Woman with Bracelets
A village in Gujarat, India 2005
I remember the days when I couldn’t tell my good photographs from my bad. In my first semester of photography class I asked the teacher to choose for me when I had to print. Luckily, he was a kind man and told me that they were all good. I didn’t believe him, but I was grateful.
He recommended looking at the works of the great photographers. In those days, we bought books, but now you can look at the web. Study the ones you like and try to figure out why you like them…put it into words. It will help you remember.
I like this photo of a woman hiding her face from me. Here’s why: the woman, who is the subject, takes up about 3/5 of the space (in addition to the rule of thirds, 3/5 and 2/5 are a good divider of space). If we divide the image into thirds, her eye, if we could see it, would rest on the upper one-third line. Her body forms a circle or maybe even a triangle. Her face is hidden, her costume is intriguing, the designs on the wall in the foreground provide texture in an otherwise soft photo and the background tells you something yet remains mysterious.