Foreign. We're back four, not four, three by two for March 2025. Hello Martin, welcome back.

Welcome back to you. Look, if you want it to be 4x3 or 4 to 3, we can do that.

You never know, it could happen. Stranger things have happened. We had a one by one at one point.

So I mean 21 by nine, that'd be cool, wouldn't it? That's like some sort of weird cinema.

Thing and a very long episode.

People would just be like, stop.

We're doing a normal three by two and we're going to kick it off with with you this week or this week, this month.

That's right. And listeners, if this is your first time joining, remember this is kind of like a director's audio commentary. Although we're not the directors, we're just commentators on other people's photos. So check the links in show notes to see what we're talking about with photos this month. So Jason, my first one is from Mastodon from an account called Global Museum and the caption is perfect shot of a red billed oxpecker resting on the horn of a rhino. Now I love how descriptive that is because it took all of the hard work out for me. For listeners this time you can imagine what's going on just from that post. And I think it is this gorgeous photo in portrait orientation, really zoomed in. We don't have any metadata here in terms of the focal length or whatever, but it doesn't matter because it's this beautiful emotive photo up close on a rhino's eye looking downward with this little bird resting on its horn. And I think we've all seen those beautiful shots and that footage from nature documentaries where you see these symbiotic relationships like some sort of bird or other animals picking the parasites off a larger animal like an elephant or a rhino. But this is just that, I don't know, I just imagine the rhino's like, thank you so much for picking these things off me or going for a ride today. Have a rest on my horn. And I just think the layering is beautiful. I love that bokeh and compression from what I assume is a super telephoto lens. A little bit of layering at the front with the greenery. It's just a gorgeous photo.

It's like a Disney movie where it's just like the animals are just in perfect harmony and they're resting and the way that the bird is laying there, it feels so unnaturally comfortable because I feel like when you think of a small bird it's kind of. It's always on the lookout. It's got, you know, it's got to take care of itself. So it's. It's always looking around. But this is just. There's clearly nothing around this entire scene that is a threat because everybody's just hanging out, having a good time, resting. I love the compression. Like you said, it gives it this. Like, the leaves in the back almost look like a painting behind the rhino. And the detail you get from this super close up of. I mean, the. The eye and the horn and the front of this rhino is taking up about half of the frame. And so you get all this incredible detail in the skin with, like, the wrinkles, the horn, and, like, the fuzziness down below. And then the bird with that super bright pop of red and yellow just brings this other element to it where it's. It's all earthly tones and then this other unnatural seeming red and yellow in the middle of it. It's. It's super cool. And that I instantly thought just, you know, Disney movie when this happened. There's some kind of nice song playing and everybody's just having a good time. So. Really great photo. I would love to know, like, where this. How did this come about? Because this feels like one of those just once in a lifetime kind of photos. Yeah.

And we should be able to find out pretty easily because another thing that I like about this post, around the photo, it seems like good web practice because I said it's posted by Global Muse, but that account, see, I don't follow them. It just popped up in my feed or when I was looking. They credited it to the photographer, and I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, Zaheer Ali. And if we look up that photographer, we might actually be able to find it, so we can dig in to find out. It's nice to actually see people crediting photos rather than, you know, here's something that I thought was cool. Who cares who did it?

I love that. Yeah, I initially just thought that's who was posting this. But yes, now I do. See, like you said, it's another account posting it, but they did credit it, so. Good. Please credit other people's work.

Beautiful. Now let's go to your first one, Jason.

All right, my first one is. Let's see here. So black and white image, and it is titled. It's got a pretty long title. It says photograph 28 in a set of 30 in my ongoing projects in Japan, In Praise of Stillness is what the project is. And it is inside of a building looking outward through a wall that has a massive circular hole in it. You could call it a doorway. I guess it's a little bit of a stretch to call it a doorway, but it's looking out onto this serene kind of open area with plants and trees. Inside the building, it's very dark. There is an illuminated lamp up on top. It looks like it's wood and paper behind that, pitch black. So the top third of the frame, totally black. Then you get down into a mid tone where this door slash circle is. And then you get back down to the floor and you're back to a very dark tone. So it's just a very, uh. It's not a night scene. It's just a very dark scene. And it's black and white. It has a very filmic look to it. I love the title, the Praise of Stillness, because it does exactly that. It feels like it is. I mean, it is a still photo, so of course it's still, but it gives you that feeling that it is serene and peaceful in this location. And you could just sit in this room, look out this doorway slash window and just really, you know, be in a very meditative state. And I like the contrast in this going between light and dark and light and dark, where you have both the external light and dark coming through that. That doorway, but also the internal light and dark of the room being super dark up above with this very well lit. I think it's a paper and wood lantern of sorts up on the ceiling. So just the play between light and dark in this is seen all over, but in different ways. And I just found that to be very interesting.

