Ernst Haas

Images by Ernst Hass

The late Ernst Haas was a master of color and composition and came to photography through experience as a painter. As a speaker at the Minnesota Symposium on Visual Communication, Haas brought a slide tray of his originals to project. One could hardly see the images on the screen. He purposely underexposed Kodachrome by several f-stops in order to saturate color. Underexposure of color transparency film makes it dark. Since he photographed for publication, not slide-shows, the prepress operation could corrected for his purposeful underexposure.

His blur motion pictures are among the best ever and he took his pictures before digital cameras were invented. Haas had to wait until his film was processed to see what his motion experiments yielded. Digital photography takes away the time delay. You immediately see the result.

Haas used a shutter speed of approximately 1/15 to 1/30 of a second for his bull fight pictures. Both the subject and Haas were moving. The bull's legs are nearly transparent. Notice is Haas' blur motion pictures that nothing is sharp bull we have no difficulty knowing what he is photographing. The blur gives us feeling of motion in a still photograph.

Resources:

Ernst Haas web site. Read his philosophy and approach to photography.

 

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