By ERIC KONIGSBERG
The New York Times
Published: May 21, 2008
Nikola Tamindzic went out late on Friday night to shoot pictures at Trash, a weekly themed party at 40C, an East Village nightclub.
Good beginning; puts the reader right in the middle of Tamindzic's life.
Mr. Tamindzic is a night-life photographer — equal parts Ron Galella, Weegee and Terry Richardson — with clippings in Time Out New York, Black Book, The Village Voice and something planned in Vanity Fair. The Voice named him Night-Life Photographer of the Year in 2006.
Synonymic replacement ("Mr. Tamindzic"), very simply defining T's work: "is a night-life photographer." Good use of dash parenthesis, to compare T to other photographers), then giving his resume (what he's published) very simply: he published in famous magazines and won an award. This leads to the first "salient" quote. That is, the quote tells us something important, relevant, significant, etc. Note how T uses a comparison ("Lee Friedlander photographs"). Note the use of the dash to add spice to the style. (I think dashes are under-used; I love them; they add color to the typography (printed page) too. Older writers used dashes a lot (Emily Dickinson, Poe, etc.), but they're less used in formal writing. I think they should be used more; it makes the writing more lively. (But of course never overuse anything, or do anything in excess!)
"My pictures suggest a story that happened before the shot and a story that hasn't happened yet," Mr. Tamindzic said. "There's a sense of melancholy. I'm thinking Lee Friedlander photographs from the '70s. Hopefully, when it comes together it puts two contradictory layers in the photo: you're both adoring it and not repulsed by it — but, yeah, almost repulsed by it."
Next the writer gives his own comparison to develop his profile. Remember, a profile focuses on a person, his or her work, and lifestyle (including manner, setting, etc.). This following paragraph describes exactly what T meant by his comment before:
Take, for example, a picture Mr. Tamindzic took the weekend before last at a book party for Arianna Huffington: Ms. Huffington with Charlie Rose, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Jann Wenner and Rupert Murdoch. None of the five — except for Mr. Wenner, who theatrically pretends to be holding Mr. Zuckerman and Mr. Murdoch at arm's length from each other — appears to want to be in the photo. Yet they are all smiling gamely enough because, well, it would be horrible form to move out of the frame.
Next dialogue is linked by descriptive attribution, informing the reader of other kinds of photographs T has taken:
"I don't judge my subjects," Mr. Tamindzic said of his portraiture, which also includes studio and fashion work. He added that although he makes more money by selling pictures to glossy magazines, his primary employer (which had sent him to the Huffington event in the first place) is Gawker, the acidic media-gossip Web site.
Now we get to T's background and history. Note this can be placed anywhere in a profile, so long as it adds variety to it:
Mr. Tamindzic is 35 and grew up in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia. He came to America in 2000, took a job doing Web design work, then landed in New York in 2004. It was around that time that he fell in love with photography, and during his initial months in town, he happened to end up at a Halloween party held by Gawker's founder.
This descriptive paragraph then leads logically, through dialogue, to a lower level of generality, using cause-effect:
"I was bored so I took a lot of pictures and posted them online, and the next day they called and said they'd pay me to start taking their party pictures," Mr. Tamindzic said.
"His work" in the next transition paragraph, links to the previous mention of photographs in the last paragraph. Note how the writer uses a parenthesis well to include explanatory information the reader might need. (Remember, the writer is always thinking of the reader in the Communication Triangle; this can be shown in terms of the Question-Answer model: what questions might the "average" reader ask that I should answer. In fact, as in the case of the FD initials a student used in his profile, the reader would naturally ask the meaning of T's web site, so the writer answers that question in parentheses:
His work can be viewed on his own site, homeofthevain.com (the name comes from a lyric by the literate post-punk band the Fall).
The writer chooses to include a rather general quote of not much interest (the writer could have included this as description instead of dialogue, but the use of words like "kids" and "trustafarians" (I've no idea what "trustafarians" means & I coudn't find it in one online dictionary, so it must be current slang) adds color to T's speech.
At the nightclub on Friday night, Mr. Tamindzic sized up the crowd. "It's very young," he said. "Lower East Side Street kids, N.Y.U. students, trustafarians."
