There's this thing called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that says, well, it says a lot of things. The basic observation is that we generally think with words, and then the hypothesis proposes that the structure of our language reflects and limits the way we can think. Variations suggest that if there's no way to say a thing in a language, then you cannot think that thing, and so forth. Babel-17 postulates a language with no first person constructs, with interesting results for the way speakers of that language think and view the world.
There are aspects of this hypothesis that are obviously true, aspects that are almost certainly false, and a whole bunch of grey stuff in the middle. It's pretty hard to study, for obvious reasons.
Photography demonstrates pretty powerfully a variation on Sapir-Whorf.
If you don't know anything about photography, you're probably pretty OK at "grading" pictures, at least in terms of how powerful the picture is from the point of view of a layperson. After all, you're a layperson.
If you have a strong background in compositional theories and whatnot, you might be able to "grade" pictures pretty well, too, and you can, as a bonus, talk about why they're powerful or whatever.
If you have a weak and shoddy background, however, you suddenly lose the ability to grade things worth a damn. If is as if you've learned how to salt a soup properly, and now you judge soups entirely on whether they're properly salted. A soup made out of dogshit, properly salted, seems pretty good to you.
Go in any photography forum. You'll find people posting awful pictures, dogshit soup, which are in-focus, have some sort of correct white balance, and use the rule or thirds, or leading lines, or something. Then you'll find the community lining up to say how great the pictures are.
Having no vocabulary, they would be forced to simply report how they feel about a picture. With a rich vocabulary they could explain why, maybe. With the little bit of vocabulary most self-styled photographers have, Sapir-Whorf comes boiling out, and now, it seems, people have no other way to judge pictures. So they judge huge swathes of pictures as equally good. A crummy fashion photo that's in focus, and a superb one, are all "great shot!" because they have no vocabulary to describe the differences, and therefore literally cannot perceive them. The standards in play are simple, imbecile. The pictures are all over the place, but generally not very good.
It's an interesting phenomenon, which underlines why photographers are more or less the worst people to get any kind of critique from.
There's a further consequence. You, while obviously you are wise and good looking, are not immune. You probably can't see flaws you have no vocabulary for. If you strain, you might see that your picture is bad, but you may lack the words, the ideas, necessary to quantify why.
This is why being "self-taught" is bullshit. If you can't see what is wrong, you can't fix it. You can look at other people's pictures, and maybe mimic what they do, but unless you're naturally gifted you're just going to be doing a great job of salting soup made of dogshit. You might some day learn enough by mimicry to produce good pictures from time to time, or even pretty often. But you could just go do some learning.
Just sayin'.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Friday, April 10, 2015
Looking at Pictures
As if we needed more evidence that people don't actually look at photos. I happened across a thread in which some chap asked advice in duplicating some lighting and gave a link to a medical clinic's staff page. A glance at the thumbnails on the page showed that several lighting styles were used and that the commonality was the framing and a few other things.
This did not stop each of the self styled experts from clicking one of the thumbnails and declaring the lighting to be 'one softbox up high' or 'a beauty dish camera left'. Because each picture was lighted differently, a hilarious sequence of equally definite and completely different responses ensued. None of these jokers was looking at the pictures. They were all clicking in and looking at catchlights. All but one were too lazy to click more than one thumbnail.
The point is that people don't look at photographs.
Self styled photographers look at a picture and see technical details. Whatever details are foremost in their mind.
Regular people look at a picture and see the subject.
Only a few of us look and see the gestalt, the masses of tone and color, and the design, and the subject, and the technical details. It takes practice and interest to see a picture this way.
Most people, even most photographers, aren't interested. That's just how it is. Ours is a niche.
If you're really going to enjoy a picture, or anything else, the name of the game is to find the right mix of detail and overall sensation.
If you're tasting a soup, you could spend all your time trying to identify the spices, but that's not enjoyable. Better to pick out a few of the stronger flavors and then move on to the textures, the mouth feel, and so on. Better to savor it. The point is to discover your own reaction to the soup, to find your own delight (or distaste), not to analyze it to death nor to give it short shrift.
In the same way, we might look at a painting, a sculpture. We note details. We note larger design ideas. We note emotion and color. All this is in service of one thing and one thing only, to wrap ourselves around our own reaction to the thing, our own pleasure in it.
These bozos looking at catchlights are certainly having fun. They're spouting off and flaunting their tiny stores of boring technical knowledge, mainly for one another. While they're having fun, they're not enjoying pictures very much.
If taking apart pictures for the technical details is fun for you, rather than necessary work, you should consider the possibility that you're not all that in to photographs, but rather, photography.
