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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Six: Vantage Point makes the difference > Student, Special Needs School, Lhasa, Tibet, 2004
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27-JUN-2004

Student, Special Needs School, Lhasa, Tibet, 2004

We visited the only boarding school for children with special needs in all of Tibet, and spent a hour or so in its classrooms. I will never forget the face of this student as she looked up from her work at me. To make this photograph, I placed the camera down on a desk, and used my flip-up rotating viewing screen to frame my shot. The low vantage brings us down to the child’s level and makes her expression all the more poignant.

Canon PowerShot G5
1/40s f/2.8 at 23.0mm full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis21-Aug-2006 22:08
Yes, Chris -- in looking at your images, I feel your portraits are the strongest part of your work. And that is because of your ability to tell a story with an expression. That is what I've tried to do here, and I am glad you feel that I've succeeded. Thank you.
Chris Sofopoulos21-Aug-2006 08:41
Her eyes are at the same level with your camera Phil. This is perfect.
Also her eyes and expression is something AWESOME. In my photos (I don't know if I achieve it) but I try to have this characteristic of expression as the basis of my photography.
A powerful image Phil!
Phil Douglis20-Oct-2005 19:13
Thanks for this comment, Denny. I appreciate your kind words on what I am trying to do here. I do it as a way to give something back to photography. It has been very kind to me over the years, and I thought that by helping others see as I have learned it see, I would be making a worthwhile contribution. I am glad you seem to agree.
And yes, I will take your suggestion to note areas where technique can be improved, and what, if anything, might have been done to do so.
Denny Crane 20-Oct-2005 18:53
Now I finally went to your bio for the first time to read about you. I expected you to be mature and experienced, but I was surprised at your age, so I admire you even more for your continuing interest and mental energy in helping others get more from their photography (not to mention learning and adopting the new digital tools) and your enthusiasm to continue learning. Your students are not trying to learn how to take prize-winning photos suitable for National Geographic Magazine, etc., so your emphasis on capturing travel shots that express the photographer's feelings and personal interpretation and experience, personal expression, and de-emphasizing technical perfection validates your teaching methods and examples. In the end, this is most important, because most photographers won't ever attain the artistic standards that the best photographers do, even if they have the desire to.
My only suggestion would be to mention (as an aside) any technical weaknesses in a picture that you're aware of -- just so viewers are warned in advance against adopting an opinion that the photo is absolutely perfect and elegant and they then try to emulate your photographic result in their own attempts, perhaps oblivious to the weaknesses that are not relevant to the particular "lesson". I've only looked the few photos I've commented on, so these comments are based on that limited experience.
Phil Douglis20-Oct-2005 18:33
Thank you for this comment, Denny. I now understand what prompted you to leave the kind of criticism you have left on these pages. I welcome all comments if they can help me teach, particularly those that relate to the principles I am teaching and how they relate to content. And yes, I do enthusiastically respond to comments that reinforce my teaching and demonstrate the effect that expression has had upon the viewer. I do not appreciate comments that fail to take into account the purpose of my galleries and my examples and I have little interest in technical suggestions that do not advance the ideas I am teaching here. I have responded to every one of your comments, always trying to put them into a teaching perspective. And I will continue to do so. You seem to understand a bit more now about where I am coming from and what my purpose is. I am here to help people learn how to trigger ideas and feelings in the imaginations of their viewers. That is the bottom line here -- not nit-picking things like small tilts or mergers or exposure failings. I use examples that demonstrate how travel images can speak to others. You and I are obviously coming at things from different places, and with different intentions. But we do agree that photographs have different purposes. I am teaching expressive travel photography here, not fine art photography or personal photography or technical photography. I ask only that you keep this in mind when you comment on my pictures. Thank you.
Denny Crane 20-Oct-2005 10:18
I came to your first photo I commented on through some link and didn't read anything about you before I plunged in on impulse and commented on the photo, after reading some of the comments. I didn't know anything about you or your purpose in posting the photos. I've never posted any comments before on any photo site, though I read dpReview regularly. I didn't know you were a teacher until after I sent my first comment. It's not your fault that some posters think your pictures are perfect and brilliant. But you seemed to be to eager to agree with them. So I thought it a good idea to make critical comments pointing out weaknesses. And you do explicitly invite viewers to suggest how the photos could be improved. So that's what I did.
I admire what your doing -- using photos that are not necessarily perfect to illustrate specific themes and things. And I'm impressed at the your responsiveness and interest. I guess I stumbled across a small group of your admirers that have or might in the future attend your workshops.
