A British Photographer changed EVERYTHING! Tony Ray-Jones

[@gingerspoons6078]

❤🙏✌️👊✌️🙏❤️ quality. Thanks for creating and sharing ✌️

[@raymondstirrup8902]

Great photographer and photography 📷

[@angelaERDE]

Wonderful book! I have it... bought it at a library discarded books sale years and years ago along with Minamata by W Eugene Smith, in Perth, Western Australia.

[@borderlands6606]

I bought A Day Off in the mid-1970s, after a brief flick through the pages. TRJ had a phenomenal output of keepers, considering how brief his photographic life was. He straddles street and documentary, but can't be pinned to either. He's an English surrealist and one of this country's greatest photographers.

[@PicturesOnMyMind]

Yes!!!

[@jbentosimoes]

What did he mean with No Middle Distance? Many of his photos seem to be middle distance. Maybe the term m.d. is a bit subjective, or he was going through a phase where he was searching for something else

[@PicturesOnMyMind]

I read middle distance as being too far away from a scene that it ceases to be a tableau. That the actions are lost. Next time your photographing groups of people if you're too far away they just look like a bunch of people stood together. A little nearer and you start to see what's going on.

[@jbentosimoes]

@@PicturesOnMyMind Thank you. A photo like Durham miners' Gala (1969) feels to me like middle distance, not close enough to call it a short distance shot. But I guess that in Tony's style it is. / I liked this video, didn't know much about TRJ's work.

[@edinburghaction5515]

The problem with the TRJ school of photography is the percentages. It takes too much time to generate complex pictures. If you want to work as a photographer, learning about complex pictures should come with a warming, it's the simple high percentage pictures that pays those bills.

[@PicturesOnMyMind]

I think once you know how to do it thats how you make pictures. Plenty of photographers I know can work this magic on command. I'd say the problem lies with peoples inability to read and enjoy complex pictures. Hence the popularity of bad, boring and simple photographs. You need your audience to have a base level to appreciate what's going on, and not many people do anymore. It's the same reason jazz music died out.

[@outtathyme5679]

A British photographer with initials M.P. comes to mind as condescending

[@ThePurpleHarpoon]

Regarding the shot on the right at 17:15 .... He's cut off half of the lady on the right. This is not very clever.

[@PicturesOnMyMind]

Yeah, that's usually a no no isn't it. Like chopping peoples hands and feet off. I've returned the books to the library now so I can't have a proper look, I can see he centrally weighted the funny little house right in the middle of the composition with the path leading to it, had he pivoted more the photo would have lost its square on composition. Or... most likely... his photo books were all made after his death, had he been part of the process of making the book he probably would have cropped her out.

[@DanScott1]

@@PicturesOnMyMind That's his editing style, he's cutting white left and right side, works. Jeeze, I'm worse, a severe cropper. Hands, feet arms and heads left and right. TRJ, awesome photographer. He had it, a humanist.

[@borderlands6606]

Chopping people on the edges is street photography normal. Bruce Gilden consistently chops people in half. It makes the frame far more dynamic and suggestive.

[@mrbigg2u]

Stunning book Ed... more digital crate digging required spending the kids inheritance 🙄

[@KevinBjorke]

*sigh* one of those KZbin videos that are free to watch and end up costing me $200 in books. The "who is the butt of the joke" question is a very tough one. It can feel like M.P. is looking down on his subjects, but would the pictures be different if he were taking a stance that is not above them, but equal? And if so, is equal ACTUALLY his stance, just standing a couple of steps back to see the context we all share of being caught in a barrage of All Media Everywhere All At Once? To borrow loosely from H. Miyazaki: "Humans are silly creatures. I know because I am one."

[@jbentosimoes]

I think Tate Britain has Paul Graham and Don McCullin on permanent display :)

[@77cats-2]

Some photos are excellent (such as #19), some you really overpraise, like the waitress walking through a door.

[@sdufg]

my pictures look nothing like his so he didn't change a thing.