This did not stop each of the self styled experts from clicking one of the thumbnails and declaring the lighting to be 'one softbox up high' or 'a beauty dish camera left'. Because each picture was lighted differently, a hilarious sequence of equally definite and completely different responses ensued. None of these jokers was looking at the pictures. They were all clicking in and looking at catchlights. All but one were too lazy to click more than one thumbnail.
The point is that people don't look at photographs.
Self styled photographers look at a picture and see technical details. Whatever details are foremost in their mind.
Regular people look at a picture and see the subject.
Only a few of us look and see the gestalt, the masses of tone and color, and the design, and the subject, and the technical details. It takes practice and interest to see a picture this way.
Most people, even most photographers, aren't interested. That's just how it is. Ours is a niche.
If you're really going to enjoy a picture, or anything else, the name of the game is to find the right mix of detail and overall sensation.
If you're tasting a soup, you could spend all your time trying to identify the spices, but that's not enjoyable. Better to pick out a few of the stronger flavors and then move on to the textures, the mouth feel, and so on. Better to savor it. The point is to discover your own reaction to the soup, to find your own delight (or distaste), not to analyze it to death nor to give it short shrift.
In the same way, we might look at a painting, a sculpture. We note details. We note larger design ideas. We note emotion and color. All this is in service of one thing and one thing only, to wrap ourselves around our own reaction to the thing, our own pleasure in it.
These bozos looking at catchlights are certainly having fun. They're spouting off and flaunting their tiny stores of boring technical knowledge, mainly for one another. While they're having fun, they're not enjoying pictures very much.
If taking apart pictures for the technical details is fun for you, rather than necessary work, you should consider the possibility that you're not all that in to photographs, but rather, photography.
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Manifesto
This is a book-like object in an edition of three. 6" x 6". Hand-made. 140 pound watercolor paper, hinged with mulberry and wheat paste. Machine prints from the local place, because I'm that kind of guy. Sharpie and micron pens.
Some PVA glue involved as well, because I was having a bit of trouble with wheat paste (I am pretty sure, because I am dumb):
See also WIP which is a 2x2 version of this same design.
Some PVA glue involved as well, because I was having a bit of trouble with wheat paste (I am pretty sure, because I am dumb):
See also WIP which is a 2x2 version of this same design.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Pasta
To me, pasta doesn't really have rules, I just follow my feelings.
Lately I've been making these cubes, six meters on a side, out of herbs and cement. To me, that's what pasta is.
(Yes. It's satire.)
Lately I've been making these cubes, six meters on a side, out of herbs and cement. To me, that's what pasta is.
(Yes. It's satire.)
Why Criticism Matters
By criticism I mean here, loosely, talking about Art. Which is pretty much what the word means, but I don't want any of my two or three readers to get bogged down in connotations. Criticism is, I like to pretend, a good part of what I do here.
Criticism changes. There are new theories of criticism always roiling about, rising to the top, and then being submerged. Do we worry about the author's intentions or not? Do we worry about the reader's reaction or not? What's Art all about anyways?
This arises partially out of the academic need to invent new things, whether or not there is anything new to be said. Nobody is going to give you a PhD for pointing out that the field is pretty much wrapped up and there isn't anything left to say. But. That's not all. Art changes. Art's position in society is always shifting around. The constant seems to be humanity's need to make Art, but the way we use it, the way society perceives it, all these things change constantly.
Way Back When, Art was largely storytelling, a sort of vague version of history-keeping. It has been primarily decorative. It has been, and is once again, a way to comment on society and politics and power. Lately it does a fair bit of commenting on itself. For each change, criticism needs to keep up. Criticism's larger job, beyond keeping academics employed and out of our hair, is to help us as a society understand what Art is all about. Not that lay people read the latest thesis on The New New Old Postmodernist Criticism, but someone does, and they talk about it at a party, and someone else repeats some of those ideas, and eventually some sort of think piece appears in The New Yorker, and then the New York Times, and finally someone says something in The Keokuk Herald.
The ideas, some of them, filter out there.
Most people, I think, have at least the vague notion that Art, today, is often political, and often self-referential. They know this because of critics thinking about things and writing them down.
Photography is particularly problematic here, since it plays so many roles in our society. If we're trying to understand how photography "fits in" to society, we find ourselves endlessly stumbling across new and different ways it plugs in and fills a role. This creates, both for people taking pictures and for people looking at them, a kind of confusion. I see photographers all over the place who appear to want to make Art, but who are winding up making Decor, or recording personal pictures. Others who just want to sell $75 mini-sessions to hapless seniors are struggling with Art, what is it anyway, when this is completely irrelevant to their goals.
The various overlapping roles of photography push and pull us, as people with cameras. Without a clear goal in mind it's difficult to know what you're supposed to be doing.
By understanding how photography fits in to our society, by reading and doing a bit of criticism, we clarify our goals. I do many things with the camera, and, usually, I know which one or ones I am doing when I press the shutter button. It's been a gigantic leap forward.