Yeah, it's a beautiful photo. And again, I hope I'm pronouncing the photographer's name correctly. Olivier Desmet. Is it Olivier? Yes, sorry, Laurence Olivier. But not him. It's Olivier. A different person. Yeah. I'm not surprised that you like this photo. I love it too, but it screams Japan. And I know that you love Japan and. And it seems to do. Now, I might be walking into stereotypes here, but anything that I know about Japanese culture, this kind of minimalistic design that has this harmony or harmony with or inspiration from nature. I see it in this photo and I think Olivier's captured it beautifully. Because you could say the focal point is nature outside and that the room through this doorway is letting it in, but there's nothing, even though there's a lot happening around nature in the room, you've got the cool lantern or light or whatever that is up the top, and then that blurred as you go to the frame, to the edge of the frame, the wood or the tatami mat down the bottom. It's all very clean. It's busy in terms of the stuff around it, but it's very clean. It's letting nature into the photo, into the room, if you were there. So I just think it's a really cool photo of a really cool space and it says something culturally about the place, which is appropriate given that in Olivier's comment, he says that he's working on a project in Japan and would be going back soon. So, yeah, this. This shows that he understands the topic and the environment that he's in. Which if you're telling any kind of story or trying to showcase a subject, it's not just a photo. There should be a point to it. And I think he's got it here.

Very good.

Alrighty, My next photo, it's called the Sunset and it's by again, sorry if I mispronounce it. Anyta Lindstrom. I love this photo. It is. I don't know if you would call it impressionist, but it's this deliberately hazy, maybe kind of motion blurred photo of the sun setting over what appears to be a sea or a lake very low in the photo, with a bit of shore or coastline in deep shadow down the bottom left, and these dark clouds overhead extending into this beautiful, serene, hazy sunset. And I just thought Anetta did a fantastic job of capturing, you know, what could just look like any other sunset photo, but putting her own charm or angle or artistic filter over the top of it, but not a filter like you get with Instagram or just the thing that you choose in your camera, like actually making a deliberate filtering decision to give a particular style to the photo. I just thought it was very deliberate and nice.

Yeah, the. The ability to take something that is you see a million times across the Internet. We've talked about this in the past where there's certain photos where you've seen a million of them, and a sunset is an obvious example of that. But when you see it done in a different way like this, it makes you smile because you're like, it's the same thing we're all looking at, but somehow you were able to capture it in a unique and special way. And this is totally. That. I absolutely love the darkness of this photo. And I don't mean that it's in the dark, but just the mood that those clouds are presenting over something that is generally, you think sunset, you think kind of a Happy, light, mood. But this dark, dark, dark clouds, I mean, they are basically black up there. They just bring a certain. A certain feeling to this image that is not something you normally think of. At least I don't think of when you think of a sunset. And you mentioned painterly. I've been looking at this photo for a little while now, and I'm in my head trying to understand what is actually going on here. And I guess, do you reckon maybe it's almost like an intentional blur, but in a complete vertical fashion, Almost like a motion shake.

There's little zigzags on some. It's almost like she went up and down. Like I'm going up and down with my hand. Yeah, yeah.

But not for the entire time. It was like. It feels intentional and purposeful that this was done. And it just. It gives it this very dreamy. I think painterly, like you said, is right on. I think it adds a lot to it and it makes it feel like an extra special capture that I really like. I could look at a photo like this for a long time. I would love to see this thing blown up huge on a wall. I think it would look absolutely incredible.

Yeah, she's done a beautiful job. And the funny thing, when I look at all the photos that we're talking about today, the first one's very bright and beautiful and friendly and happy. And the rest of them deliberately lean into a kind of darkness, a deliberate darkness. So I think we started off happy, and we're going to be in brooding and not menacing but foreboding kind of style. And it's nice to see people taking photos who aren't tempted to just put that shadow slider all the way up, let some things sink into darkness. So we started off happy with the rhino, but let's continue into darkness.

That is hard to do. I mean, when you look at a photo and there's stuff that's just fallen away, your instinct is to bring it back, but sometimes it's best to leave it a secret.

All right, let's go to your next one.

