Photo of the Month

This month, NYI Associate Dean Jerry Rice has written the Photo of the Month Review. Jerry's keen eye can help readers decipher any type of photograph. A lifelong lover of fine photography, when Jerry talks about photographs, everyone at NYI listens. We know you'll enjoy Jerry's observations on this month's photograph.

At NYI we teach our students a simple Three-Step Method for setting up every photograph they shoot:

• Step 1. Know your subject.
• Step 2. Focus attention on your subject.
• Step 3. Simplify.

This simple Three-Step Method is the secret of every successful photograph ever taken. We teach our students to consider these three steps every time they look into the viewfinder. To consider them before they press the shutter button.

When our students mail in their photographs for analysis by their instructor, the instructor starts by commenting on what we call the three Guidelines. Of course, the instructor analyzes other elements of the picture too – focus, exposure, filters, etc. But the key to every good photo – and the essential element of every great photo – is adherence to these three Guidelines.

How do they work? How can you apply them? It's beyond the scope of this Web site to teach you every nuance, but you will get an inkling from the Photo of the Month Analysis that follows.

Parade in Times Square

Photo by NYI Student Jeong Hwa Min

It all started, officially, on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – my hometown, by the way. They rang the Liberty Bell and proclaimed liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof. I wasn't actually there though some might think so.

It was a great day, America's birthday! The United States of America, a term first used in the Declaration of Independence, became a reality and patriotic Americans have vigorously celebrated that birthday ever since.

What better subject for our NYI Picture of the Month! NYI Student Jeong Hwa Min, a New Yorker from Long Island City (just across the East River from Manhattan) made this excellent photograph depicting a variety of American patriotic symbols and a number of other cultural icons, too all in one broad expansive photograph.

The width of the picture is an important element, I think. Ours is a big wide land and about as tall as it is wide; the addition of Alaska and Hawaii make it even bigger. You just can't comprehend America quickly, easily. You need to scrutinize this great country carefully.

What do I see here? Why, there's a replica of Miss Liberty – give us your tired poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, as Emma Lazarus said. And there's about a dozen pretty girls in Uncle Sam outfits and youthful marchers in baseball caps. A General Motors truck and a Coca-Cola sign. Howard Johnson (a double dip tutti-frutti cone, please). And so much more.

I can hear, in my mind's ear, George and Ira Gershwin's Strike Up the Band, John Philip Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever, Georgie Cohan's You're a Grand Old Flag. But for all the hoopla, bonhomie, and birthday zeitgeist I can also hear bittersweet Taps at Arlington, The Battle Hymn of the Republic at Gettysburg, The Bonnie Blue Flag at bloody Shiloh.

But most of all I hear Woody Guthrie: "This land is your land, this land is my land. From California to the New York island, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, this land was made for you and me."

Viewing this photograph in terms of the famous NYI Guidelines, there can be no doubt that Jeong Hwa Min has very strong subject matter as his theme. The first NYI Guideline has been well served here. The emotional response to patriotism, whether in the form of jubilant celebration or solemn memorial service, is powerful and of considerable interest to millions of viewers.

The second NYI Guideline explores means for focusing attention on the subject. I've already mentioned the importance of the width of the photograph. You could not do justice to this photograph unless you allow the subject matter to expand from one side of New York's Times Square to the other.

Yet another means of focusing attention on the subject can be seen in the clutter of the picture. Yes, it is cluttered and yes, NYI does tell its students to simplify the picture (third NYI Guideline). So, are we contradicting ourselves? No, of course not. Times Square is indeed a cluttered crowded area even with a parade. In order to get the true feeling of that gaudy and overblown area you simply have to fill it up with buildings, advertisements, crowds of people. It's Manhattan in New York, not Manhattan, Kansas!

It's hard to write about simplifying the picture when I've just talked about how deliberately cluttered the photograph is. But I feel that the clutter is in this case an absolute necessity.