Photography by Weed / Humility by Mike
Every 2 – 3 years, my family gets their picture taken by a professional photographer, so we can hand out pictures to relatives and the like. Usually we do it in combination with getting our picture in a church photo directory. So, as I looked at today’s For Better or For Worse as Michael Patterson was getting his publicity shots done, something bothered me. I had to look at pictures of an actual professional studio to see what was wrong. Basically, there is some equipment missing, most noticeably a backdrop for the picture.
My initial thought was that Lynn Johnston had not access to a photo studio for reference; so, I verified that North Bay, Ontario has photography studios.
I think what we have is a situation somewhat like the Howard Bunt courtroom scene, where Lynn Johnston had reference pictures of a courtroom, but must have decided they were too cluttered and removed items from them for the strip, like the court reporter sitting in front of the judge. However, by decluttering, she also made the courtroom look wrong. In today’s strip with Josef Weeder’s photography studio, I get the same impression. The only difference between what we have in the strip and a real photography studio situation is the missing equipment—a backdrop, lighting umbrellas and lights in front of Michael pointing at Michael, a camera on a tripod, etc.
There is a fine line in these kinds of things. A comic strip can’t hold everything; but if it is not going include it all, then there as to be a line as to what is or is not included, so the drawing is still believable. For example, the last 2 panels with close-ups did not bother me with their lack of equipment. But the second panel, with Carleen and the light behind Mike in the angle of the camera shot, did bother me. Weed using a handheld camera also bothered me, because when my family has had professional portraits done, the camera was always held on a tripod for the stillness, and it had a big old lens on it. That little handheld thing, just doesn't seem right to me.
The other surprising thing was Michael Patterson’s whole speech. While he is talking about how he doesn’t want success to change him, what tells me it has, more than any request for autograph space in his pictures, is the nonstop talking about himself. After the first novel, Michael Patterson couldn’t even put together a speech for his party. He played the humble card to the hilt. With book #2, he is a humble Mike no longer.
My initial thought was that Lynn Johnston had not access to a photo studio for reference; so, I verified that North Bay, Ontario has photography studios.
I think what we have is a situation somewhat like the Howard Bunt courtroom scene, where Lynn Johnston had reference pictures of a courtroom, but must have decided they were too cluttered and removed items from them for the strip, like the court reporter sitting in front of the judge. However, by decluttering, she also made the courtroom look wrong. In today’s strip with Josef Weeder’s photography studio, I get the same impression. The only difference between what we have in the strip and a real photography studio situation is the missing equipment—a backdrop, lighting umbrellas and lights in front of Michael pointing at Michael, a camera on a tripod, etc.
There is a fine line in these kinds of things. A comic strip can’t hold everything; but if it is not going include it all, then there as to be a line as to what is or is not included, so the drawing is still believable. For example, the last 2 panels with close-ups did not bother me with their lack of equipment. But the second panel, with Carleen and the light behind Mike in the angle of the camera shot, did bother me. Weed using a handheld camera also bothered me, because when my family has had professional portraits done, the camera was always held on a tripod for the stillness, and it had a big old lens on it. That little handheld thing, just doesn't seem right to me.
The other surprising thing was Michael Patterson’s whole speech. While he is talking about how he doesn’t want success to change him, what tells me it has, more than any request for autograph space in his pictures, is the nonstop talking about himself. After the first novel, Michael Patterson couldn’t even put together a speech for his party. He played the humble card to the hilt. With book #2, he is a humble Mike no longer.
posted by howard at 11:57 PM
5 Comments:
howard:
There is a fine line in these kinds of things. A comic strip can’t hold everything; but if it is not going include it all, then there as to be a line as to what is or is not included, so the drawing is still believable.
The problem, as I see it, is that Lynn has her own idea of what's unnecessary. The reason her artwork fails is that she bases it on her own aesthetic impression instead of worrying about the functionality of her ommissions.
After the first novel, Michael Patterson couldn’t even put together a speech for his party. He played the humble card to the hilt. With book #2, he is a humble Mike no longer.
I know. If he delivers a long rant that nobody listens to about his not becoming an arrogant jerk, the odds are that it's too late to start worrying about it.
Yes. The only people I know who talk like this are already arrogant, self-absorbed jerks.
dreadedcandiru2,
The reason her artwork fails is that she bases it on her own aesthetic impression instead of worrying about the functionality of her omissions.
True enough. The look of the picture-taking reminds me a lot more of a fashion shoot, where the photographer is trying to get all kinds of odd, artistic angles, as opposed to a publicity shot where you want as clean a shot of the person’s face as possible. My initial perspective when I saw the strip was that this may have been an attempt on Lynn’s part to show that Josef Weeder was not that competent when it came to photographs which were not high fashion or that, even though he has his own studio, he is still not far up enough in the business to have the money to properly equip it.
qnjones
The only people I know who talk like this are already arrogant, self-absorbed jerks.
One of the reasons the final panel joke about the autographs doesn’t work as a “Surprise! Mike is an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk!” is the astute reader already knows that in the first panel.
Not to defend Lynn or anything, but...
Not all professionals shoot with the same setup, and the old "tripod and backdrop studio" is a cliched and expected concept, but not an inevitable. Many professional portrait photographers take amazing outdoor-natural-lighting-and-setting family group photos, for instance... and wedding photographers have to operate under all sorts of conditions, yet produce "magic".
Many photographers don't use tripods these days either; modern pro digital cameras are often very stable when hand-held, even in low light. Weed is not having to deal with a heavy camera weight in a loooooooong photo session with many models. Weed is also shooting close; the camera and lens don't have to be huge (especially if Weed somehow has gotten a Leica M8.)
Depending what is in the background, the ambient light, and the depth of field being used (usually fairly shallow for portraits), the background could just darken out and/or be blurred sufficiently to give a more "natural setting" look instead of placing the subject against an obvious backdrop.
I'm not sure what the lighting setup is - perhaps the can light is a slave strobe off to the left and can reflect off the lightbox surface, but the can mysteriously jumps away from Mike between panels 1 and 2 and only the lightbox seems to be going off in Panel 3 (with Mike in the midst of whining and therefore looking stupid.)
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