to ponder...

By Henri Cartier-Bresson.

"it seems dangerous to me to be a portrait artist
who does commissions for clients because everyone
wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way there is
NOTHING LEFT OF TRUTH."


I love looking through my photography books filled with prints by some of the greats. The masters, classic and timeless images. It is something I find myself doing when the digital age takes me far from what I truly love about photography. I am someone who loves the printed photograph. Negatives, film, the smell of fixer lingering in a darkroom. The anticipation of unrolling a newly developed roll of negatives to see what I have captured. It is all a little bit of magic to me.

Thought it would be fun to share some of the thoughts of a few of the late photographers whom I turn to for inspiration. This one from HCB reminds me of a challenge I often find. I tend to use small cameras, lenses and use only the natural light given to me and the moment. It is a way to be more connected and less intimidating to my subjects, it helps me keep my work real.

This is taken from WIKIPEDIA...a little insight on the photographer
"Cartier-Bresson exclusively used Leica 35 mm rangefinder cameras equipped with normal 50 mm lenses or occasionally a wide-angle for landscapes.[citation needed] He often wrapped black tape around the camera's chrome body to make it less conspicuous. With fast black and white films and sharp lenses, he was able to photograph almost by stealth to capture the events. No longer bound by a huge 4×5 press camera or an awkward two and a quarter inch twin-lens reflex camera, miniature-format cameras gave Cartier-Bresson what he called "the velvet hand [and] the hawk's eye."[citation needed] He never photographed with flash, a practice he saw as "[i]mpolite...like coming to a concert with a pistol in your hand."[citation needed] He believed in composing his photographs in his camera and not in the darkroom, showcasing this belief by having nearly all his photographs printed only at full-frame and completely free of any cropping or other darkroom manipulation -- indeed, he emphasized that the entire negative had been used by extending the area reproduced on the print to include a thick black border around the frame.
Cartier-Bresson worked exclusively in black and white, other than a few unsuccessful attempts in color. He never developed or made his own prints.[citation needed] He said: "I've never been interested in the process of photography, never, never. Right from the beginning. For me, photography with a small camera like the Leica is an instant drawing."[citation needed]
Cartier-Bresson is regarded as one of the art world's most unassuming personalities. He disliked publicity and exhibited a ferocious shyness since his days in hiding from the Nazis during World War II. Although he took many famous portraits, his own face was little known to the world at large (which presumably had the advantage of allowing him to work on the street in peace). He dismissed others' applications of the term "art" to his photographs, which he thought were merely his gut reactions to moments in time that he had happened upon.