You don't have to do it. Many photographers seem to find their groove by instinct and are perfectly happy with whatever they're doing.
But if you're not, well, now perhaps you have some hints as to what to do.
Criticism changes. There are new theories of criticism always roiling about, rising to the top, and then being submerged. Do we worry about the author's intentions or not? Do we worry about the reader's reaction or not? What's Art all about anyways?
This arises partially out of the academic need to invent new things, whether or not there is anything new to be said. Nobody is going to give you a PhD for pointing out that the field is pretty much wrapped up and there isn't anything left to say. But. That's not all. Art changes. Art's position in society is always shifting around. The constant seems to be humanity's need to make Art, but the way we use it, the way society perceives it, all these things change constantly.
Way Back When, Art was largely storytelling, a sort of vague version of history-keeping. It has been primarily decorative. It has been, and is once again, a way to comment on society and politics and power. Lately it does a fair bit of commenting on itself. For each change, criticism needs to keep up. Criticism's larger job, beyond keeping academics employed and out of our hair, is to help us as a society understand what Art is all about. Not that lay people read the latest thesis on The New New Old Postmodernist Criticism, but someone does, and they talk about it at a party, and someone else repeats some of those ideas, and eventually some sort of think piece appears in The New Yorker, and then the New York Times, and finally someone says something in The Keokuk Herald.
The ideas, some of them, filter out there.
Most people, I think, have at least the vague notion that Art, today, is often political, and often self-referential. They know this because of critics thinking about things and writing them down.
Photography is particularly problematic here, since it plays so many roles in our society. If we're trying to understand how photography "fits in" to society, we find ourselves endlessly stumbling across new and different ways it plugs in and fills a role. This creates, both for people taking pictures and for people looking at them, a kind of confusion. I see photographers all over the place who appear to want to make Art, but who are winding up making Decor, or recording personal pictures. Others who just want to sell $75 mini-sessions to hapless seniors are struggling with Art, what is it anyway, when this is completely irrelevant to their goals.
The various overlapping roles of photography push and pull us, as people with cameras. Without a clear goal in mind it's difficult to know what you're supposed to be doing.
By understanding how photography fits in to our society, by reading and doing a bit of criticism, we clarify our goals. I do many things with the camera, and, usually, I know which one or ones I am doing when I press the shutter button. It's been a gigantic leap forward.
You don't have to do it. Many photographers seem to find their groove by instinct and are perfectly happy with whatever they're doing.
But if you're not, well, now perhaps you have some hints as to what to do.
Monday, April 6, 2015
"Good"
I recently made the remark that a lot of the "well known" photographers working today are quite awful. I was accused, in turn, of simply not liking them, and was snootily informed that my personal taste is just that, personal taste, and by implication of no consequence.
Ho hum, retards abound on the internets.
Still. What do I mean when I say something is good?
What I mean is, of course, an expression of my opinion. But it is not that I like it or not. I dislike plenty of things I estimate are "good". What "good" means is that the social consensus says so. The tastemakers, usually, have some say here, the gallerists and curators. But generally, some notion of The Public agrees that it's good. They might not like it. Most people don't "like" Warhol or Pollock, but they grudgingly agree that it's Art and that they suppose it must mean something to someone (possibly a homosexual).
What I mean when I say something is good is that I think, it is my opinion that, the social consensus will, or at any rate ought to, coalesce around the work and declare it good. I don't mean that I like it.
It has something to do with whether the work will stand up in time. If Ming Thein hung it up today, nobody but a few fanboys would remember him in a year. If you stumbled over his pictures five years later, you'd shrug. Flickr-ready junk. If Kirk Tuck hung it up today, people would stumble across his portraits year after year and think "man, that guy could shoot". If Daniel Milnor hung it up, again, he'd be remembered by a relatively small cadre and newcomers would look at his pictures and think "yeah, there's something there, isn't there?"
Usually it embodies having something to say. The point is that people look and they thing "there's something there" or "maybe there's something there" they do not think merely "how sharp! How wonderfully pretty!"
Anyways. It's all about that social consensus.
Ho hum, retards abound on the internets.
Still. What do I mean when I say something is good?
What I mean is, of course, an expression of my opinion. But it is not that I like it or not. I dislike plenty of things I estimate are "good". What "good" means is that the social consensus says so. The tastemakers, usually, have some say here, the gallerists and curators. But generally, some notion of The Public agrees that it's good. They might not like it. Most people don't "like" Warhol or Pollock, but they grudgingly agree that it's Art and that they suppose it must mean something to someone (possibly a homosexual).
What I mean when I say something is good is that I think, it is my opinion that, the social consensus will, or at any rate ought to, coalesce around the work and declare it good. I don't mean that I like it.