I'm not a technician. For me, content is most important. The technical aspects are important only to present the content in the most effective way. For beginning photographers to make better pictures, technical weaknesses should be analyzed in order to improve future pictures and present the content more effectively. To you and anybody reading my comments, please note that my statements are all personal opinion and feelings about what is good, even though I omit that qualification in my sentences. But though personal, I try to go by the highest artistic standards. Personal photographs to be enjoyed by the photographer and friends are valued differently and are judged differently than photographs to be judged by other photographers and critics. The difference should be borne in mind.
Phil Douglis19-Oct-2005 22:44
I see this image in an entirely different context. You seem to be looking at it from a technical standpoint. I am using it as a teaching image, not an example of perfect composition in the technical sense. I am teaching the role of vantage point in this particular gallery -- by placing my camera where I placed it, I bring the viewer into intimate contact with the subject and express the effect of what I consider to be a poignant and memorable moment. The other three people who have previously commented on this image are all responding to the expressive effects of camera placement. If my goal was to demonstrate flawless organization, I would not have chosen this image as an example. I think you may have misunderstood the purpose of this cyberbook -- this example, and indeed, this entire gallery, is not about organization or composition. (I discuss that in Gallery Nine.) This gallery is about vantage point and its effect on expression and the viewer. Of course I would have preferred to have a different background on the right. But I accept the burned out area as something we must live with. If I had moved my vantage point to avoid it, I would have lost this expression and this relationship. Likewise, the merger of subject's arm with the face of the child behind her. I consider these to be technical flaws that do not significantly effect meaning. My goal is never technical perfection. My goal is expression. This image is strong enough to work, even with the burnout and the merger. It offers a substantive example of the effect of vantage point upon a subject, and thats why I've posted it here.
Denny Crane 19-Oct-2005 18:50
Good human subjects. Nice colors and lighting on the clothes. The blackboard has the potential to making this a very good photo, but you big white area to the right hurts ths shot a lot. The composition is not very good due to this white area, the way the front girl's top of head intersects with the top of the blackboard (this is minor quibbling), and significantly the unpleasant intersection of the girl's arm across the nose of the girl in back. I'd like to see the back girl's arm not cut off or the front girl's elbow not cut off. To improve this picture, I would shoot from a slightly higher angle, try to make the blackboard the entire background and straight - not angled -- and MAYBE more in focus if possible. The blurry paper and pencil holder in the foreground are too distracting, especially as they block the view of the girl's arms and writing hand. With some minor adjustments of your shooting position and moving away the foreground objects, this could be a very nice photo. Personally, I would prefer the front girl not staring at the camera. This gives an artificial feeling to the scene, like she wouldn't look that way if you weren't taking a picture of her.
Phil Douglis22-Oct-2004 01:19
Very astute comment, Rod. This image would have been impossible if I was firing at her with a big DSLR. A small digicam on the desk was no threat. I never had a camera up to my face. I was looking right at her, glanced down into the flipped up LCD display of my G5 and made this shot work.
Guest 15-Oct-2004 00:03
The chosen angle is perfect with DOF just enough to allow us to see the blackboard, it's text adds to the scene of a familiar, yet foreign feeling. The fact only she is viewing you addes to this, as it shows the others away at work, and undisturbed. The singularity she creates adds more to the photo, than if all heads were looking at you.

Again you demonstrate how the flip-lcd of some point/shoot digitals can help capture images without disturbing the scene (I think if you were crouching down on a knee with an SLR with a 70-200, she, and probably the students behind her, would all turn their attention to you).
Matt Reichel15-Aug-2004 00:34
FANTASTIC
Phil Douglis16-Jul-2004 18:31
This was a very emotional experience for all of us. As I looked into my viewfinder and framed these children within the softly focused blackboard behind them, I sensed what you express here. As a former teacher of children with "special needs" you are well aware of the linkage between learning difficulties and the complexity of teaching tools. I never shared that experience, but as a story-telling photographer I deliberately related the expression on that child's face to an environment bringing context to it. Relating subject matter to context is what I do. Thank you, Tim, for defining, from your personal experience, the meaning of that relationship in this particular image.
Tim May16-Jul-2004 17:45
For many years I was a teacher of "special needs" children and for me there is an almost subliminal aspect to this image created by the writing on the blackboard in the background. There is a way that child learning difficulties are always trying to find their ways through the complexity of language and print. Here it sits in the background and flows over them.
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