Alain de Botton wrote a nice piece for the Wall Street Journal this weekend, evidently adapted from a book I have not read: Art as Therapy. The essay makes the rather bold claim that Art with a capital A might actually have a purpose, rather than simply existing for its own sake. It offers up "therapy" as a purpose, but perhaps not in quite the way one might suspect.
The essay in the WSJ goes on to examine a few pieces and the kinds of therapeutic results one might get by looking at them, but largely seems to take introspection as therapy. This is fair enough. I think it's more interesting to just stop at the idea of introspection.
The interpretations de Botton proposes strike me as very personal and specific. He presents them, I think, as generally applicable and this is the weakest element of the essay. Who cares if we struggle with a piece, and find something very specifically personal in it? Isn't that a good thing? Why must the result be general? My idea here is to look at a piece of art and then to consciously reach for some sort of reaction to it, to consciously cast about for something one might take away from it. Mostly we seem to feel that it's the artwork's job to reach out to us, to poke and prod us, to make feel or think or something. Why not turn this around?
This isn't quite deconstructionist. I don't mean to dismiss the artist's ideas as irrelevant at all. Insofar as the artist's ideas are clear, they will surely color our reaction to it, no matter how we struggle. We could strive to understand the artist, or we could simply free-associate, or, or.. the point is simply that we actively strive to make something of the work.
I'm not sure I buy into the idea of art as "therapy" per se, but I'm pretty interested in this idea that we can consciously bring our selves to bear on a piece of art, that we can try to pull from it, that we can be an active participant from the moment we open our eyes. Photography, as usual, stands a little apart. That this was a real thing, a little slice of reality, connects us already to the work. What if, instead of demanding that the picture pose the question "what was out of frame?" or "what is she thinking?" we consciously posed these questions to ourselves?
Would it be reasonably to walk around a gallery with a notebook of questions, and to interview each picture? Possibly out loud? Why not?!
Monday, November 4, 2013
Saturday, November 2, 2013
On the use of Color
I am uncomfortable with color. I'm just not good at it. But, I can see it and think about it. My ideas about how it's used have evolved over time. This essay is kind of a snapshot.
There is a device called the color wheel. This is, essentially, the colors of the rainbow in rainbow-order wrapped around a circle with the red end and the purple end connected together. Whether you proceed red-orange-yellow-etc in the clockwise or counter direction varies. How the colors are spaced varies, which means that which color is opposite which other color can vary a bit. The point is, though, that for any color there are colors that are close to it on the color wheel and there are colors that are far apart on the wheel. Some color wheels represent saturation as well, as a distance from the center. The center is white, the rim of the wheel has very saturated hues, and so on.
Colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel are called complementary but this notion depends, obviously, on the wheel. I will use the word complementary instead to simply mean that two colors are very far apart on the wheel. Blue/orange, green/red, yellow/purple, these are complementary. Also, however, Purple/orange, or green/violet, or yellow/purple might be considered complementary. I am being somewhat naughty here, since complementary really does mean something specific, it just happens to depend on your color model.
A quick web search will turn up loads of pictures and examples of this sort of thing.
When I say a narrow palette of colors, I mean a collection of colors drawn from close together on the color wheel, colors that are similar in hue. However, generally, I mean that they are similar in value and saturation as well, although a certain amount of variation is permitted here. A narrow palette of colors "goes together" in general terms. A collection of muted oranges, reddish-yellows, and warm browns might form such a narrow palette, for instance.
By far the most common color design in fashion photography and, interestingly enough, high end landscape art, uses two narrow palettes which are complementary. One is dominant, and provides colors for most of the frame, while the other is subordinate and colors a smaller percentage of the frame area. The subordinate color is an accent color.
Some people will talk about patterns of three colors or palettes, or even four, evenly spaced around the color wheel. Again, since color wheels vary, these colors will depend on which wheel we're talking about. In addition, we start talking about exceedingly narrow palettes, or even single colors, here, otherwise the palettes overlap and we simply have all available hues and there is, in reality, no plan. I don't notice this occurring much in real work, to be honest, but perhaps it's out there. I think that these ideas tend to either disintegrate or to be read as simple a "riot of colors" idiom, which can certainly be successful.
Let us, therefore, return to the two-palette theme.
Once you recognize the pattern and know what to look for, you will start to see it everywhere. It is perhaps too much to say that it is the single most important thing nobody ever tells you about marketable photography, but there are moments when this seems to be true.
The dominant palette pulls the frame together. It creates a very coherent look, the frame feels controlled and "put together". Ideally, the dominant palette colors the things you want to emphasize, the dress, the model's hair, the sand dune. A single palette can work by itself, but tends toward visually dull. The subject matter or the graphical properties of the frame better be pretty interesting. With an accent palette in play, you get visual interest for free.
