Shutter Mike Photography

In our post-9/11 world photography news has been filled with stories of the rights of photographers, amateur and professional alike, being questioned and tested.  Security guards and police officers stopping photographers everywhere from shopping malls to train stations claiming photography is banned is nothing new.  If you know your rights as a photographer and have the ability to remain calm and polite these incidents are usually no more than an uninformed “officer” and an inconvenience.

However, there are some legitimate bans on photography.  The latest comes from Washington DC and the National Archives.  Effective February 24th tourists will no longer be able to take photographs inside the National Archives, the home of the US Constitution and other historically and politically priceless documents.

This has some photographers up in arms as their right to photograph and even document these documents is being squashed.  But according to the National Archives, the reasons for the ban are not “terrorist” related as is often cited by as the reason for stopping photographers in other public places.  Being hundreds of years old, the documents housed in the Archives are obviously in a fragile state to say the least.  Up until recently they were housed behind filtered glass to protect them from the building lights and the unknowing or delinquent tourist who ignored the “no flash photography” signs.  But the filters made the documents have a greenish hue which, again according to the Archives, diminished the tourist experience.  So they removed the filtered glass, placed the filters on the lights themselves and banned all photography.  Easier than policing the few tourists who could not or would not comply with the rules I suppose.

In the case of this photography ban, we have the point-and-shoot, sock-and-sandal tourist who does not understand they are part of the bigger world and their actions impact others to blame.  I understand that the National Archives are doing their job to protect America’s priceless historical documents.  Unfortunately the amateur photography is a casualty.  For professionals and the media arrangements can still be made to photograph within the Archives.  The rest of us can grab one of the free pre-printed photos of the constitution and make mental pictures.

The tungsten lighting in this image works with the over all monochromatic colors of the chair, pillow and curtains.  The lighting sets an inviting, almost peaceful  mood.  While the white balance on the camera could have been adjusted to compensate for the tungsten lamp I think it was more true to the actual setting to leave the light as it was.

The composition rules in photography all serve the general purpose of engaging the image’s viewer with the image.  That may be through getting an image that follows certain standards of beauty or enticing some sort of interaction from the viewer.  The purpose of leading lines in a photograph is to lead the viewer’s eye through (and occasionally right out of) the photograph so that they view the image as the photographer wants them to see it, starting at point A and following a specific path to see the image as the photographer saw the scene.  Leading lines are also used to bring the viewer’s  attention to one particular point in the image, generally the main subject.

How the leading line is achieved and what is used to construct it is completely up to your imagination.  Railroad tracks are probably the most common example of a leading line.  But fences, roads, the edge of a building, or a row of similar objects can all make a leading line.  As mentioned in the Framing the Subject post the “rules” o f composition are not absolute so much as they are guidelines to use and expand upon to produce images that are appealing.  As photographers we have to interpret and often break or reconstruct these rules to get the images we are after.

The image in the upper right is using the yellow lines of the road as the leading line to start the viewer in the lower left corner of the photograph and leading them to the center and the sunset.

The photograph of the tunnel above is simply directing the viewer’s eye to a termination point of the light at the end of the tunnel.

Finally, the image of the path on the right takes the photograph viewer from the shade to the light and finally the museum building at the end of the path.  In this photo one could argue that the path, or the leading line, itself is the subject rather than termination point of the museum.