Properties of Objects

  Some things lend themselves readily to photography, drawing and painting. They have a pleasing shape or colour, or respond well in varying light. Perhaps they have an air of timelessness or humanity. Countless images of this kind come to mind. A flower in a vase, dusty French wine bottles with torn and faded labels on an old table, pale lilies standing on a windowsill in the afternoon light, or a bridge in the river's mist at dawn.

  Well, perhaps some subjects are beautiful. Their inherent properties or qualities blend seamlessly into the feelings they may readily suggest, cultural or aesthetic meanings they already have, their emotional power, or an associated mood*.

  Other photographs' essence comes from inviting a comparison. Objects within the same frame gain something in relation to each other, and work in combination. 'Large' and 'small' have little meaning on their own, for instance (unlike, say, 'round' or 'blue'**). But putting together objects with these properties - this sense of scale creates a comparison, and says something.  

  Let's take an example. A picture of a little red apple sitting by itself in a large fruit bowl might somehow be 'about' size. But the picture would be interpreted differently if a green pear and a yellow banana are now added to the setup. The key property (no longer size, but colour) changes the interpretation.

  And those same lilies in the windowsill which we mentioned earlier: imagine them now pictured with some weathered old books placed on the other side of the sill. If the books are leaning askew at hard angles, they now begin to contrast with the soft, slender curves of the lilies' stems. The windowsill confines the angled books and curved flowers in its own rectangular frame - and the picture begins to suggest something different.

  So: either pictured alone, or compared to other objects, everything has properties. There are two ways in which an object's properties are relevant:

  Photographically

  As we've been discussing. An object's photographic qualities would include its shape, colour or texture, how it responds to light. Swans, for example, are white; they also have curved necks. A road may be triangular. An orange is colourful and spherical, and closer up, its has a dimpled texture.

  Practically

  That is, how the properties' relevance ties in what you can do with them. These are the possibilities to be explored, the problems to be solved. It's about what you can do, and what you can't - and the thinking that must follow hence. This refers to the reality of taking pictures in real time, in the real world. Example considerations are things like size, weight, dimensions or location, or perhaps how the object affects the light.

  For example, a leafy tree acts to diffuse the sunlight - and so can be a good place to shoot outdoor portraits. A mug of tea can be used as a prop to give the sitter something natural to do with his hands. The size of a laptop's screen is on the same scale as a person's face - and the laptop can be moved, folded or held. Televisions, on the other hand, are heavier and larger in general, and so less useful.

 (far left) Laptop screens enable reflections.(left) Being close to a wall in bright sunlight allows for an opportunity with shadows.

  There is some overlap between these two areas. For example, something photogenic can also be a natural 'prop' to fill an otherwise empty foreground. Imagine a shot taken from a beach, looking out to sea, but where you have conveniently placed a pretty shell up close to the camera to provide a point of interest. Or bare trees which get in the way for a shot of a temple. However, shooting in Autumn, they could be a welcome addition to the picture, their golden leaves perhaps filling a dull sky, or framing the temple completely.

 

(far left) These skeletal trees break up the flat sky.

(left) These flowers act as a frame.

 Golf clubs are all wrong

  I remember a former colleague's frustration on being sent to photograph a golfer. "The thing is, golf clubs are the wrong shape!" she said. And she's right. They are long and thin, and the business end is right on the ground. Relative to a person, they're not so big, either. My friend would likely have used other clues to shoot the portrait - perhaps by having the subject near the flag at the hole on the green, or by putting their golf bag in shot.

  Compare this to a portrait of a tennis player. Not only is their racquet more instantly recognisable in a picture (even at thumbnail-size), but it has an interesting shape. Look at portraits of tennis players and you'll see how photographers might utilise this property to effect. Also, being large, a racquet can be held quite naturally with two hands. This allows for more posing possibilities than, say, portraits of a table-tennis player, whose bat is small. Although the table-tennis table is perhaps better suited for a background than a tennis court, and the subject can lean or sit on it.

  The tennis racquet can even be used as a frame, since the player can 'look through' it. Tennis balls, too, are bright and colourful - much more so than golf balls. And so on. This is what I mean by the photographic and practical aspects being central to how we would approach a shoot.

  Or suppose you're shooting a stage-fighting instructor, and by way of props he has a sword. The sword, similar in dimensions to a golf club, is inherently more interesting (visually and suggestively). But are there other properties than can be used? Well, a sword may offer the potential for reflections: if not a close-up of the owner's eyes reflected on the polished steel, then at least the glint of sunlight flashed on the edge. Or you could stick it in the ground. If the sword is big enough, it wouldn't look out of place: think of the image from Braveheart with the claymore in the battlefield. Then you can perhaps have the subject standing, hands resting on the hilt.

