Photography

Watch

• Two Views in Documentary Photography | Billy Weeks | TEDxChattanooga ↗TEDx Talks
• Helen M. Stummer, Social Documentary Photographer ↗StateoftheArtsNJ
• 9 Years of Camera Setting Knowledge in 29 Minutes ↗Cody Mitchell
• How To Do Abstract Street Photography Like Saul Leiter ↗Imitative Photography

Read

• On Photography ↗This seminal collection dissects photography's philosophical and ethical implications, revealing its power to shape perception and memory.Susan Sontag
• Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography ↗A profound and personal meditation on the photographic image, exploring its unique capacity to evoke presence and absence.Roland Barthes
• The Decisive Moment ↗Essential reading from a master of street photography, offering insights into the intuition and precision required to capture fleeting reality.Henri Cartier-Bresson
• The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ↗This foundational essay examines how mechanical reproduction alters art's aura, a crucial text for understanding modern media.Walter Benjamin
• Photography and the History of ArtA critical examination of photography's contested place within art history, challenging conventional narratives and categories.Allan Sekula

Voices to follow

• Annie Leibovitz ↗Her distinctive, often theatrical, portraits of celebrities and cultural figures have profoundly shaped contemporary visual storytelling and magazine aesthetics.Celebrated portrait photographer
• Sebastião Salgado ↗His stark, black-and-white images powerfully chronicle global social and environmental issues, offering a profound humanistic perspective on our shared planet.Renowned documentary photographer and photojournalist
• Wolfgang Tillmans ↗A Turner Prize winner, he explores the mundane and the monumental with equal intensity, blurring the lines between art, fashion, and documentary photography.Influential contemporary artist and photographer
• Stephen Shore ↗His early and influential use of colour in fine art photography transformed perceptions of the medium, documenting American vernacular landscapes with quiet observation.Pioneering photographer and educator

Glossary

• ApertureAperture is the size of the opening in the lens that controls how much light enters the camera. A wider aperture lets in more light and makes the background blurry, while a smaller one lets in less light and keeps more of the scene in focus. For example, if you want to take a portrait where your friend is sharp but the background is soft and blurry, you'd use a wide aperture.
• CameraA camera is a device that captures pictures or videos by recording light. It's like a special box with a hole that lets light in to create an image. For example, your smartphone has a tiny camera built into it that you use to take selfies and videos.
• CompositionComposition is how you arrange all the elements within your photo's frame to create a pleasing and interesting image. It's about deciding where to place your subject, background, and other objects. For example, when you take a picture of your pet and move around to get the best angle and background, you are thinking about composition.
• Depth of FieldDepth of field is the range of distance in a photo where objects appear acceptably sharp and in focus. A shallow depth of field means only a small part is sharp (like a blurry background portrait), while a deep depth of field means almost everything from front to back is sharp. For example, if you take a picture of a flower and only the flower is sharp while the garden behind it is blurry, that's a shallow depth of field.
• ExposureExposure is the overall brightness or darkness of your photo, determined by how much light reaches the camera's sensor. A photo can be underexposed (too dark) or overexposed (too bright) if the light isn't just right. For example, if your picture of a sunny beach looks washed out, it might be overexposed because too much light hit the sensor.
• FlashA flash is a burst of bright light produced by the camera, usually for a very short time, to illuminate a scene when there isn't enough natural light. It helps brighten up dark areas or subjects. For example, if you're taking a picture indoors at night and everyone looks too dark, turning on the flash will light them up.
• FocusFocus refers to how sharp and clear a specific part of your image appears. When something is "in focus," it looks crisp and detailed, while out-of-focus areas look blurry. For example, when you tap on your phone screen to make a person's face sharp in a photo, you are setting the focus.
• ISOISO measures how sensitive your camera's sensor is to light. A higher ISO makes the sensor more sensitive, which is useful in dark places, but it can also make your picture look grainy or noisy. For example, if you're taking pictures indoors at night without a flash, you might increase the ISO to make the image brighter, even if it adds a little grain.
• LensThe lens is the glass part of a camera that gathers light from what you're looking at and directs it onto the camera's sensor. It helps make the image clear and focused. For example, when you zoom in on something far away with your phone camera, you're using the lens to magnify the view.
• Rule of ThirdsThe Rule of Thirds is a simple guideline for good composition where you imagine dividing your image into nine equal sections with two horizontal and two vertical lines. You then place important subjects or interesting elements along these lines or at their intersections to make the photo more balanced and engaging. For example, instead of putting your friend exactly in the middle of a photo, you might place them slightly to the left or right along one of these imaginary lines.
• Shutter SpeedShutter speed is how long the camera's shutter (a small door inside the camera) stays open to let light hit the sensor. A fast shutter speed freezes motion, while a slow one can show movement as a blur. For example, if you want to capture a friend jumping in mid-air without blur, you'd use a fast shutter speed.

Threads 5

Where this connects to other fields, and why it's worth knowing.

• Signal & Image Processing Mathematics

  Before you even see a digital photo, your phone has rebuilt it: guessing colors, wiping out noise, and squishing the file smaller. So a photo that supposedly 'proves what happened' is already a computer's best guess, dressed up to look like raw reality.

• Scientific Instruments & Measurement Science

  People argued for ages about whether a galloping horse ever has all four hooves off the ground. A camera settled it, freezing a split second no human eye could catch. That's when photography stopped just recording and started seeing things we physically can't.

• Procedure & Evidence Law

  When photos first showed up in court, judges had to invent brand-new rules for proving a picture was genuine. So the camera didn't just capture crimes; it forced the law to rewrite what even counts as evidence.

• Memory and Its Failures Psychology

  Think of your favorite birthday. Odds are you're remembering the photo, not the actual day. A picture doesn't just save a memory, it quietly writes over it, so the thing meant to prove what happened ends up replacing it.

• International & Human Rights Law Law

  A single photo of an atrocity can launch a war-crimes trial or push a country to send in troops, things that piles of treaties and speeches never manage. In human rights law, the image often is the evidence.