*ooof*: Viewer ReActions

There is nothing better than a bit of RL fangirling to bring me back into the swing of things. After a missed *ooof* from last week – apologies – I had a visit from a RL RA friend of mine, and the ensuing RAfest between the two of us brought back the desire to have an in-depth look at a RA photograph. Before I received a request (which I will honour next week), I started on today’s *ooof* – the latest release from the prolific work of Sarah Dunn, the ladder shot of Mr Armitage from a Japanese magazine.

What are you staring at???
Richard Armitage grumps in a shoot by Sarah Dunn
Found at thorinrichardarmitage.tumblr.com

Let’s start with the customary description of the shot before we launch into technicalities, interpretation and fictionalisation of the image. Shot outdoors, Mr A is pictured dangling from a metal ladder in an undefinable location. The portrait format of the image shows a full length representation of RA, as if he is climbing the ladder, feet on two different rungs, holding on with his right hand. The ladder is at a 45 degree angle to the camera, which is pointing into a rather non-descript corner. Dressed all in black – shoes, jeans, zipped-up leather jacket, Armitage shows his body from the side. He has turned his head towards the camera, though, and so we get a look at his face. Not straight on, but we can make out his eyes staring straight at us, a neutral expression on his face. As the camera level is about the height of his hips, he inclines his head downwards just a little bit. His left arm dangles by his side. Visible in the shot is a dirty wall which appears to be light blue in colour. There are pipes at the upper edge of the image along the wall, and various other pipes and metal bars are attached to the wall, with rust marks having left brown streaks underneath the metal where the rain has washed down.

My initial reaction to this image was a big knowing smile. No, nothing about the ridiculousness of Mr A suspended between heaven and earth, but the typical photographic practice I felt manifested in the image. Photographers, like animals, prefer the outdoors. I have said this so often in my *ooof*s, you already know why. The light is simply unsurpassed. We prefer the day to be cloudy – intense sunlight is no good for us because it causes problems with its strong shadow. Here we have a cloudy day (or simply a shadowy corner without direct access to rays of sunlight) indicated by the lack of shadow on the subject (and let’s not be finickity about the tiny amount of shadow under the Armitage proboscis – impossible to lose when lit by the great big softbox in the sky). We like shooting outdoors in bright but cloudy conditions because we have no need for flash. That means we neither have to set up triggers, nor are we hampered by cords that connect our camera to an off-camera flash. There is simply less potential for technical failure, and the colour representation is easier to deal with than under artificial light.

The choice of location may keep some viewers puzzled. Why place a beautiful subject in ugly surroundings? Does the unattractive location not take away from the aesthetics of the scene? Well, placing a flawlessly perfect handsome person in an ugly location will undoubtedly enhance his beauty even more. Just imagine a single flower growing from a crack in asphalt – the contrast is literally forced upon the viewer. It is a rather brutal and in-your-face device of photographic aestheticism, but it never fails to do the trick for me: However much lacking in beauty the background may be, Mr A’s handsomeness will glow from the image. It will stand out even more than it might do in a shot such as Getz Mezibov’s staircase image of RA in the classy, stringently aesthetic Art Deco setting of the Town Hall Hotel in London. However, both approaches have their merits – enhancing beauty by setting it off from ugly backgrounds (Dunn), as well as complementing beauty by seemlessly blending it with a beautiful visual context (Getz Mezibov).

What made me smile here, too, was the evident? habit of photographers to find and use anything and everything as a backdrop for their shots. This is something I am familiar with from my own photographic practice and from my time spent assisting others on their shoots. As an insight into how a photographer works: Ideally, before the actual shoot takes place, the photographer will already have visited the location and checked its suitability. When the set-up is a shoot against a neutral backdrop under studio lights, there is not that much to scout – she might possibly want to check how many lights are available, if there are props and whether there are different colour backdrops. We do not know what Dunn’s brief was when the shoot was organised – but photographers are a creative lot, and they will always scan their location for any and every possible set-up they can conjure up. I have a studio at my own disposal – with a variety of monochrome backdrops – but I regularly also push the backdrop aside and place my sitters against the large window that dominates my studio, making use of the natural light there, or I turn my sitters around and place them against a large double-door that connects my studio to another room, using the white painted wooden panels as an unobtrusive but distinctive background. Nothing is safe, when a photographer looks for a suitable background – pictures will be ruthlessly ripped down from the wall, or pieces of fabric will be gorilla-taped against a wall in luscious velvet waves,  and pieces of furniture will be rearranged to receive a look that fakes a feel *just* within the frame and for as long as it takes to release the shutter. We cheat wherever we can – want a crackling fire within the hearth behind the sitter reclining in a chair? Heck, building a fire from logs is far too complicated. We will crumple up yesterday’s newspaper, throw it in the grate, light it and shoot 5 images in quick succession in the 30 seconds the paper ball takes to go up in flame.