Next one is from Hans. We've got. Finally, I took out my M8 and started using it. So this is a self portrait of Hans here, I believe, in an elevator. Looks like an elevator. He is pointing the camera at a mirror in the elevator. It's an M8, as mentioned. And what really struck me about this one is, I mean, first of all, it's a self portrait, so that's always fun to see. Kind of what someone's interpretation of, like, a Self portrait is and how it's an opportunity for you to present to others how you see yourself, I think, a lot of times. And that, I think is doing this. Exactly. And what I loved about it was just, you see, okay, there's the M8 camera. Visually, it's a. It's a nice looking camera. So that's, that's great analog. And then you kind of are drawn down to his watch is. Is peeking out from his jacket, analog watch. And then you notice, wait, come back out. He's got headphones on, so he's listening to music. And it's just, it's a lot going on in this seemingly small space where you assume he is alone. And then you just, you keep going from there where now you've got the. The textures of the jacket feel really good. Again with texture. You have the hair, there's the band aid around the finger, which is generally, you know, a band aid is not remarkable, I don't think. But I think because of that texture, which then plays in with the jacket, I think that's super cool. And then you look back at the back of the elevator and you have this nice graininess and everything's all very analog and natural and, you know, you have the fabrics and so forth. And then there's just this giant LED one with an up arrow that's just completely different from everything else that's going on in the photo. He could have scooted over a little bit to have that be completely behind him and it would have been a completely different image. I assume he chose to leave that there on purpose, which I think just was an interesting choice. And it's just right there above his shoulder, a one going up. It adds a little extra touch of flair, I think, to the image. But overall, I love the contrast of the image and the way that all of the textures are coming out from each thing in a very different way. From the metal in the back, to the jacket, to the hair, to the band aid and then to the hands and the camera. And it's just all very interesting, unique textures.

Yep, you bring up great points. Now I'm going to try not to take too long and not to sound too ridiculous and arrogant in what I'm about to say, but listeners and you can be the judge. Two things I want to say about this photo. First of all, you talked about the fact that it's a self portrait and it being an interesting genre or framing for how you see yourself. What I think is interesting, and I've done this before, I'm sure you have many people have. In this photo, you can see that Hans has flipped the image because we're not seeing the reflection that the camera sees. We're seeing the correct orientation that another person would see if you were being photographed by him. So we're seeing M8 and everything, and the number one in the correct orientation or perspective. It's not reversed. Right. So what I find interesting about that is, and I don't know if you, Jason, or any listeners have experienced this before, when you flip an image of yourself like this, it's actually a little bit weird. It's a bit disconcerting because you see yourself in mirrored reflections in a different orientation from this. So your own mental image of yourself is not really what you imagine it to be. And then you flip it around, it's like, that's not what I normally see in the mirror. So you never really see yourself as other people do. Do you know what I mean?

And that that counts on many levels.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So in the literal and, you know, the figurative yet. So it's a bit weird. And I don't know if Hans, if you're listening, if you felt this, but it's strange to think about how mirrors have that effect on you and how you then have to flip it to have it look correct, which you would never really see because you can't just look at yourself. The second thing I want to say is that I don't know if Hans meant it this way, but my whole kind of interest in research and general reading and everything is media. That's what I studied. It's what I do. And this photo seems like the perfect example of the saturation of our modern media environment. And I say that because, as you identified, he's got this camera, he's got the headphones. Let's look at the layers and almost the claustrophobia of what we're dealing with. So he's in a built environment, completely cut off from the rest of the world. He's in this, like, cell, essentially, of a lift or elevator. And we see symbols, you know where he is. He's going up to number one, or he is going from number one. And then he's cut himself off further from the world with headphones on his ears. So that's a level of abstraction from reality around himself again. And then he's looking directly through the viewfinder of his camera at another medium, again, a mirror at himself. So you can go down layers and layers and layers of this fil. Funnel in how removed he is from the real world. In this lift, cut off by music, the viewfinder, everything, and then cropped again, as he explains in the caption, to a specific perspective that is narrower than what he originally took. And then it's presented to us. So he is essentially not imprisoned, but just kept in this space. And this is all that we see. So I just think this is an amazing symbol for, like, a commentary on the image and how we interact with media today and how we cut ourselves off or abstract ourselves from the reality around us.

No notes. Well said. Thank you.

I don't know what people think about that. Like, okay, we're turning the podcast off now. But it's an amazing case study for media saturation. And I don't mean that negatively. It's just you go to the shops, you walk down the street, people are less and less connected to what's around them. And that can be a positive experience, you know, sound isolation or something, but it can also be isolating in the negative sense. Anyway, I think I spoke for too long, so it's your turn now. Well done, Hans.

Yeah, I think everything you just said is not wrong. And, yeah, I think we can move on to the next one.

