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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Five: Using the frame to define ideas > Conversation, Heritage Park, San Diego, California, 2004
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15-APR-2004

Conversation, Heritage Park, San Diego, California, 2004

The huge porch at the corner of a historic Bed & Breakfast Inn in San Diego makes a perfect setting for a picture about sharing. This porch is framed in the decorative woodwork of another time – embracing two people who face each other across a table. I do not know if words or silence is passing between them at this moment. But they certainly were sharing the wonders of a San Diego sunset amidst surroundings that have seen many of them. I shot this picture from the corner of the house because of the symmetry created by the woodwork, the hanging baskets, and the people sitting opposite each other. The porch itself creates a frame within a frame – it is as if we are in the audience, and watching a performance on an ornate and historic stage.

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Phil Douglis20-Oct-2005 18:05
Thanks for the followup. I am always interested in comments, particularly those that discuss the nature of content in relationship to what I am trying to teach in a particular image. This image is an example of expression through framing, and I feel it is very instructive. Obviously you feel differently.
Denny Crane 20-Oct-2005 09:13
I didn't write that the woman was a bad thing. She's a really important part of the picture. I wrote that the light on her was poor. Yes, you could justify that in describing the woman's image as shadowy and therefore symbolic, and therefore appropriate for the image, but if her face had a highlight, sidelight, or frontal light on her, you could then justify that as being symbolic of something else. You can't really see her face, mostly a dark blob of hair, and a part of her arm and bit of her shoulder and blue shirt are lit up, which is difficult to justify symbolically without some radical stretching. I don't these parts lit up have any intentional merit.
I skimmed the message about the post, so I didn't realize it wasn't there. It's not really a bad thing that it's not there, though. The symmetry it would lend is not important to this picture.
This picture is usable as an example of framing. It's just not inspiring as a complete picture. I like the man's face and how it's lit. I'm trying to give constructive criticism by pointing out the things that might be improved, so I focus on the aspects of the photo that keep it from being a perfect, complete picture. I'm not trying to put down your photo(s).
Phil Douglis20-Oct-2005 00:14
This may a run of the mill snapshot to you, but it serves as good example of framing for my purposes, and my students are seeing it here in that context, as well as discovering in it a depth of meaning that has surprised me. As for the woman being "a bad thing" for this image, I feel that she works very well here as an abstract symbol. This is not an image about two specific people who need to be described in detail. I originally intended it as symbolic expression of sharing. And did within a series of frames. (Maureen later saw the image as a study of people keeping a distance between themselves -- exactly the opposite of what I had intended. Which is fine -- it only bears out the image's potential for expressing different thing to different people, a strength, not a weakness.) As for that "unseen post to the right" that you suggested be included in the frame, (and Maureen did as well), it was not there for me to include. It was an asymmetrical porch -- the right hand post was further away from the corner of the porch than the left hand post, and had I backed up to include them both, the image would have lost whatever symmetry I might have given to it with this framing.
Denny Crane 19-Oct-2005 19:57
The bad thing about this photo is the light on the woman's face. It doesn't attract the eye, and the eye goes there only after seeing the man's face, to see what he's looking at. The unseen post to the right outside the frame should be in the frame, it really should. We can project our thoughts and fantasies into this picture all we want, but isn't this really just a run-of-the-mill snapshot?
Ramma 16-Sep-2005 20:56
Superb Framing
Phil Douglis22-Dec-2004 19:31
Glad you find meaning here, Clara. And glad you understand the idea I am trying to get across.
Guest 22-Dec-2004 19:07
Pleasing representation of human company and dialogue. They may know each other or not, they may be talking or not. They share a space of being, they are open to each other. The wooden structure with the columns frames each one of the subjects as apparently separate, but this is our illusory perception, our perspective, not what they really experience.
Phil Douglis31-Oct-2004 18:51
