Random Excellence / Quote o' the Day

Photo by Dave Jenkins

Triggered by my snapshot of the TransAmerica building the other day, Dave Jenkins sent me this photo of the same motif that he took 25 years ago with an Olympus OM-2 and Zuiko 85mm ƒ/2 lens.

Dave writes, "I found what I think is the perfect summary to all the talk about clichés a week or so ago. On the back cover of the February, 2000 issue of Popular Photography is an ad for Minolta light meters. It shows a photo of Elliott Erwitt holding a large, framed print of one of his best-known photographs. In the caption, he is saying 'To me, photography is an art of observation...I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.'"

I managed to find the ad:

This is the quote I felt related to Ctein's two photos, the one of the plane wing and the one of the leaf.

Another relevant quote is probably mine, something Ctein says I told him 20 years ago: "We should never be so insecure as to avoid cliché at every turn."

Ezra Pound said "make it new"; I say "make it yours." Half the battle.

Mike

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Comments

[Adam Richardson]

I like how in the ad it looks like Erwitt's legs in the print!

[Michael Martin-Morgan]

I see Elliott Erwitt in a short skirt and knee length boots ...

[Frank]

One thing to add is that Elliot was appears to have had no compunction about cropping -- see his photo Chihuahua (here is a link - http://www.artspace.com/elliott_erwitt/chihuahua_new_york_city)
So observation and how we see may include both the photo we see when we push the shutter and what we find in the resulting photograph.

[david adam edelstein]

My favorite example of "make it yours" is Ted Orland's "One and a half domes": http://www.tedorland.com/classic/domes.html

[FK]

I do like the "dog bones" too.

[Maggie Osterberg]

Great post! Love the shot of SF.

Who was it that said "bad artists borrow, great artists steal?"

Here's my attempt to make an Erwitt meme "mine":

In Step, Paris, September 29, 2007

[John Krumm]

It's such a distinctive building, and I love that shot. You can walk around San Fransisco all day getting frames of it in different settings...

[hugh crawford]

Of all the tools Erwit used for that shot, I pretty much guarantee that a Minolta flash meter was not one of them.

Really nice meters nonetheless,

[Stan B.]

Can't tell ya how many times I've been to famous/cliche places only to see something truly worthwhile and "spectacular" right around the corner, two steps over, right aross the street...

[Ash]

"make it yours"
Thank you for these words of wisdom.

Frankly, all of the landscape subjects I enjoy photographing have been snapped before. Maybe I will encounter something brand new, but maybe not.

As a hobbyist photographer, going out into the world and making it mine is what makes photography enjoyable.

[Mike]

I love that picture. My eyes are constantly moving up and down, but they're locked inside the frame lines.

[Andrew Molitor]

If it's a cliche and you have something to say, great! If it's not a cliche, but you have nothing to say, not so great.

So is it the "clicheness" that matters?

('have something to say" means the same thing as "make it yours" and a million other variants, of course)

[ctein]

And, my photograph of the featured cliché, from 1978...

pax / Ctein

[Roger Bradbury]

A bloke I've only met once before showed me some of his photos yesterday, and the first one had this very building right in the middle of it!

Coincidence? I think not! : ]