A picture is worth a thousand words (Part 1)


Dành tặng các bố mẹ và các bạn học viên đang theo học lớp Nhiếp ảnh của MVL với thầy Nguyễn Long Hưng 


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Hai bức ảnh dưới đây được chọn ra từ 12 bức ảnh biểu tượng nổi tiếng trên thế giới được tổng hợp trong một bài báo. 


Mời các bạn cùng xem ảnh và đọc bài viết bằng tiếng Anh. Chúng ta vừa học thêm tiếng Anh vừa học cách tác giả phân tích và bình luận một bức ảnh. Có rất nhiều điều thú vị. 


(Mình đã chọn ra những đoạn text đơn giản, dễ hiểu để các bạn dễ theo dõi.)

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"Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything." - Aaron Siskind


"To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." - Elliott Erwitt


"A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny moments in a person’s life that reveal greater truths." - Anonymous



Sharbat Gula – Steve McCurry – 1984


Published for the first time in 1985, the iconic portrait of a young afghan girl, a refugee from the war, still evokes a deep and complex mix of feelings and emotions to this day. After seventeen years, Steve McCurry found her and portrayed her again.


© Steve McCurry

This image is a superb portrait of all portraits of all time for me. This is due to many things, but the primordial is that eerie feeling of indefinite expression (I guess this is why some people have stated that this picture is the modern Mona Lisa).

The moment Steve McCurry captured is so intense that I could only guess that this is evidence of the transition between recognizable emotions. Her beautiful green eyes, her skin, her hair, her fragile clothes, the outstanding sharpness of the image, the complementary colors, her soul-piercing look, everything in this picture, speaks.

I remember when I first saw this photo, I imagined Steve McCurry running on a random street and capturing this image almost candidly. Later on, I learned that it wasn’t like that, and it doesn’t matter to me; this portrait is sublime and perfect; it speaks about the universality of the human being.

A couple of years ago, I saw this video, and I understood the importance of having agile and well-intended social skills in order to capture meaningful pictures.

Steve McCurry wasn’t running away from the bullets like a superhero-portrayed him when I saw this image for the first time (at least with photographic awareness of what could have implied capturing an image like this one surrounded by a bellic context), but he was at a school, and he managed to let her almost want the picture. His skills were beyond amazing. We have the wrong idea that kids don’t understand things and could easily be tricked out. But kids don’t lie, and they have a lot of temper and character, and this is completely tangible in the iconic portrait of Sharbat Gula. And after 17 years, he found her again. 



Hyeres – Henri Cartier-Bresson – 1932



© Henri Cartier-Bresson


Cartier-Bresson was known for his challenging approach of not cropping his images and showcasing them right as they were framed in-camera. He talked a lot about the Decisive Moment, which in a few words, is the ability to capture a moment right before it happens. I don’t remember the source, but I heard once that he said (and this one was printed in my memory) that if you had seen the moment, it had just occurred, and that one as a photographer must be able to see the moment before it happens.

The image called Hyeres by Cartier-Bresson is almost all the illustration needed in order to comprehend composition. We have a rule of thirds everywhere, but mainly on the bicycle rider, and we have leading lines everywhere, from the sidewalk to the obvious swirl on the hand railing of the stairs. And if that wasn’t enough, the slow shutter speed shows a great sense of movement and dynamism of the rider exiting the scene.

The picture itself was taken in Hyeres in 1932 and has been present as an iconic image of Henri Cartier-Bresson during several retrospectives. The decisive moment here is obvious, and it beautifully juxtaposes the freedom of the rider, with the rigid soul of the balcony and the railings. The image seems even to be taken by accident, but thanks to his theory of the decisive moment, chances of doing things the way he intended were and are on his side. We can also think that this was the product of a long wait, which is, in fact valid. Photography is about patience, and we must never forget it.


Source: https://www.phototraces.com/creative-photography/world-famous-photos/

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