Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/03/31

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Subject: RE: [Leica] I missed it.
From: Eric Welch <ewelch@ponyexpress.net>
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 22:53:54 -0600

At 09:09 PM 3/31/99 +0200, you wrote:
>It is difficult to produce images that 'work' on their own right. Very
>often, pictures of people "getting on with their lifes" fail to function as
>soon as the caption disappears. In those circumstances, it is the caption
>and the article that tell the story, transforming the pictures into
>illustrations.

I don't think so. No picture is going to be useful without text. What good 
is a portrait without knowing who the person is? Pictures of people getting 
on with their lives at least has more information that historians could 
conceivably use to gain information. What good would a picture of a person 
staring at the camera do more?

I agree that it might be an easier connection superficially to have eye 
contact. But that starts looking like every other eye-contact picture out 
there.

The combination of pictures and words is the most effective media, if you 
ask me. What the Photographic Communication book by R. Smith Scunneman 
talks about at the "third effect." The sum of the parts, words and 
pictures, is greater than the individual parts.

Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch

My computer's sick. I think my modem is a carrier.