At this point you can use the accent palette to manage the frame a bit. By saturating those accent colors, you can draw the eye to those accented regions. Fashion, both as worn and as photographed, does this a lot. The shoes, the clutch, and the lipstick are popped reds to draw attention, as well as to complement the navy blue dress and hat. Alternatively, the accent colors can be desaturated and muted, to push them into the background, to simply add a little visual depth and flavor to the picture. In this case, you might saturate, brighten, or use graphical techniques to draw the eye to whatever it is in the dominant palette that you want to be visually important.
With modern digital editing tools it is trivial to select areas and to adjust hues and saturations within them. It is somewhat startling how far you can go here without making the picture look unreal. You can apply much more radical changes to hue and saturation that you can to values. I strongly advocate for using the hue and saturation equivalents of burning and dodging, and I am practically certain that most successful commercial work uses these ideas extensively. If they're not using them in post, they're doing much the same thing by gelling lights.
While these ideas are certainly dominant in landscape and fashion, there's no reason event photographers and other commercial workers cannot use the same ideas. Put the bridesmaids up against complementary background, or otherwise use a complementary color palette. If you can't make it happen in camera, at least do some adjustments in post.
I wouldn't recommend messing with the dress colors, though. The bride's gonna notice that.
There is a device called the color wheel. This is, essentially, the colors of the rainbow in rainbow-order wrapped around a circle with the red end and the purple end connected together. Whether you proceed red-orange-yellow-etc in the clockwise or counter direction varies. How the colors are spaced varies, which means that which color is opposite which other color can vary a bit. The point is, though, that for any color there are colors that are close to it on the color wheel and there are colors that are far apart on the wheel. Some color wheels represent saturation as well, as a distance from the center. The center is white, the rim of the wheel has very saturated hues, and so on.
Colors that are opposite one another on the color wheel are called complementary but this notion depends, obviously, on the wheel. I will use the word complementary instead to simply mean that two colors are very far apart on the wheel. Blue/orange, green/red, yellow/purple, these are complementary. Also, however, Purple/orange, or green/violet, or yellow/purple might be considered complementary. I am being somewhat naughty here, since complementary really does mean something specific, it just happens to depend on your color model.
A quick web search will turn up loads of pictures and examples of this sort of thing.
When I say a narrow palette of colors, I mean a collection of colors drawn from close together on the color wheel, colors that are similar in hue. However, generally, I mean that they are similar in value and saturation as well, although a certain amount of variation is permitted here. A narrow palette of colors "goes together" in general terms. A collection of muted oranges, reddish-yellows, and warm browns might form such a narrow palette, for instance.
By far the most common color design in fashion photography and, interestingly enough, high end landscape art, uses two narrow palettes which are complementary. One is dominant, and provides colors for most of the frame, while the other is subordinate and colors a smaller percentage of the frame area. The subordinate color is an accent color.
Some people will talk about patterns of three colors or palettes, or even four, evenly spaced around the color wheel. Again, since color wheels vary, these colors will depend on which wheel we're talking about. In addition, we start talking about exceedingly narrow palettes, or even single colors, here, otherwise the palettes overlap and we simply have all available hues and there is, in reality, no plan. I don't notice this occurring much in real work, to be honest, but perhaps it's out there. I think that these ideas tend to either disintegrate or to be read as simple a "riot of colors" idiom, which can certainly be successful.
Let us, therefore, return to the two-palette theme.
Once you recognize the pattern and know what to look for, you will start to see it everywhere. It is perhaps too much to say that it is the single most important thing nobody ever tells you about marketable photography, but there are moments when this seems to be true.
The dominant palette pulls the frame together. It creates a very coherent look, the frame feels controlled and "put together". Ideally, the dominant palette colors the things you want to emphasize, the dress, the model's hair, the sand dune. A single palette can work by itself, but tends toward visually dull. The subject matter or the graphical properties of the frame better be pretty interesting. With an accent palette in play, you get visual interest for free.
At this point you can use the accent palette to manage the frame a bit. By saturating those accent colors, you can draw the eye to those accented regions. Fashion, both as worn and as photographed, does this a lot. The shoes, the clutch, and the lipstick are popped reds to draw attention, as well as to complement the navy blue dress and hat. Alternatively, the accent colors can be desaturated and muted, to push them into the background, to simply add a little visual depth and flavor to the picture. In this case, you might saturate, brighten, or use graphical techniques to draw the eye to whatever it is in the dominant palette that you want to be visually important.
With modern digital editing tools it is trivial to select areas and to adjust hues and saturations within them. It is somewhat startling how far you can go here without making the picture look unreal. You can apply much more radical changes to hue and saturation that you can to values. I strongly advocate for using the hue and saturation equivalents of burning and dodging, and I am practically certain that most successful commercial work uses these ideas extensively. If they're not using them in post, they're doing much the same thing by gelling lights.
While these ideas are certainly dominant in landscape and fashion, there's no reason event photographers and other commercial workers cannot use the same ideas. Put the bridesmaids up against complementary background, or otherwise use a complementary color palette. If you can't make it happen in camera, at least do some adjustments in post.
