Re: turn, turn, turn

[Gregory Parkinson <glp@xxxxxxxxx>]

At 5:32 PM -0500 1/4/00, Alan Zinn wrote:
>At 05:11 PM 1/4/2000 +0000,Karl Snyder wrote:
>>  It
>>also has something to do with the pano rule of 1/3, which I believe, differs
>>from the classic (3x4) rule of 1/3.  The classic rule of 1/3s is typically
>>defined as 1/3 foreground, 1/3 middle ground and, you guess it, 1/3
>>background.
>>In panos, the 1/3 rule is 1/3 on the right, 1/3 in the middle and, you
>>guess it
>>again, 1/3 on the right.  This gives the photograph 3 subjects that the eye
>>(mind) has trouble seeing when the eye is looking at one point.  This is the
>>beauty of pano photography that caused the viewer to move his/her eye
>>back and
>>forth to see the picture.  I have observed people at exhibits view a class
>>photograph and quickly move on while pausing several moments to view a
>pano.  It
>>changes the viewer!
[...]
>>At the risk of getting some members dandruff up, I typically recognize a pano
>>photo as having two requirements to be successful: 1> a format ratio of at
>least
>>1:2 and 2> a subject that can be divided into thirds.  A ratio of more
>>than 1:3
>>looses a viewer interest by having too many subjects or having a subject
>>spread
>>out too far for viewer to see it at once.

[...]

>Karl and friends,
> Why want the wide format in order to cause the viewer to see segments at a
>time, which is good, but not want a really wide format for pictorial
>reasons?  It seems that that is focusing on the frame rather than the
>content of the picture. I think that there are far more ways of dealing with
>the picture plane that panoramic photographers don't consider. Why make
>arbitrary rules about how to make an image?

Abitrary vs experiental.

>While scenery is nice (or thrilling, or dangerous) to be in I think photos
>of it are mostly formulaic and post-cardish no matter how well made.

They can be gorgeous, though.

> It is
>not surprising that so few find in it more than conventional notions of
>pictorial space, beauty, and ideas about nature. That seems very narrow
>since panoramas offer even the scenic photographer many new ways of seeing.

I think that panoramics can be constricting because they so strongly
define a visual h/w ratio and when you're taking "scenics" you don't have
many options.   What's there is there and since the frame is so wide you don't
have many choices about what to include or not to include.  I think that's
why there is so much emphasis on hardware - for scenics you can't
control a lot more than width and and focal lenght that's based on the
camera you use.

I think that usually panoramic photography requires photographers to *find*
situations to photograph as opposed to cropping or framing (with a
squarish ratio or a zoom) in many different situations.

Unconventional ends up meaning taking photos of unconventional scenes, or
playing
with foreground/background placement - just what it looks like you (Alan)
were objecting to.

>Seldom do scenic photographers deal with the way nature is perceived or
>anything conceptual. Gross generalizations? Show me some work that pushes
>the envelope.

Back at you.  What panoramic work do you know of that pushes the
envelope?

>I think the built environment, like nature, has infinite variety and
>stimulates a wider, more conceptual range of expressions. There seems to be
>no common mode that has to be adhered to. It may be just a safer place to do
>interesting things. Many photographers fear to mess with Mother Nature.

It's just harder to move things.  Built environments certainly give you
the ability to place things.  How do you decide what to place where?

Referring to Karl's comments, the 1|1|1 structure is useful to start with
because
it seems that people enjoy it.  One thing I like about shooting panos is
watching
the eye movement of people viewing them, and providing thirds works well.
Once you start thinking about eye movement, though, there are innumerable
variations - upward sweeps, downward sweeps, interruptions, loopbacks,
that sort of thing.   What moves and what is grounded.

Halves are fun, too.  The company I work for collects art and lots of
photography, and one floor in my building has a series of panos that
are very boring sorts of views but they are graphically divided by
a natural feature - a shed next to a pool of water, for ex. - that
is almost noisy when you view it, jumping back and forth.

So there are two things interesting to me about panos - the aforementioned
busy viewing eye and the control of that, and the high information
content, more than the eye can grasp with one glance.

For film formats,  I used to lust for the Fuji 617 and would still buy
one if I had the money, but I'm exited about my new Mac G4 and new
Olympus C2020 and the ability to assemble panos using stitching
sofware.   I believe that it's possible to trick the eye using a 35mm
format (like 35mm or MF 6x9) into seeing a pano format if you make
a big enough print, even without cropping, and then you can place the
pano area in the top, middle, or bottom of the frame.   The eye floats
and has to define the interesting area while it searches for other
information in the empty parts as opposed to closely framed shots.
Which I like too.

Greg