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Author Topic: The 101 Cliches of Photography  (Read 163511 times)

Rob C

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The 101 Cliches of Photography
« Reply #120 on: October 19, 2009, 09:37:02 am »

Quote from: EduPerez
Could you elaborate more on that, please?


De nada... it is one of my favourite places to spend some time.




¡Hola!

To elaborate on the dangers of confusion? Well, it is rather easy, as with your spider, to think that since the same components are involved in the picture, that it will be so similar to all the others that it will be unable to offer anything new - a cliché.

But, not all pictures that consist of roughly the same elements are going to be virtual copies of each other - they might be of the same genre but could still retain sufficient individuality to retain identity; thus, I think of fashion pictures against a white/grey roll of paper as being reasonably good examples of perhaps both cliché and genre. Genre, unmistakably, because they share the common location of a roll of paper; cliché if they bring nothing new to the experience in front of the reader but not cliché if they still manage to surprise.

However, even that isn't as tight or binding a definition as might be desired - the cliché might exist even when the same idea is only seen twice. There is a famous topless photograph of Janet Jackson with her arms up in the air and a pair of male hands holding her breasts from behind, which I think was shot for Rolling Stone, but I might be mistaken. I have seen one more picture copying that pose and instantly, for me, it became cliché, even with just a single predecessor.

Maybe the problem is language or the belief that it can define everything that humans can feel. And I don't mean Janet Jackson.

Ciao

Rob C

DanLehman

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The 101 Cliches of Photography
« Reply #121 on: October 22, 2009, 01:01:34 am »

Quote from: EduPerez
... I immediately remembered this photo I had seen some days before: http://1x.com/v2/#/photos/latest-additions/27939/. It is a spiderweb, it has dew, and the spider is in the center... but I could never classify that photography as a cliché.

Lovely, but unnatural -- I feel the discomfort of a spider put in that
upside-down position by the photographer!  (Such spiders hang from,
not sit upon, the web.)  (What the viewer brings to the image ... .)

(-;
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Rob C

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The 101 Cliches of Photography
« Reply #122 on: October 22, 2009, 04:57:10 am »

Quote from: DanLehman
Lovely, but unnatural -- I feel the discomfort of a spider put in that
upside-down position by the photographer!  (Such spiders hang from,
not sit upon, the web.)  (What the viewer brings to the image ... .)

(-;





Dan

I am not well enough versed in such matters to know, but assuming that you are right, and any small spider I see with a web in the vicinity is of the hanging variety, it just goes to prove that one should always seriously doubt the apparent truth within photographs! But the aesthetics...!

Rob C

schrodingerscat

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The 101 Cliches of Photography
« Reply #123 on: November 18, 2009, 10:51:38 pm »

"Show me a magazine with a picture of a pretty girl, a dog, or a baby on the cover, and I'll show you a magazine that sells" - W R Hearst.

National Lampoon went on to put all three on the cover, and was a masterpiece.

Insofar as New Cliche is concerned...HDR and/or stiched landscapes.

And just to make sure we don't leave anyone out -

ducks
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