Will someone please tell me why I keep photographing walls? Or, better yet, why I can’t stop photographing them?
When I see a wall like this — something flat and, I think, beautiful — a guilty smile bubbles up inside. It’s almost like I’m sneaking downstairs for another midnight snack, or climbing up on a chair so I can reach the cookie jar on top of my grandmother’s fridge. I look around as I hold the camera up and wave cars or passers by with a toothy smile smeared all across my chin like mayo. “I’m sorry, I just can’t help it anymore,” I tell them in my head. Then I take shot after shot until I feel shamed into walking away. I like shooting people, or whatever, too. But I shoot like this when I’m alone and I don’t completely understand it.
Son, this wall looks like modrien meets plywood. worthy of putting it on ye olde daguerotype.
Pretty sure I misspelled half of that statement.
I wasn’t going to say anything though.
[…] It is my continual desire to shoot planes flat to the lens in a way that creates an almost awkward presentational tableau — a graphic. After rolling, brad will consistantly walk closer to the plane such that it angles past the lens and turn to me, “but Raaf, look at this!” He lenses depth as well as anyone I’ve worked with. As such, we use the phrases “the brad way” and “the raaf way” as shorthand for how we approach certain setups. There are few shots in cinema that dictate authorship to the viewer, and these two techniques of visualizing things surely do not belong to anyone. […]