Finding A Vision

I once read that Henri Cartier-Bresson, the famous Parisian street photographer, didn't like to crop his photographs, insisting instead that they be printed and framed exactly as he had seen them in his viewfinder. I think I am coming to understand why he felt that way. But, before I tell you what I think I have learned, I would like to show you some street photography from my favorite big city, Boston, Massachusetts.

I was never satisfied with my own cityscapes until I saw the work of a local watercolor artist here, whose colorful renditions of the Boston streets just knocked my socks off. After studying those paintings for some time, I noticed that this artist had a knack for standing in just the right spot on a street where the compositional lines came together for him in an amazing and beautiful way. So I determined that I would go out and consciously imitate his style.

One of the first things I discovered on my journey was that, unfortunately, the real streets weren’t quite like the paintings. The watercolor artist had subtly distorted the shapes and perspectives of things in order to improve his composition. I couldn’t do that with my camera, of course, so my photos would never look like the watercolors that I so admired. But, wasn’t the basic principle still valid? Find the right spot to stand so that the architectural lines come together in the right way. Leading lines of perspective, repeating elements, layering of foreground, middleground and background, framing of objects within other objects, and the like. Just find the right spot to stand.

For this photo, which I call “Sunset Over Boylston Street At Auditorium,” I decided to stand close to the wall of the building on my right. I saw the lines of the street and the row of buildings on the left recede into a perspective point in the distance, and I thought the wall on the right provided a nice foreground to offset the distant perspective point. I liked the way the sunset was nestled between the canyon of buildings. I also knew that I wanted a human element to add interest, so I waited there patiently for “interesting people” to walk onto my stage. I think I took eight or ten snaps from this location, moving around a bit each time, and with different denizens of the city in each shot.

I have a companion shot of this same scene, taken just a few seconds later from a vantage point just one or two feet to the left of where I am standing here. Same sunset, same guy hanging out, but it is a much weaker image than this one, not at all pleasing to look at. The imposing foreground created by the wall on the right is gone, and the lines just aren’t quite right. Just a twelve-inch difference in point of view, but one shot is a failure, and the other is one that I want to keep.

Anyway, back to Henri. If the composition seen in the viewfinder is deliberate, and is to me the essence of the image, then I certainly don’t want to crop out and display just a little piece of it. To be sure, somebody else might like that little piece, but the vision that I was trying to show you would be lost.