It has something to do with whether the work will stand up in time. If Ming Thein hung it up today, nobody but a few fanboys would remember him in a year. If you stumbled over his pictures five years later, you'd shrug. Flickr-ready junk. If Kirk Tuck hung it up today, people would stumble across his portraits year after year and think "man, that guy could shoot". If Daniel Milnor hung it up, again, he'd be remembered by a relatively small cadre and newcomers would look at his pictures and think "yeah, there's something there, isn't there?"
Usually it embodies having something to say. The point is that people look and they thing "there's something there" or "maybe there's something there" they do not think merely "how sharp! How wonderfully pretty!"
Anyways. It's all about that social consensus.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Photoshop is [Not] Ruining Landscape Photography!
Here's the context (which is nearly 3 years old, but a recent essay on LuLa dredged it up again):
Opinion: Why Photoshop is Ruining Landscape Photography
It would be an interesting thing to discuss is only wiser heads had not had it out more than 100 years ago. Compositing in skies was standard procedure in the early days of orthochromatic emulsions. P.H. Emerson and H.P. Robinson had an epic Victorian war of letters on, more or less, this exact point.
The players in this round strike me as thoughtless children, when stacked up next to those elder statesmen.
The trouble is that nobody thinks about much of anything these days. Consider this quote from the cited piece:
How? The author goes on to claim that, basically, if only you were patient you could get the right color, and landscape photography is all about stalking the right color (it is?), blah blah blah. The whole piece is a lame mess of justification for a poorly thought out opinion held for no particular reason at all, except that his friends hold it. (To be fair, almost every opinion we hold, we hold because our friends or family hold it, but golly, you can do a better job of rationalization.)
Emerson, who is on the same side as the cited piece, points out that if you don't shoot the sky from the same place at the same time you're not going to get the light right. You can get it close, but you can't get it right. And, a quick look at the relevant picture shows that he is correct. The light is improbable. Now, if you don't know it's photoshopped, you probably wouldn't say that, you'd probably feel that the light was a bit surreal, but you wouldn't likely peg it as wrong. But it is wrong, and pretty obviously so, once you know.
Emerson also suggests, and I agree with him, that manipulations will out. People will feel it. They will, somehow, know. And your picture will be, somehow, wrong. No matter how careful you are, it is artifice and the fact that it is artifice will damage the picture.
Now, we all manipulate. There is always artifice. You have to accept that there is artifice in pictures. Getting hissy about "well, this is OK and that is not" is ridiculous, but it is equally ridiculous to claim that artifice is always wrong, or that it is harmless.
What is true is this:
Every bit of manipulation you perform sacrifices a little bit of the reality of the photograph. The power of a photograph over other forms lies in, precisely, that reality. Therefore, make your sacrifices count.
Opinion: Why Photoshop is Ruining Landscape Photography
It would be an interesting thing to discuss is only wiser heads had not had it out more than 100 years ago. Compositing in skies was standard procedure in the early days of orthochromatic emulsions. P.H. Emerson and H.P. Robinson had an epic Victorian war of letters on, more or less, this exact point.
The players in this round strike me as thoughtless children, when stacked up next to those elder statesmen.
The trouble is that nobody thinks about much of anything these days. Consider this quote from the cited piece:
Removing power lines from a landscape is one thing. Changing the colour of the sky from grey to orange quite another.
How? The author goes on to claim that, basically, if only you were patient you could get the right color, and landscape photography is all about stalking the right color (it is?), blah blah blah. The whole piece is a lame mess of justification for a poorly thought out opinion held for no particular reason at all, except that his friends hold it. (To be fair, almost every opinion we hold, we hold because our friends or family hold it, but golly, you can do a better job of rationalization.)
Emerson, who is on the same side as the cited piece, points out that if you don't shoot the sky from the same place at the same time you're not going to get the light right. You can get it close, but you can't get it right. And, a quick look at the relevant picture shows that he is correct. The light is improbable. Now, if you don't know it's photoshopped, you probably wouldn't say that, you'd probably feel that the light was a bit surreal, but you wouldn't likely peg it as wrong. But it is wrong, and pretty obviously so, once you know.
Emerson also suggests, and I agree with him, that manipulations will out. People will feel it. They will, somehow, know. And your picture will be, somehow, wrong. No matter how careful you are, it is artifice and the fact that it is artifice will damage the picture.
Now, we all manipulate. There is always artifice. You have to accept that there is artifice in pictures. Getting hissy about "well, this is OK and that is not" is ridiculous, but it is equally ridiculous to claim that artifice is always wrong, or that it is harmless.
What is true is this:
Every bit of manipulation you perform sacrifices a little bit of the reality of the photograph. The power of a photograph over other forms lies in, precisely, that reality. Therefore, make your sacrifices count.
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