Thoughts on National Geographic photos...

Alaskan Rover

Photography, like any art, is an intensely individual experience. What leaps out at one person as a great photo, others pass on by because it just doesn't grab them.

And yet with individual tastes aside, one paper venue CONTINUALLY makes absolutely astounding photographs (okay...LIFE did too...but it's gone now)...that MANY MANY people can agree with.

So how do they do it? What is their recipe for photos that leap from the page and capture even the most cumudgerin(sp) of us?

It's more than just light and angles and perspective...all that is good, but all that is quantitative. No...it's something more...maybe just a little bit of magic...a little of the undefined. There is ONE photo that ALWAYS leaps to my mind when thinking about National Geographic Magazine...that one of the Persian girl with the absolutely ELECTRIC green eyes. Perhaps you know the one. I'll look for it. Like I said...a picture like that is MORE than technique, more than skill, more than perspective...it is more than the aggregate of ALL of that.

If magic exists, perhaps it exists in a photo like that. And perhaps that one moment in time, in life, needed to be captured like that to reassure us that there is more than just light formulas and f-stops out there...and that the true art of photography is capturing not just the moment but the essence and the life and the heart of that moment.

How do you teach that? You don't.

I guess the only thing I could offer is that it is a matter of luck and timing...and so one key is to take LOTS and LOTS of photos. Thank god for digitals...when I think of the THOUSANDS I've spent on lab developing!

I found her. And I guess she's Afghan not Persian.

There is a shot of an white-bearded, old Afghan-looking or Pakistani-looking man that shows up on the top header of this website from time to time that is EQUALLY as arresting. I love photos like that.

What do YOU picture when YOU think of National Geographic?

http://i799.photobucket.com/albums/yy274/SoulVoyager/afghan-girl-portrait-127438-xl-1.jpg

mod edit: image removed for copyright infringement. the photo referenced and included with above link was taken by celebrated photographer Steve McCurry. Here's some reading material on him and the famous shot:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/100best/multi1_interview.html
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

.

Chrissiebeez_NL

I am so very sure some other members have some much better arguments ready but i think it has a lot to do with telling the story. I've noticed that my (nowhere near NG quality) shots improve a lot when i put the camera down at first and get just soak up all the environment, the persons, the story, history, etc. After that, you're much better able to tell a story with your photo and you can decide about what you want in the frame (since it now has intrinsic-storytelling value, rather than just compositional) and what not. And i think a lot has to do with the willingness to go to the places that are depicted in the NG, often remote and exotic, and have the patience to get just the right set of elements that make the shot. This all beside the fact of technical expertise. I think your right that they make a lot of shots too, and only a few really really stand out but just keeping the shutter pressed while walking wont get you your stellar shot.. not in a million years.

Just my $ .02

Blackwood

Three words:

subject,
subject, and
SUBJECT.

I think everyone knows the picture you are talking about. I bet if you polled a hundred people with "what do you think of when I say national geographic," more than half would picture that photo. I do.

Anyway, from a purely photographic standpoint, there is nothing exceedingly special about much of what gets published in Nat Geo (note: I'm not saying they are bad, just that nothing above and beyond what many talented photographers regularly do). Nat Geo is all about subject matter.