Photography of Chess

Greetings,

I will be going back to uni soon where I am studying photography and one of my projects is going to be to create a series of photographs for the front cover of a modern classic book. The photo should be based on a certain passage/s. Strangely, despite being equally obsessed with chess and photography I have never taken any chess photos! For this reason I have decided i will use either:

The Queen's Gambit (Penguin Modern Classics) by Walter Tevis
The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov

or perhaps even

The Glass Bead Game (Vintage Classics) by Hermann Hesse

I haven't yet read any of them, but I have seen the Defence which was made into a film with John Turturro where it was called The Luzhin Defence [DVD] [2000].

Anyway, in general the photos of chess that I have seen have been pretty poor artistically, simply getting the player and board but not really showing any understanding of contrast, composition or even focus! (obviously I am generalizing badly, there are lots of good ones):

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/greatest-chess-photos

I want to try black and white, Chiaroscuro, still-life's of chess sets, players at the board, player on their own as a portrait, maybe make a short film of a blitz game-closeups of hands or feet etc when filming etc etc.
Anyway, anyone who has read any of the books, or has any ideas, photos to look at, articles (eg mental illness in chess), they would be greatly appreciated.

From a previous posting I have goldendog to thank for bringing Fred Lucas to my attention:

http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=4419

http://www.fredlucas.eu/

So the above photo by Fred Lucas, I like the watching people, I want that sort of thing, but I would perhaps focus on the hand rather than the face, and crop it a bit.

With the above 2 photos, again by Fred Lucas, I like the expressions and it is something I would like to get across when I do mine. Not sure why Gelfand is so devastated by Ivanchuk's 1 c4 though?! LOL

And thanks to philidor_position for mentioning Zweig's short novel Chess

Another bit I need ideas for is what position to have on the board other than the starting one. Famous ones like Ruy Lopez or Sicilian Dragon or something aesthetically pleasing to the non chess player, so symmetrical etc? For example the game from the James Bond movie "From Russia With Love" where the game is taken from a famous Spassky vs Bronstein game but with 2 centre pawns removed (for aesthetic reasons??):

Thanks again for philidor_position's suggestions, unfortunately they have been lost from the last posting.

John

I agree, I've always liked these photos.  They are for sale at the bigger tournaments, and I've always thought them super cool!  :)

Gata Kamsky, trying to hold his tears after the last round of his match against Topalov, where he ruined a winning position in time trouble and lost the game.

epic man cool pic did u say you r doing some down our club mate

yep, I will probably pop in a few times, depends if anyone minds being photographed or filmed whilst playing or if they will pose. Otherwise I will try the uni's club. I may also try to borrow a clock for a studio shoot. I want to do a blitz game and film it, with instant moving etc and focus on the hands, or just very close. You up for playing me? Result doesn't matter, just as long as it looks real and is very fast.

I have decided to use The Queen's Gambit book, however I am a e4 player and only know the basics of the opening. Anyone got any famous positions in the QG which is aesthetically pleasing, symmetrical etc?

Anand playing e4 d5 against Kasparov in 1995. This the sort of thing that I want in my photos, a story, emotions, tension etc. Anyway, anyone else have any ideas?

Oh and here is a quick one I took of my niece with my nephew looking on. She is making jewelery rather than playing chess but it has the same sort of thing I want. She has shown an interest in chess before so I could probably do some shots of her at the chessboard as I have chosen The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis which has a girl chess player as the main character. Good idea? Or is she too young, maybe I should find someone else? What do you think?

bump

I think once you have an overall idea of what you want to do, you just need to take a step forward, play around with the camera and see if you like the outcome, this is what I believe how photography works.

Here are some chess related photos that caught my eye on deviantart:

http://semideus.deviantart.com/art/ghosts-of-a-chess-player-44225420

http://lloydhughes.deviantart.com/art/smoking-chess-player-24056532

http://bluecadet3douconnect.deviantart.com/art/Chess-50166894

http://irakly.deviantart.com/art/strip-chess-84705733

http://lloydhughes.deviantart.com/art/chess-players-bird-24056848

http://ubern00bish.deviantart.com/art/chess-75287190

I don't know if you know about this thread or not:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/greatest-chess-photos

:)

Edit:  It looks like you already know about it.

Ok, yes i am going to experiment now, go in a studio and shoot some still lifes, go to local clubs and shoot etc. Thanks for the advice Philidor_position.

Glad to hear that, now you need to go on and make comments on other peoples work there, so that slowly you'll get more views, more watchers, more comments etc.

If you give it some effort, I think it's a very nice community for amateur photographers. Of course you can also use it only as a gallery to organize your work and not bother with anything else, that's what I do because I stopped taking photos for a long while ago.

Unfortuately I can't use Alice as isn't modern enough but I had thought about it and could use ideas from it, thanks for that.

Here are my first attempts just shooting pieces as I have never photographed chess before so I was just testing using a lamp in my room and a chess set. Not very good, and the lens was dirty but it gave me some ideas:

So these are a few of my first trys, hope you like them, please feel free to comment what you would change/improve, different backround, focusing on something else etc. Next week I should be doing a shoot at my local club with people etc. Bear in mind that the above photos had book cover in mind, so the reason for the composition is to allow for the title, author etc.

Here are some of my second attempt, I got hold of some different sets of pieces. Again shot in my room with a lamp and this time also a piece of tinfoil to bring in the other side. They'd look much better if i messed about in photoshop with them but I am just going to do that when I have an idea of why my final shots will be :

Any comments, ideas etc etc would be greatly appreciated, should be going to my local club on tuesday and shooting some people at the board.

Nice i enjoyed the photo's!  thanks it was a nice bright spot in my day!

Thanks richfeet.

Here are a couple of other things I tried, my hand holding the queen, doesn't really work, needs to be a girls hand for the book. But I was suprised at how you could get some nice images with just a lamp, tinfoil and a black piece of material in the backround. I know that the below images are slightly wonky but I don't have any software for photographs, will have to do it at college. I'm a bit worried about going to my local club next week and photographing people playing, you can't take your time setting things up like with these:

Here is my first shoot at my local club. I've never really taken photos of people before, I usually try to keep them out of my photographs so these aren't very good. I could have done with using flash as the light was quite poor but the camera clicking was annoying enough, I didn't want everyone getting blinded during their games as well... So just available light trying to get ideas, the main thing I was trying to capture was hands and tension. I found that the best people to photograph were the best players, they had better expressions for some reason, more caught up in the game. I didn't really like doing the shoot as I felt like I was imposing, clicking away the silence. I may go back next week and try to get some better shots, closer, in particular hands etc Anyway here they are, all comments are welcome, as are ideas etc (not just about this shoot but any of it)

I am thinking of making/designing some chess sets/pieces/clocks etc to photograph. Any comments/ideas etc for this or previous ideas?

Below are some links:

 Man Ray chess set

Digeon paintings

Duchamp

bump

Fischer was psychotic, 2 bishops are stronger than a queen, h4 is the best opening, computers have proved chess is a win for black, chess is a sport but not a science etc etc.

Why do trolls have so many posts? I have more lack of respect for the people who respond to them, and they get pages upon pages. I used to think this site had some intelligent people who ignored the trolls and discussed sane interesting parts of chess. I guess I was wrong. So I'll try a bit of trolling to get some interest,...

one last try, anyone out there want to discuss ideas, comments etc about my chess photography project from the page before or chess in art in general...