Saturday, October 1, 2011

All you have do is frame and click - Contact Sheets No.1 - William Klein (1988)

Picasa Contact Sheet - eljeiffel - New York (Fri 12 Aug 2011)

Picasa Contact Sheet - eljeiffel - New York (Wed 17 Aug 2011)

Just a couple of screen shots of some virtual contact sheets (*) from recent trip to New York. Will put a few more over the coming days as (the following youtube clip reveals) I think they reveal something about how I see when I travel.


From his film Contacts Vol.1 (*), William Klein (*) reveals some great insights into the working processes of a photographer.

It does not matter if you are great or unknown, if you care when you press the shutter to take a photo, we pretty much all go through the same thoughts and steps.

Some of the more interesting insights from the clip follow:
A sheet of contacts. 36 exposures. 6 strips of 6 photographs, taken one after the other. You read them from left to right like a text. It the diary of a photographer. You see what he sees through the viewfinder. His hesitations. His hits. His misses. His choices. He choses one moment. One angle. Another moment. Another angle. He insists. He stops.

You rarely see the contacts of a photographer. You only see the picture chosen. You don't see the before or the after like you do on proof sheet. [..]

Ok, the contacts. You see the before and after. Why one picture is taken rather than the other. And then why one is chosen rather than another. [..]

A wall in New York 20 years ago. Ciaro. Probably the name of a gang. Torn paper. A ready made photo. A kind of ??. All you have do is frame and click. You can do a hundread on that wall no sweat. It's there for the taking. There are pictures like that all over, you just have to look.

This picture is maybe better than that one. Or this one. Or that one.
Found the Klein clip from a Jonathan Walker (*) post (*). Always lots of good information on photography (*) there. Thanks Jonathan.

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