We kill as many birds as we can with one stone. We are greedy. We don’t just want that *one* look of the sitter conventionally placed against the neutral backdrop. The photographer is guided by “you never know”, and so we do as many different looks and set-ups as we can manufacture from our location.  Just think back to Ascroft and the amount of different images – with very different feels – that he produced from what was most likely just one day of shooting: He did the classic white backdrop portraits, he placed a suited RA in front of a relatively neutral steel door for several shots, he had a less formal Armitage sit on the concrete floor and on a shabby chic armchair, he placed the casually dressed Armitage in front of a wall with peeling paint in various poses, he had him perch in front of a window, and he took him outdoors on the street in a coat. Dunn did the same here – she shot the ubiquitous blown-out white backdrops, she shot some moody pictures with RA reclining in a chair, and she undoubtedly spotted this visually interesting corner somewhere on the location and immediately saw its potential as a backdrop for a casual portrait. This is creative thinking on the go – the eyes always open for potential set-ups. Anything goes – and if there is a particularly interesting toilet cubicle, nothing will stop a photographer from incorporating *that* in a shot.

With that in mind, I can totally see why Dunn had to get a shot in of her sitter in this unsightly corner. It added a gritty, edgy scene to the other set-ups that were sleek and streamlined (white neutral backdrop), and soft and moody (the chair images). Three locations for the price of one, essentially… I like the setting, I like the grittiness of it. I like how this shot contrasts with the other shots taken on the same occasion (presuming that the Dunn shoot was done in just one take on one day). With this set-up Dunn manages to find a location that fits the casually, leather-dressed sitter much more than the studio-shot of a suited RA. Because a man dressed in black and casual, tight-fiitting leather jacket is believable – in theory – to be dangling from a ladder, in an ugly corner. The association of a spy? A heist movie? Cary Grant in “To Catch a Thief”, anyone? And more so than under moody lighting in-studio.

I like the colour composition of this image – the cold ice blue of the walls complements rather than contrasts with the black of the sitter’s outfit. (Although I need to caveat that – it is entirely possible that the walls are not blue *at all* but white – and the blue is merely a hue added by the camera; the pale skin tone makes me slightly suspicious that this image is either postproduced or deliberately shot with the WB setting set for “sunny” while actually shooting in “cloudy” conditions. The result is a blueish hue.) The colour cast in this image is very cold – but that mirrors the cold stare of the sitter, and thus is nicely organic.  – I also like the added visual interest by the many horizontal and vertical lines in the image. They do not necessarily work like guiding lines for the viewer’s gaze in this image, but they add relatively unobtrusive visual interest. I am slightly flummoxed by the fact that Dunn has not adjusted the horizon in this picture: The image is slightly tilted to the left. You can compare a version of the image where I adjusted the horizon line in Photoshop – the subject still dangles nicely from the ladder even when the ladder does not lean to the left. I don’t quite get the decision to leave the tilt. I am also not mad about the inclusion of the pipe corner at the top of the frame that adds a lot of busy background right in the spot of the image where the most important part of the sitter is pictured, his head. As he it stands, RA’s head is just at the sort of height where a dark, discoloured corner obscures the background and blends with RA’s mop of dark hair. I might have asked Armitage to step down one rung to get his head slightly further down. By crouching down, the photographer could have still emphasised the feeling of height.

Having said that, the image is slightly too posed for my taste. I do not really mind the incongruous act of looking at a camera while climbing on/hanging from a ladder. But the pose itself is slightly to forced for me, both manifested in the unusual grip of the right hand on the ladder as well as the drawn back left shoulder. The left arm is deliberately (?) pulled back to reveal the torso. Unfortunately, the left hand subsequently restricts the view of the buns peaches. Big no-no, Ms Dunn!