This is a good paragraph, making us see T in action. Note the vivid (though conventional) phrase, "he leaped into action." Note the writer is specific in his description ("in underwear and cutoff shorts" and "encouraging them to mug [that is, make faces] for the camera"). A poor writer would have written the same paragraph like this: "He took pictures of people in the bar" or "He took pictures of people dancing." Can you see the difference between those sentences and the one the writer actually wrote. (Not that it's a great paragraph sentence; but it's adequate:
He leaped into action, snapping pictures of the two young women who were being paid to dance on the bar in underwear and cutoff shorts and encouraging them to mug for the camera.
Next we get a descriptive image of T ("all legs and elbows" and "purposeful and obvious"). By "obvious" the writer means T is obviously snapping photos and doesn't try to hide the fact from his subjects. The writer includes a specific mention of the camera T uses. Again, think of the Q-A model of writing: if a photographer were reading this, what kinds of questions would he or she ask? Certainly they would wish to know what kind of camera T uses! Note the precise image: "a noirish crime-scene photographer's burst of light") ("film noir" is a well-known movie genre whose subject is sleazy crimes and criminals).
Mr. Tamindzic, a lanky 6 feet 3 inches tall, all legs and elbows, was purposeful and obvious, with a hefty Canon EOS 5D camera in one hand and a LumiQuest softbox flash in the other (to throw up a noirish, crime-scene photographer's burst of intense light). He uses long exposures, then shakes the camera while the shutter is still open, causing colors to blur and lights to streak.
A nice quote follows, telling us not only about T but about his subjects (those who attend parties). Note there's no standard style of writing numbers; magazines allow numerals (3 & 4), though in formal writing we would write out the numerals:
"I'm not recording what is really happening, but it's something like what the brain is seeing late at night, especially if maybe you're drunk or very excited," he said. "I like that hour between 3 and 4 in the morning when desperation sets in, when you see all the anticipation of going out starting to fade. The masks drop and everybody realizes the night is not going to be everything they were hoping for."
Paragraphing has changed too: formerly, the following short paragraphs would really be a single paragraph. Note how the writer gets to lower levels of generality. All of this information answers questions readers might have. There are many models of writing: the newspaper model (5 W's + H); the commonplace model (Definition, cause-effect, etc.); the Question-Answer model (Q-A): the writer is both reader and writer in dialogue as she writes, constantly asking questions as the reader and answering them as the writer; there's the psychological model (we are all voyeurs and wish to observe another's life completely). Note, by the way, the writer doesn't add a period after the final "a.m." Writers can learn more by studying good writing than by studying grammar books. Note also the use of anaphora (beginning each sentence with the same word(s), in this case "He." Parallelism is at work too, since each "He" is followed by the same type of verb form (past tense): snapped, photographed, photographed:
Mr. Tamindzic appeared to be at the top of his game as the clock struck 1:30 a.m.
Note the proper use of a semi-colon (our classmates would use a comma splice instead: "a bouquet of flowers, they were out," etc.
He snapped pictures of a couple of young career women in pumps and wool coats, one of whom held a bouquet of flowers; they were out on the town for her birthday.
A single sentence like the following seems easy when reading it, but it takes a lot of thought and word choices before the precise image is captured:
He photographed a rather robotic looking woman in a futuristic version of a Playboy Club waitress's outfit.
He photographed a couple who had fallen into what appeared to be an unlikely and unaccounted-for embrace.
Notice that a film (Blow-Up) is usually italicized in formal writing, but in magazine writing it's placed in quotations. As students you should remember the formal writing style, because (at least in the near future) it's unlikely you'll need to put films in quotes; besides, the magazine editor would make the change for you. But the main point in the next paragraph is the way the writer compares T to the famous photographer in the movie, Blow-Up (by the way, this movie is in our library). (One more note: when the text is in italics, as here, then what should be in italics is put in Roman type, as contrast! So Blow-Up is then put in Roman type! Notice the use of dashes again and the "for example." I myself would just give the examples without writing "for example"! So it would look like this: ". . . coaxing them into poses: a hand on someone's stomach," etc.:
There was something of the character portrayed by David Hemmings in "Blow-Up" in the way Mr. Tamindzic worked the back room of the club, pulling women onto the velvet couch and coaxing them into poses — for example, a hand on someone's stomach, or a shoulder strap undone. They were mostly shy but thrilled by his attention.
The writer ends as he began: with a memorable quote:
"I like to bring people to a point of vulnerability and then meet their gaze," he explained earlier in the evening about his portraits. "That creates compassion, which hopefully is reflected in the image. If you get vulnerability out of them and then look away, that's the cruelest thing you can do. To flinch at that point and not take the picture, the subject will throw the wall up faster than you can say — well, faster than you can say a very short word."
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