

Another photo I chose to show my use of framing is a photograph I took of my mother for my photo 1 final.

I shot this photo from above. I like how the viewer can only see the ends of the fingers and not the rest of the arm. For context I wanted to add some more background and that is why I included some of the bathroom mirror and shelf. The viewer is able to look directly at the face and can see that the woman in the photograph is applying mascara. 

Shore’s work has always stuck out to me because of his use of color. Shore even states that when people look at his work from the 70’s they think of “1970’s color”. I have the same reaction to his work. Although there are lots of photographs from the 1970’s, Shore’s work has always stuck out to me. The color seems almost non-realistic. The compositions are always very aesthetically pleasing. I feel like viewing his work in black in white would not create the same feel.

When Shore starts to talk about digital photography briefly and states that “I haven’t seen a digital image that can compare to a large-format negative, scanned and printed digitally” I think about my beginnings in photography. I started off shooting digital on an automatic special. There is never anything really special in the photos I first took. I think that black and white photography takes a lot more time and thought. There always seems to be more feelings in black and white photography apposed to digital. I am not opposed to digital photography in any way but I always found myself turning my digital photos into black and white ones. Of course at the time I did not really know why I was doing this but it is more obvious today that I was trying to give them more feeling. I probably also thought that black and white would make the image more dramatic.