(top left) All three of these are very old pictures from my newspaper days! This is an example of the good old 'look-through', exploiting the properties of a bicycle wheel to come up with something more interesting than three people just standing next to a bicycle. (bottom left) Here, dull stands from a card shop become colourful converging lines from above, meeting at the shop's owner at the bottom. (above right) Using the reflection on the sword for effect. Notice also how the small size of the sword requires a closer crop to keep things in proportion.

 (left) Signage is usually a nightmare. It is typically small and high up. So this required a tightly cropped shot from below: anything looser would have reduced the sign to insignificance. The main sign on the front of the building, although larger, is letterbox-shaped. To stand the girl underneath it, even at an angle, would probably have resulted in lots of dead space.

(below left) Making a pattern using repetition. This idea with a tennis squad (small balls!) or bowling team (heavy balls!) wouldn't have worked. A football team would have yielded a less interesting result. Yellow volleyballs work better with the blue kits than white footballs.

(below right) Using an implied property (weight) to get something different at a car show.

  Pretty much everything you can photograph has properties***. Even buildings have properties which affect how we might shoot them. A building's primary considerations are probably related to its location, its proximity to other buildings, its size etc. Its concerns are practical - where you can stand to get the best picture? It may be next to a busy road, or have a large tree blocking the view. And what time of day has the best light, which direction does it face?

 

(above left) This theatre presented problems. The road in front was in fact quite busy, so I was waiting a long while for traffic to pass. But the wall and steps to the entrance block much of the building from up close, meaning that there is no decent view from the building's side of the street. Moreover, highlighted in red is a lamppost which would have become very intrusive closer up. (above right) Moving backward creates a frame with some branches, breaking up the sky. The lamp-post is less intrusive too, although the overall trade-off is the theatre becomes relatively small in the frame.

 

(far left) Shooting from nearer the building caused problems with my own shadow. Also, we have an annoying shadow from a tree over much of the front of the building. A few hours' later, or on an overcast day, both shadows would be gone - but then the light may not have been as interesting.

(left) By moving around, my own shadow is much less intrusive, but the tradeoff here is a poor view of the main part of the building.

Apologies for not correcting the verticals on these!

  Forks

  I also teach privately, and recently set one of my students a little homework photographing forks (yes, that's right) in order to get him thinking in terms of properties and limitations. Doing the exercise myself, I immediately found the two features relevant to forks were the shape of the prongs and the curve of their neck. In the brief shoot, this took me down a path of abstracts and shadows. However, I could just as well have seen 'size', 'lack of colour' and 'purpose' as the key properties, which would have meant me doing close-ups of bright green peas on the tips of the prongs.

(left and below left) These are almost abstract arrangements of forks on a plate, using their curves and shadows.

(below right) This composition uses the prongs' shadows, with one of the forks - second from right - slightly angled downwards with a bent prong, to create a point of interest and break up the image.

  To conclude… For everything you photograph, photographic and practical properties often force you to shoot along certain lines, and this brings constraints. Awareness of the properties simplifies the thought process. Awareness of the constraints is key to making the best of the situation. In other words, you could say there are certain ways to shoot certain things. But the real skill is in being aware of other possibilities you would have ignored. To get something different, trying out something that shouldn't work, and achieving something new. None of this is new or surprising, it's just a way of thinking.

 *When starting out, I proudly showed a photographer a picture I had taken of some cranes on a cityscape. Their angles were interesting. Their red and blue colours contrasted well. Their stature, their presence thrusting out from the scene - their properties would seem to make them a good subject. But he told me that it would be nearly impossible to get a good picture of cranes. Ever. This bothered me. I wondered perhaps if I returned at sunrise, or when there were more cranes on the scene, or perhaps if I could do something with their silhouettes - would I be able to prove him wrong? I doubt it. If some things are beautiful (and therefore lend themselves to photography) perhaps it follows that other things just aren't. 

**Although it's fair to say that something's roundness is emphasised further when seen amongst rectangles, say. And colours certainly seem to become stronger in relation to other colours. More on this here.

***Yes, people have properties too - shape being an obvious one. When standing, we are narrow, upright rectangles, and at full-length we don't fit well in the typical wide format of a photograph. How do we work around this? Well, this is where chairs, steps, sitting, leaning - or just plain cropping - come into play!