It's the real thing -- or is it?

It’s the real thing – or is it?

Be warned --- I’m gonna wax philosophical in this post.  You’ll have to work to follow it closely.

There are still people who whine that digital manipulation is somehow cheating, that it distorts the reality of a film camera shot, and it’s somehow too easy.  I say nuts, for two simple reasons.  1. No camera captures reality.  2.  The final photograph depends on the vision and skill of the photographer both composing and taking the picture, and in the lab afterwards.

So to begin with, let’s take a look at the “reality” of a film exposure.  A film camera sees only what is there, and sees it only in terms of light and shadow (and color, though that’s a separate argument).  It does not see trees and hills and soccer balls and smiling Uncle Jack.  And it is at best a representation of what it sees; it’s not the thing itself.  Heck, a picture’s not even three-dimensional, let alone four-dimensional.

The camera – any camera – does not see context.  Only humans do that.  That’s because an exposure is typically very short.  Portrait photographers like to claim they capture a moment in time – but in fact, it’s usually something around 1/60 of a second or less.  Pretty brief moment, and says nothing of what happened right before it or what happens right after it.

It’s the before-and-after part that creates a story and gives meaning to human life. Movies tell stories.  Photographs only imply them – and frequently they’re lying.  Take the picture of the little girl and her dolly.  She looks so sad!  In fact a few seconds before this shot she was grinning and skylarking about, and a few seconds after it she was smiling again.

I had asked her to “love the dolly.”  Click.

The reality is – at that instant the child looked like that.  But in terms of her overall personality, it’s not the reality.  It’s not related to anything beyond that instant. Anything we might say about this kid is all made-up, an invention.  It’s a story.  Humans make up stories all the time.  We do it to bring order and meaning into what would otherwise be chaos and senseless. 

But it’s all fiction. 

A successful portrait generates a story in us that we like to tell.  If the portrait actually generates a story that reminds us of OUR fiction about the person in the picture, it’s a really successful portrait. 

So, I ask again …. What’s reality? To a camera, it’s photons flooding a receptor, whether film or pixels sensors.  No subject, no context, no story, no reality.  Reality, one more time, is defined by people’s experience of life (which includes their experience of science experiments, so nyahh, nyahh, nyahh to you measurers and quantifiers out there).

The so-what of this is that since there is no human reality in a photograph, what on earth can be wrong with constructing a more artistic or human-oriented version of what the camera saw?  No great moral sin is being committed.  Removing the inadvertent tree trunk from Sister Helen’s head is no lie.  Taking it out of there (or blurring it in photoshop) lets the viewer concentrate on Sister Helen, who is far more important to the photographer than the tree trunk.  All you’re doing by taking out the tree trunk is creating the reality you THOUGHT you saw or WANTED to see when you took the picture. 

 

The picture now corresponds much more closely to your view of reality. 

 

BIG ASIDE

The tree trunk appears to be coming from Sister Helen’s head for two reasons.  The first is that the camera’s lens treated head and tree as both in focus with no space between them.  The second reason is that the photographer didn’t see the tree.  He saw Sister Helen, and mentally blocked out the tree.  Surprise!  It was there all along!  Skilled photographers learn to see the tree trunk, and to check the corners of the frame to make sure nothing’s there that shouldn’t be.

Watch those telephone wires!  They’re the dark lines you don’t see looking down the street – but the camera sees them just fine.  If you want to take that scene, move where the wires are out of frame, or be prepared to bust your ass in photoshop later! 

END OF BIG ASIDE

So, to finish up, cameras see only a very limited version of reality.  All the richness and wealth of reality comes from the photographer – and he or she made it all up in the first place!

Don’t be shy.  Just admit what you’re doing with a film camera or a digital one is only step one in expressing the reality that’s in your head …. Then go for broke back in the lab or on the computer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have terrible eyesight

It's true.  I have lousy eyesight.  I've had a total of 13 eye operations since I was six.  Maybe I'

ll wind up as the first braille photographer, which is great in the studio with models, but not so hot for landscapes ....

My eyes don't resolve very well.  Specks of lens crud that are instantly visible to my friends and critics and eagle-eyed older daughter are invisible to me.  That's a problem, but it's also a blessing, because while I don't see details well, I see patterns just fine.  And patterns are what give a photograph its organization, its life and vigor, and a good part of its style.

If you've ever tried to capture a scene, a whole scene, you've probably been disappointed by the result.  I know I have!  But if instead of the whole scene, you start seeing how the elements of the scene are connected, the patterns that they make, and photograph those, you're likely to be much happier with the outcome.    The photo above shows a wooden flume carrying spring water from the New Mexico mountains to a village.  What makes the image succeed, aside from its interest as a subject, is the energy caused by the diagonal line intersecting the circular pool.  That's really all this picture is -- a diagonal and a circle.  And it looks even better when it's flopped left-to-right --- because in our culture, that's how our eyes are taught to move.

In the photo competitions I've been involved with,  one of the worst things you can to is center your subject.  This is called "bulls-eye composition" and it's BORING (unless you're shooting macros, and even then ....).  Imbalance, off-center, sliding on a diagonal, snaking through a serpentine --- these all have far more energy than a bulls-eye.  

So that's it for this entry.  Bad eyesight has forced me to rely on seeing patterns of shape and light-and-dark -- which has really helped my photography.

Your comments are welcome!

In the beginning

Some years ago I made the terrible mistake of listening to other people when they told me to stop griping about business conditions and start selling my photographs instead of consulting.

This turned out to be hard to do .... and still is!  Accepting this proposition meant re-thinking what the heck I was doing with my life, anyway.

You should know that photography is my fifth career.  Others have included management, organizational development consulting, teaching, and writing.  To accept the challenge of becoming a full-time photographer, I had to accept that it wasn't my job to fix the world.  

My new job --- and my personal mission -- became "sharing the beautiful in the commonplace."

This blog is about my adventures trying to accomplish that mission.  It will incorporate thoughts on a wide variety of topics, links to photographs, and some comments on the aesthetics of photography and maybe some hints along the way.

I'm a life-long learner.  So this blogging thing is a learning opportunity for me .... and maybe for you as well.

The picture above was shot yesterday morning, on my way to the studio.  Saw the mist, stopped the car, and went to work.  It's commonplace, and it's beautiful.  Anybody could have taken this picture.  But I happened to actually do it.  Enjoy!