Welcome to the Two by Three web site. My name is Piet Niederhausen and
I'm a part time photographer living in the Washington DC area. My main interest
is in fine art photography, but I also enjoy travel, documentary, and
food photography. I've been taking pictures since my parents first gave
me a camera around age twelve.
My fine art work is primarily subjective, meaning that I'm not mainly
interested in representing the world as it is, but rather in using
reality as a starting point to create an image. I emphasize
composition and framing (hence the name of this site) and the use of empty space. I'm also interested in how text fragments (for example, from signs) can become part of an image.
I'm an active flickr user and you can see more of my day-to-day photography in my flickr collections or on the map. If there's an image in flickr that you'd like to see added to this site, just let me know. Thanks!
Monday, February 18, 2008
"Two by three" -- what's with the name?
"To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft." -- John Szarkowski
In his wonderful book The Nature of Photographs, Stephen Shore discusses four formal elements that define photography: vantage point, frame, focus, and time.
In framing an image, a photographer makes complex (if not always conscious) decisions. Whatever is inside the frame is visible in the final image; whatever is excluded remains unknown to the viewer. If the photo is depictive, the choice of frame changes the message of the photo. If it is subjective, it changes the composition.
Not only the location of the frame (the boundary between what is "put in" and "left out") matters, but also the shape of the frame. Square images feel different from rectangular images. The shape of the rectangle matters too. A very wide, narrow perspective creates a different feeling from a nearly-square frame.
The shape of the frame starts with the camera; the design of the camera and film determine the proportions of the photos that are recorded with it (unless they are cropped). In the twentieth century, thirty-five millimeter film cameras became the de facto standard for photography around the world. The proportions used by these cameras were adopted for digital SLRs and continue to shape how we see photography. They became what we think of as the "normal" proportions for a photograph.
Those proportions are the ratio 2:3.
Two by three.
In his wonderful book The Nature of Photographs, Stephen Shore discusses four formal elements that define photography: vantage point, frame, focus, and time.
In framing an image, a photographer makes complex (if not always conscious) decisions. Whatever is inside the frame is visible in the final image; whatever is excluded remains unknown to the viewer. If the photo is depictive, the choice of frame changes the message of the photo. If it is subjective, it changes the composition.
Not only the location of the frame (the boundary between what is "put in" and "left out") matters, but also the shape of the frame. Square images feel different from rectangular images. The shape of the rectangle matters too. A very wide, narrow perspective creates a different feeling from a nearly-square frame.
The shape of the frame starts with the camera; the design of the camera and film determine the proportions of the photos that are recorded with it (unless they are cropped). In the twentieth century, thirty-five millimeter film cameras became the de facto standard for photography around the world. The proportions used by these cameras were adopted for digital SLRs and continue to shape how we see photography. They became what we think of as the "normal" proportions for a photograph.
Those proportions are the ratio 2:3.
Two by three.
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