On Image and Intuition
Taste doesn’t come out of nowhere. You build it by being present, by noticing, by repetition. And I think a lot about this when I drink coffee .. not just any coffee, but well-made, specialty coffee. Where the grind size matters. Where water temperature changes the cup. Where you can taste the difference between washed and natural process, between an Ethiopian and a Colombian.
And after a while, you just know when something’s off. You don’t need to explain it, you feel it.
That’s what image-making has become for me. You spend enough time watching good films, noticing light in real life, studying paintings, stills, street photographs, and eventually, the way you frame, light, block, and color becomes second nature.
This post isn’t a manual. It’s a personal reflection on the patterns I keep returning to in cinematography .. on how taste, once developed, becomes intuition, and how that intuition shapes the work.
When i think of shot sizes, i first think of medium-wide shots, i feel like that’s where my eye naturally lands. it’s the frame size that lets me stay with the character while still showing the space around them. it gives enough room for blocking, for background details, for light to shape the environment. and it forces me to make real decisions. you can’t hide behind shallow depth or tight coverage .. there’s no escape. everything is visible, so everything has to be intentional. i keep coming back to this shot size because it allows the character and their surroundings to exist together in one frame. for me, that’s where the story starts to speak.
Blue Sun Palace – DP Norm Li
Medium-Wide
Fight Club - DP Jeff Cronenweth
Where Is the Friend's House - DP Farhad Saba