Minimalism as Simple Geometry
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| Minimalist Photography by © Prakash Ghai Buy a Print |
A Black and White Minimalist Architecture Photograph of a Dual staircase.
Why I Paired Two Staircases Instead of One?
I was walking around Swej Farm in Jaipur and I saw these two staircase openings cut into the side of a building and I just stopped there for a minute because something about the way they were sitting on that plain wall felt like it was a decent frame to capture, I just had to figure out exactly what that frame was.
The staircases were quite far from me, maybe 50 to 60 feet away, so I pulled out my Canon 55-250 mm lens and zoomed in a lot to get close to what I was seeing with my eyes, and because I was zoomed in that much I had to shoot at a higher shutter speed to make sure the image did not come out blurry, which is always the risk when you are handholding at long focal lengths.
I mostly never carry a tripod because I find it very inconvenient to set up on public places as I am an introvert. Instead I always shoot RAW and JPEG together so that later I can open the RAW file for corrections when at home and pull out more details or add some sharpness to the photograph to compensate for the handheld blur.
My first attempt was just capturing one staircase, shot in landscape orientation. When I reviewed it on the camera LCD screen, it felt a bit flat and boring. The photograph was not saying anything, rather just showing a shape sitting there with no real reason. That is the thing about minimalist photography and black and white minimalism specifically, you can have a clean frame and good light and still have a photograph that has no life in it if the composition is not doing any work.
The One Decision That Changed This Minimalist Shot
So I stepped back a little and looked at the full wall again. I realised that having both the staircases together in a portrait frame was the right shot. When you stack them one above the other, the eye starts moving between them and comparing them and finding the small differences. That is what gives the photograph its energy.
In black and white minimalism the tonal contrast is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, so the dark underside of each staircase sitting against the lighter wall is where the whole image is held together. Portrait orientation was the right call.
Swej Farm is not a famous location and most people walk past buildings like this without a second look, but that is where I find the photographs that interest me the most.
In the ordinary places where real geometry hides. The architecture minimalism is just sitting quietly waiting for someone to slow down, notice it and frame it right. That is what minimalist photography is about, the art of noticing both what's hidden and goes unnoticed despite being there.
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