Yes, listeners come back to some sort of happy reality. All right, so this is an image, also a portrait that I selected by Jared's or Jared Zed. Sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. The caption is my son at 15. I found this photo originally because I was looking at Glass's camera tagging system and I wanted to see new photos with the OM System. OM3. It's a new camera that OM System launched this year. It's basically like their flagship OM1 Mark 2 internals put into a super classic retro street camera design. So it's like, you want the flagship, go for it. You don't want the big grip or you want the flatter design. Here you go. So I thought, I want to see what photos have been taken. And he's taken it with a 25 millimeter or 50 equivalent 1.4. And the photo is essentially, it's like a. Is it a double or a multiple exposure of his sun, like, profile with his torso, like, chest up with what appears to be dead branches and twigs layered on a sandy or dirty ground. And I just thought this is a fantastic high contrast portrait that lets you see maybe a bit of insight or into a milestone of his son's life, this idea of growth or seeing his son change, but we don't get a full idea of his identity. It's almost like this ethical, respectful shot of his son published on social media, where you have an idea of his transformation, but we don't have to see his face. And I thought it was a really nice portrait and effort here.

Yeah, very creative. When I first popped it open, it took a half a second for me to realize that this was a superimposed person's silhouette onto other things. And then it was like, okay, that. I guess now I see what's going on here. It's a very cool idea. I don't fully even still looking at it, understand exactly how this was done, because I see the silhouette and then behind there's the lighter branches, or I think they're branches behind. And then there's kind of the lower half, which is. I see cars back there and trees. So I'm wondering, is it three images? Is it two images? I'm not entire. My first thought when I first saw it was that it was a. Some kind of reflection or something out of, off of like looking through a mirror at something and then this was reflected onto or a glass window or something. But I assume this is some kind of digital manipulation. Would you agree?

Well, I think so. And you know me, I like micro 4/3 and particularly om system. Say what you will about smaller sensors if you're a full frame fan or something, but they're pretty much unparalleled in terms of computational features in the camera. And I think an older feature that's been carried through is this. You know, they have little framing things or filters and stuff, but I think they also do these other multiple exposures in camera. So he might have done this after the fact, but I have a feeling it might have been something in camera. And he's gone click, move, click, that sort of thing.

Oh, that's cool. Okay, that's super interesting. That's like one of those cool creative tools that probably doesn't make sense all the time, but every once in a while you're like, oh, this is perfect. I'm gonna use it for that. Yeah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

So I think so.

Yeah. And maybe not. But I think in general, just the creativity of this image is super cool. I love the fact that it is a portrait in which you alluded to, but it's. You don't know who it is. I think that's pretty powerful that you can, like anybody that knows this person in the photo could probably instantly tell, oh, that's, you know, insert name David or whatever. But the fact that we don't know, even though we're Looking directly at a photo of this person is really cool that that's like something you're able to do because you can obviously like blur out a face, but I don't know, if you're blurring out the face, what's the point of sharing the photo anyway? Maybe, I don't know, I guess there's different feelings on that. But this is just a, it's a creative way to do it. And this is something that, I mean it's, this is that, you know, capital A art, I think, where you're creating something truly different out of what exists there. You could just do a full on front portrait of them or let's do something cool and creative and mix it up a little bit. So yeah, this is super fun. I would actually love to try to do something like this. I think this could be a fun experiment.

I agree with you. It kind of opens your eyes up to other things you can try. And I think, look, I did mention ethics and respect before. The thing that really appealed to me was, I mean, you and I, we have our photo sites and we use glass. I have Feld photo, that's the site that I use on Micro Blog. But I originally had the feldnote site, which I think confuses people who see it because they think it's field notes and get excited and go, who's this random guy? But I've shared family photos there before, particularly of my son. And I think there were one or two photos early where I showed his face when he was very young, when he was a baby. He's turning four soon. And as time went on and I thought he's becoming more recognizable, I want to share photos of him. I want to engage with other people who, you know, share photos of their family and friends or, you know, important things in their life because that's what's great about a site like Microdot Blog. But then he doesn't have the awareness of what that means to be publicly displayed all the time. So I thought, how can I share photos of him that show an important moment or something fun that he's doing, but without going, this is him, he's his identity all the time. So trying to go over the shoulder, obscure his face, make it more about the moment or something interesting? And I'm not saying I've ever shot at anything as creative as what Jared has done here, but thinking about ways of showing special things or people in your life without outing them constantly because you selfishly want to put it on social media.

Yeah, I think. And I've You've done a number of those that have been really good in terms of.

Thank you.

