In the early 1980's I designed a technique to where the camera could take photographs without my intervention. To do this I built a random selector device. I would spin the pointer and where it stopped would be the section of the room to locate the camera. I would spin it again and this would be the height from the floor the camera would be positioned. On the third spin it would determine the format, either horizontal or vertical. The last spin would determine the the exact direction the camera was pointed in when the picture was taken.
I then had a student actually do the spinning and taking of the photos so I could totally separate myself from the camera. Here is one of the results.
I only took two rolls of 35 mm film and learned a lot about composition. First of all I learned that in a Man made environment the composition is automatic.
I learned that my students by merely reacting to the subject and centering it would consistently get poorer compositions than the camera at random.
Then the question came up why?
One of the major reasons was that the man made environment was already composed.
The other one was that by aligning the camera for its horizontal or vertical format it will always make horizontals horizontal and verticals verticals. This seems to be a major factor in composing a photograph. If we take this farther we realize that man expects horizontals, horizontal and verticals, vertical. This is due to the environmental factor of gravity. We, meaning every cell in our body, senses up and down. The horizontal may come from the horizon line in the environment but I doubt it. It probably comes from the fact that the vertical is sensed and the next logical after it is the horizontal. It does not have to be sensed but is somehow automatic just because it is the opposite of the vertical.
To see more camera photographs camera1.htm
