It seems appropriate that on a day when I was working on my new talk on photo composition, my friend Hy and I visited an exhibition of Garry Winogrand’s photos. Winogrand’s professed ideas about composition fly in the face of almost every piece of conventional wisdom. At least to hear him speak (in retrospect only now, as he passed away in 1984), photos did not and could not contain narrative or tell a story. For him only the grains of film within the frame mattered.

Ironically, that didn’t stop the curators and commentators from reeling off narratives for his images. Perhaps it didn’t even stop him – as he would have been the first to admit that he didn’t fully understand his own creative process. Whatever you think of his approach to photography (shoot constantly, shoot what you like, shoot what you think will look good in a photograph), his body of work contains some amazing and thought-provoking images.

Afterwards, deciding to spend a little time trying to emulate his style of “walking-around” photography, I captured this image on a pier by the Bay and used Dfx’s Tri-X filter to post-process with the look of one of Winogrand’s favorite films. If you’re looking for a way to broaden your horizons as a photographer, it’s fun and useful to look at someone else’s work and then try to think like them for a while. In fairness I was shooting mostly at 85mm, as it’ll take some effort for me to get comfortable shooting this type of image at Winogrand’s preferred 35mm or 28mm focal length.

Nikon D600, 24-120mm lens @ 85mm, 1/2000s @ f/5.6

If you can make it there, the excellent Winogrand exhibit is at the SF MOMA for a bit. Snag the free audio tour iPod as well, as the narrations add some nice value and it includes video clips of Winogrand being interviewed. I’ll be introducing my new talk on composition starting with my upcoming May Texas photo safaris.