Monday, February 18, 2013

"HITS AND FITS" AND HOW IT "PLAYS"

When I taught a university advanced photography course decades ago, I needed to work out a simply stated method so students could know where I came from when looking at a work, I said something like this: “Shoot what hits and fits, and remember that everything in the frame plays.”
“Hits and fit” refers to a person’s sensibility, how an image strikes a person’s authenticity. A better word could the Spanish “sensibilidad,” which includes both sensibility and sensitivity, still very nuanced words
“Everything in the frame plays” refers to how to compose, what to leave out and leave in, how to arrange what’s in the image. So “hits and fits” then is how an image presents to oneself and “everything in the frame plays” is how it’s presented to another from the artist’s viewpoint. A viewer attends the image similarly, in this view. The two can become simultaneous.
I’m now realizing I could have applied these two more diligently in filmmaking and now, as well, in writing, or authoring.


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