You expressed yourself very well, Maureen, both times. You made me realize how poorly I had understood the value of this image before you illuminated it for me. Now that I look at it through new eyes, I agree that this picture is a substantive image. What you have really done for me, and for all of us, is to bring a new interpretation to this image that transcends my own intentions. I liked the way the original picture felt to me, but for the wrong reasons. Your analysis of it is brilliant. Although I teach photographic expression, from time to time, I, too, can fall into the trap of liking an image for what I saw while making it, yet fail to stand back and to see other its meanings to viewers who were not there with me on that quiet warm evening in San Diego. I only saw the positives of peace and quiet, because that is what I felt as I made this shot. But you see an image with negative connotation that goes far beyond my peaceful interpretation. The image you see, Maureen, talks about people who are going through the act of being together without really being together. Which to me is a far more thought provoking concept than my original intention. I am thrilled at what you see, because it shows us how images can acquire a life of their own once they are made. Thank you for your insights.
Guest 31-Oct-2004 13:36
LOL, Phil. I must have expressed myself poorly in this one. I don't hate the picture and doubt you're capable of taking a bad photograph. I actually think this is a wonderful photograph, although I would have expanded the framing to include the post on the right so it mirrored the post on the left. What differs is my interpretation of this photo, and as you know, those are subjective, and reflective of who WE are. While I'm typically a person whose glass is half full, I came away with a wonderful impression of the photo, but a negative connotation for the subject matter. YOU aren't anal in your framing....I would guess that they are anal with the way they have set up their lives, and you merely captured that. They each have positioned themselves on the porch to be in their own little box. The hanging baskets are almost perfectly centered. There is something (a chair?) that is almost perfectly centered on the other side of the middle post. They aren't smiling. They don't even look all that engaged to me. I think this is a great photograph of a couple that should be enjoying the evening sunset...should be engaged... should be touching or at least look connected...but have put themselves at a distance from one another, in neat little boxes living lives that may look perfect and symmetrical, but aren't intertwined and touching in any way.
Phil Douglis31-Oct-2004 05:05
It looks as if I have finally persuaded you to actually come out and actually disagree with how I handled a picture, Maureen! I am delighted you see it differently. I don't think any reframing of this image would make you like it any better, either. You see these folks as being centered perfectly, boxed in and looking unhappy. To top it off, you tell me that my symmetrical composition is almost "almost anal in nature." Maureen, why are you being so genteel here? Why not come right out and say that you think this is a shitty picture? It must be, because according to you, it certainly does not do what I wanted it to do. I made this picture as memory of a pleasant sunset chat, yet to you, these people are bored stiff. So let us both agree that the picture I intended to make, err, stinks! But the story of this image does not end in "failure." You imply that this picture can work if we can agree that it says something altogether different. At the end of your critique, you say that these people are centered perfectly within their boxes and that maybe it's the need to be perfect that has them both boxed and looking so unhappy. In other words, you feel that this couple has found the perfect spot in the perfect place at the perfect time, yet they still look unhappy. And that, dear Maureen, is one hell of a different picture than the one I intended, but as social comment, it potentially goes far beyond anything I had even considered or recognized. In other words, by abandoning the objective I had in mind for this picture, and substituting your own objective for mine, you have turned what was once a shitty picture into pure gold!

Welcome to my "Favorite Critics Club" Maureen. You have truly earned your membership tonight! Your criticism taught me, and any who may stumble upon this page, an extremely important lesson: the same image can be read in many ways. One person's shitty picture is another person's treasure! Thanks, Maureen, for pointing this out so eloquently.
Guest 31-Oct-2004 04:02
I see this very differently and would have framed it more to the right, so a bit of the unseen post on the right was in view - as much as the visible post is on the left. From here we have balance and symmetry that seems almost anal in nature. I'm not convinced they were enjoying a sunset, because they're both facing opposite directions. Only one of them could have seen the sunset. Furthermore, if you look carefully at their faces, it doesn't appear they're enjoying much of anything. Both people look to be centered perfectly within their own box. Each box contains a nice decorative touch - a hanging basket of flowers that is perfectly placed in the center of the box. Maybe it's the need to be perfect that has them both boxed in and looking so unhappy.
Guest 17-Jun-2004 00:32
This has a feel of quiet and intimacy made stronger by the tight framing.
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