ambiguity

Photoessay: Ambiguity, part II

August 24, 2020 by Ming Thein

Whilst the previous post was all about ambiguity in groups, crowds or simply physically larger and visually more dense situations, with the barest hint of narrative (if any) dictated by gross body language – this set focuses more closely on couples or a single individual, thus leaving more room for expression and gesture. It is more of an emotional set that suggests causality from a detail or gesture frozen in mid-motion rate than juxtaposition. Though to be honest, the differences are perhaps not as stark as I make them out to be, even if during the curation process the images naturally separated themselves into two distinct groups. Enough words about images that are intended to stand on pure visual interest…MT

This series was shot with a mixed bag of hardware over some period of time and multiple locations, but predominantly the Nikon Z7, mostly the 24-70/4 S and my custom SOOC JPEG profiles.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: ambiguity, blackandwhite, life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, monochrome, people, photoessay, street, thein

Photoessay: Ambiguity, part I

August 21, 2020 by Ming Thein

I make no claims to have any idea what any of these people are doing – and judging from how some of them look in certain locations, I suspect neither do they themselves. But that’s okay, because it makes for the kind of open-ended storytelling photography that allows us to fit our own narrative to things, and thus manage to satisfy a wider variety of audience expectations. In my previous work of this kind, I’ve always tried to provide some sort of serving suggestion for the narrative; in these sets, I’ve deliberately stayed away from that as far as possible and focused on curation for the sake of visual entertainment only. Shadows, textures, patterns, dynamism and implied flow…but no immediate narrative. Because honestly, why not? MT

This series was shot with a mixed bag of hardware over some period of time and multiple locations, but predominantly the Nikon Z7, mostly the 24-70/4 S and my custom SOOC JPEG profiles.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: ambiguity, blackandwhite, life, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, monochrome, people, photoessay, street, thein

Don’t fear the shadows

November 19, 2015 by Ming Thein

In a conversation, sometimes what is left explicitly unsaid reveals just as much as what is – and the same is true in photography. Whilst much fuss is made over extended dynamic range, highlight and shadow recoverability and similar technical aspects, the question of what we’re going to do with all of this latitude is seldom addressed. In a practical sense, there is of course the desire to replicate the tonal range of the human eye especially for very literal images like most landscapes, but to move beyond that requires a bit more conscious consideration of the end intention.

November 11, 2015 by Ming Thein

Jazz time.

I believe good photographs can be divided into two camps: the literal and the ambiguous. (There’s a third kind, which you cannot really classify into either because they are lacking something fundamental like a clear subject – these land up as being ambiguous by default, but not intentionally.) From an interpretative/ artistic standpoint, a photograph is perhaps the most literal of all art forms; assuming minimal postprocessing, the translation between reality and finished interpretation is predictable and consistent across all subjects and capture conditions. The resultant image has to obey the laws of physics, after all – and these are generally quite consistent. But then how can we use ambiguity to our advantage to make a stronger image?