Having a way to capture them in the moment again without just a full on like, face shot.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think it's. I find them to be more interesting a lot of times, I think because you're. You're trying to do more than just take a picture of a person. You're trying to create the story around them because they're somewhat abstracted, away from it. So it forces you to tell more of the story, which I think is more interesting. You know, if it's just a close up, tight shot on, On a child, it's like, okay, that's cool. But like when you do one where it's further out and they're at the park and they're playing with something and they're facing away, like, it just tells a better story. I appreciate that. So.

Well, I'm glad that you agree. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now your last photo.

Yeah, last one from arnd. I clearly had a theme this week of black and white.

And I almost let you have the thing through like the whole episode, except for the sunset and the rhino. Like we were almost there in this moodiness that's like, oh, rhinos and birds.

This is from arnt and this is in Madrid, I guess. And it is, it is a stair. So we're up at the top of a very, very tall staircase that is going around and around and around all the way down, but not in a circle, not a circular staircase going down. It is a. It's, I guess a square. It's maybe a little bit rectangle, but it's. We're up at the top on probably the seventh or eighth floor, something like that, looking down through the middle of this stairway. And I feel like this is another example like I just talked about, you know, ever there's been a million sunset photos and like, how do you make it be something interesting? I think there's probably. This is another one of those of like the stairway that seems to go down forever. Like they're just. Visually, we get excited when we see those and we want to take a picture of it. And so this is, this is another one. But I think the shape of the stairway is super cool. Where it is. It is. Again, it starts if. When I look at the bottom, I see a rectangle sort of longer left to right. And as I get up to the top, I see a rectangle that's longer top to bottom. So it's doing this sort of weird thing. With your brain, where you're like, what shape? It's an unnatural shape, especially for a building. Something that is generally, you know, buildings that be square or round, not this almost alive kind of shape. So that's super cool. The tones of the black and white, I think, sell this so well. I would be interested in what this looked like in color, but I have to imagine the black and white one really sells it the best. And then the last piece, it's not aluminum, you know, it's not this. This liminal space of nothing. There's one person and they are going down and it's captured in such a way that they are in motion. So it's not frozen, which I love. If they were just sort of frozen there, it would again feel a little just like I'm in this weird place of this. Why is this person frozen? But we have this motion. They're completely obscured. They almost feel potentially not human either in this weird, unnaturally shaped staircase. So I think that adding that person in there just gives it that final little touch. And the fact that the. The dark, the person there is completely silhouette, black matches so well with the hole at the bottom. That gives you this, like, feeling that it goes on forever, even though that's probably just the bottom. But now it feels like this silhouette person or thing has this, like, trajectory to go all the way down to match the thing at the bottom, which I think is just. I don't know if that was the intention, but that's what I read into it as. Again, that's art. It's subjective. That's what I see. And I just. I think that's. I love it.

Yep, I agree with everything you said. This is the agreement show. In case you haven't noticed, listeners, I don't think we ever disagree. Someone says something, then we go, yeah, you're right, because we're choosing stuff that we love. Yeah, it's great. Yay. I think what I really like about this, and this goes for any architectural shots that I like, because, look, I'm not a professional architectural photographer in my work. I have to take a lot of photos of things that you could maybe call architectural, you know, industrial things. But it's not like art pieces or galleries and that sort of stuff. We're talking heavy industry stuff. And whenever I see shots of things like, for example, the Opera House, the Sydney Opera House in Australia, my favourite building. Heavily biased, but I love that thing. There are too many shots of the Opera House, and I say that because they're all the same. Jon Utzen the designer and then all the people who built it, they can take credit for the beauty of that structure. And then everyone's just taking the same damn photo of it over and over again. There's no real creativity unless you get someone who takes a really different perspective here. All of the beauty is really in the architectural design of the building. The photographer can't take credit for this, but what they've done is be thoughtful and considerate about how they've composed it, how they've used the space to give you, as you said, that impression of that shifting rectangle, the motion in it. You know, they didn't just shoot it and go, here's a cool stairwell, and try to take credit for it. They did something with the space. So I suppose my message is I like architectural shots. When a photographer does something creative to use the space rather than just shoot something that someone else designed beautifully. I feel like there's some effort in this photo and thinking about it.

Absolutely. Yeah. And the last thing I'll just add is what I would give to take that little sign and just move it around the corner so it's not in the shot.

Oh, you don't want that sign?

No.

You know what the sign says? No photos of this stairwell, please.

Probably. Yes. No professional photography allowed here. Exactly. Don't move this sign. That's it.

Don't move the sign.

Well, there you go.

This is great.

That's six. I believe. If my math checks out, three times two is six. So we have done it again for March 3x2 photocast.

This is the kind of quality and planning the listeners expect.

Absolutely. Until next time. See you later.

Bye.