However, I like the attempt at shooting a full-length shot that is certainly different. It is not the usual, boring standing pose, but an extended climbing pose. We get to see the whole length of the body, but in an interesting, different pose. The body shape as it is moulded against the ladder is interesting – with one leg higher up, allowing a knee and thigh to stand out. There is also a connotation of strength coming from the one-armed holding on to the ladder that makes you almost *feel* the flexed biceps of RA’s right arm despite his torso entirely concealing it. (Again, this could’ve been even more sledgehammer effective if RA had not worn the leather jacket that conceals his torso. Just imagine a t-shirt-clad Armitage holding on to the ladder – an opportunity to flex his muscles and show his biceps. But I supect that is Guylty the fangirl speaking, rather than Guylty the photographer *blushes*.)

What is interesting to me since I have now analysed four Dunn shots, is the comparison it allows with other shoots that happened at roughly the same time, namely the Hassler shoot. A number of things strike me: Dunn’s shots come across as much less personal than Hasslers. She seems to picture less Armitage and more “model”. I say this based on the impression that her images appear much more “static” and posed, despite implied movement (especially in this shot), and because of the generally more serious facial expression of RA in her images. Despite clearly posing for Hassler as well, there a feeling of dynamicism emanates from the images. The pictures look more personal (to me). Hassler’s shots look as if they were fun, Dunn’s look like work: more minute modifications to the pose, and taking longer to release the shutter. All Dunn poses are characterised by a static feel. But: they are classy, classic, deliberate, planned portraits, whereas Hassler’s are more dynamic, intuitive, snapped at the decisive moment. There is no judgment in that, they are equally well executed, but they create different reactions in the viewer.

Talking about reactions in the viewer… Just imagine this:

He’d shot himself a bit in the foot. No, not to worry – only figuratively speaking. He smirked to himself, thinking how a statement like that would be received by his legions of well-wishing fans. Well, the worry was valid, as some of his recent public statements had proved counterproductive. He had been interviewed by a little known webchannel, and possibly swept away by a false feeling of intimacy – ooooh, another one of those phrases that he probably ought to avoid  if he didn’t want his fans to completely get the wrong end of the stick… wait, was “stick” also too suggestive??? Shit, this was getting worse and worse. If he didn’t immerse himself in some sort of work soon, he’d go ga-ga, and alienate his fandom in the process. Right, collecting his wits, he went back to his previous train of thought. So, he’d been interviewed, and lulled into a sense of security, he’d let on to being interested in adapting and writing, producing and possibly directing. That’s where the bullet-pierced extremity came in. The result had been a decided frosty silence by all the recently seen casting agents and directors he  had hoped to garner a role from. How the  hell had *they* heard about this interview???

Anyway, that whole snafus was responsible for him doing what he was doing right now. In the lull between filming and acting, he was researching for a self-driven adaptation project. Every generation needs its David Copperfield, he had thought, and he had thrown himself with enthusiasm into the text. David Copperfield meets the 21st century – his version of the Dickens masterpiece was set in New York City. And right now he was scaling the heights of New York City rooftops, getting a feel for the work of the chimney sweeps. Through far-reaching contacts he had wormed his way into a sweeping company, and here he was, reaching lofty heights, literally. As he set one foot above the next on the metal rungs of the ladder, he felt a surge of adrenaline in his veins. This was almost like being back in Lucas North territory – racing across the rooftops of London, gun in hand, tight Belstaff coat hugging the tops of his hips, ahhhhhhhhh. Reaching the end of the ladder, he took a perfunctory look into the chimney pot – just for the benefit of the lady of the house who had called for a chimney professional and admitted him, personally, to her rooftop.

He could feel her eyes on his back as he was getting ready to climb back down. “I say, chimney sweeps come in really nice packages these days”, the dark blonde said with a smoky voice that made him break out in a cold sweat. Her eyes had moved down to his bum, he was sure. He squirmed inwardly and continued climbing down, ignoring her remark. The sexual objectification of well-hung craftsmen by bored housewives was a taboo topic that clearly needed to be addressed. He made a mental note to include this controversial issue in his adaptation. Focussing his eyes on the last few rungs before he reached the safe ground, he missed the client surreptitiously moving forward to the bottom of the ladder. “Heeeek”, he exclaimed in a surprised falsetto, as a sharp-nailed thumb and index finger pinched forcefully through his tight black trousers. “These bunsss… did you make them? These buns?”, the female cooed behind  his leather-clad back. Suddenly his temper flared. A threatening growl escaped from his lungs – with the desired effect on the woman: She nearly flew back a couple of steps. Dangling from the ladder, he held on with one hand and slowly turned his head towards her. He pierced her with an icy stare. Maybe he should adapt A Discovery of Witches instead. His accent would be spot-on, and he already had the piercing vampire gaze down to the tee…
 

~ by Guylty on March 11, 2014.