Saturday, January 19

What's Left

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I wrote about Jeff Curto's teachings yesterday. It's worth a trip to iTunes to download his free course on the history of photography. I've listened to it once through. Now I've discovered that I can pick lectures randomly and listen to them as I work on my own images. The repetition helps the ideas sink in.

It was one of those ideas that fathered this image. I seem to recall him saying that painters start with nothing and have to edit everything onto an empty canvas. But a photographer starts out with everything and then edits reality away. We start through framing, then use whatever craft we can master to identify the singular idea and feeling which we want to communicate.

That was precisely my challenge as I looked at these Roman windows. By the way, they don't seem to have flies in Rome or Florence. I never once saw a screen on a window. And I guess that's why they use their windows a lot more than we do. People seem routinely to lean out and peer at everything. Here in Lancaster City, it's rare to see folks hanging out and watching or carrying on conversations with passers-by. And look at how those windows were cut into that wall. They are poked everywhere.

The idea which I've left then? A lot more than light passes through a Roman's window.

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