Dance Duo: Yukako and Makiko
The final image in my series on dancing duos is the first I made, ten years and one month ago now!
I am pleased with this series of Yukako (left) and Makiko now, but for quite some time after I made them, I considered them a failure.
Why?
It had nothing to do with Yukako or Makiko, the colors of their kimono, or the lighting.
It was about one choice I had to make regarding the composition:
Should my camera be horizontal or vertical?
I have always favored a vertical frame, going back to my earliest days of photographing geiko and maiko. In my first book, One Hundred Views of Maiko and Geiko (2006), only four of the 100 photos have horizontal compositions. That’s only four percent!
I see the world vertically, not horizontally, at least when it comes to geiko and maiko.
I had never photographed two geiko before Yukako and Makiko, so I was apprehensive. How should I frame them?
I remember torturing myself over the framing that day. Horizontal or vertical? Landscape or portrait? I kept on going back and forth.
I was running out of time, and I decided to frame the images vertically. I did it more because this was the way I almost always worked, not because it was right for the subjects I was going to be photographing that day.
When Yukako and Makiko started dancing, I realized it was probably about 50-50. Half of the poses would have looked better with a horizontal frame, but the other half (like the image posted here) looked better with a vertical one.
It wasn’t until I got home and checked all the images on my computer that I noticed just how much of the ceiling I could see in all the photographs. It wasn’t so obvious on the back of my camera, especially since the ceiling was darker than the white shoji.
There was a lot of dead space at the top of the frame.
I was angry with myself. I judge myself pretty harshly, especially when it comes to my photography. I should get the image right in camera. That means I shouldn’t be changing the composition or the lighting or anything else after the fact.
If I do, the image is a failure. I felt these images of Yukako and Makiko were failures.
Fortunately, with a lot of time and distance between now and that day, I don’t feel the same way.
I also made one simple change. I changed the aspect ratio of the image from 2:3 to 4:5. In other words, I cropped the images from 8’x12’ to 8’x10’. By doing this, I lose two inches from the top of the frame, but those two inches are just empty ceiling. I don’t miss them!
I still am a little upset that I didn’t make the right decision that day, but I know that most of the time, I do.
And as the last line of the great movie Some Like It Hot reminds me, “Nobody’s perfect."
Next month I’ll be celebrating the tenth anniversary of my blog. I hope you’ll be here then!