I wouldn't recommend messing with the dress colors, though. The bride's gonna notice that.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Personal Journeys
This post is largely about me, but the plan is that my personal tale will provide some sort of more widely applicable ideas. It is in some ways a followup to this post.
Here is a picture I took:
I put it out there for "critique" on some random photography forum, where it was quite well received. There's some things to quibble about with it, for sure, but basically it's a very likable picture and people like it. I made it that way. I went out with malice aforethought to take a likable picture, and Seattle graced me with a good dose of luck, and here we are.
I don't like it it. At all. I hate myself a little for shooting it. That picture looks like anyone with a modicum of color and design sense could have shot it. Pictures just like it show up on flickr's Explore, and in every other photo sharing site's Trending, Hot, Buzz, Whatever lists. It's likable, and extremely generic. Pictures like it are shot by the thousands every day, and many of them don't have the technical quibbles this one is saddled with. Normally when I see a picture like this, I raise the camera to my eye, and then lower it. It's just not interesting to me.
This doesn't mean that it's bad. It's not bad, it's pretty good. It's very likable. It just doesn't look like something I shot.
Here is another picture I shot:
This was also offered for critique. Same forum. Boy was it not liked! Nobody liked it. I made it with a lot of formal structure, and I happen to think it's interesting, and I like it. Everyone else sees a big confusing dead space of nothing right in the middle and can't get past that. They don't like it, at all.
Ok, so that makes it bad, by my own standards. If more or less regular people just can't stand to look at your picture, then you're not connecting, you're not communicating, you're not garnering a reaction. The work isn't good. So be it. I still like it.
This picture looks like something I shot. It's too much to hope in this world of a trillion pictures that an aficionado could look at a picture and say a priori that it is a Molitor. It is not unreasonable that the same aficionado could look at it after learning that it is a Molitor, and discern clearly that it is consistent with Molitor's other work. It is not unreasonable that my work could be a coherent and visually related body of work.
I want to shoot things that look like I shot them, and that people like. So far, not a lot of luck. It's hard to do, since people mostly like things they've seen before, and things they've seen before don't look very individualistic.
Lots of people have no such ambitions. Some guys just want to duplicate Ansel Adams photos, and that's OK. More power to 'em. Lots and lots of people just want to make pictures that hit flickr's Explore, or similar. That's OK too. They're both technically and artistically challenging things to do.
That's just not what I want to do.
Here is a picture I took:
I put it out there for "critique" on some random photography forum, where it was quite well received. There's some things to quibble about with it, for sure, but basically it's a very likable picture and people like it. I made it that way. I went out with malice aforethought to take a likable picture, and Seattle graced me with a good dose of luck, and here we are.
I don't like it it. At all. I hate myself a little for shooting it. That picture looks like anyone with a modicum of color and design sense could have shot it. Pictures just like it show up on flickr's Explore, and in every other photo sharing site's Trending, Hot, Buzz, Whatever lists. It's likable, and extremely generic. Pictures like it are shot by the thousands every day, and many of them don't have the technical quibbles this one is saddled with. Normally when I see a picture like this, I raise the camera to my eye, and then lower it. It's just not interesting to me.
This doesn't mean that it's bad. It's not bad, it's pretty good. It's very likable. It just doesn't look like something I shot.
Here is another picture I shot:
This was also offered for critique. Same forum. Boy was it not liked! Nobody liked it. I made it with a lot of formal structure, and I happen to think it's interesting, and I like it. Everyone else sees a big confusing dead space of nothing right in the middle and can't get past that. They don't like it, at all.
Ok, so that makes it bad, by my own standards. If more or less regular people just can't stand to look at your picture, then you're not connecting, you're not communicating, you're not garnering a reaction. The work isn't good. So be it. I still like it.
This picture looks like something I shot. It's too much to hope in this world of a trillion pictures that an aficionado could look at a picture and say a priori that it is a Molitor. It is not unreasonable that the same aficionado could look at it after learning that it is a Molitor, and discern clearly that it is consistent with Molitor's other work. It is not unreasonable that my work could be a coherent and visually related body of work.
I want to shoot things that look like I shot them, and that people like. So far, not a lot of luck. It's hard to do, since people mostly like things they've seen before, and things they've seen before don't look very individualistic.
Lots of people have no such ambitions. Some guys just want to duplicate Ansel Adams photos, and that's OK. More power to 'em. Lots and lots of people just want to make pictures that hit flickr's Explore, or similar. That's OK too. They're both technically and artistically challenging things to do.
That's just not what I want to do.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Pictures and Cameras
I try to avoid industry commentary, but this particular tempest in a teapot struck some chords, and also inspired a little thinking about larger topics. I hope you don't mind.
Some people, most people, just want pictures. Some people want to possess a camera. Some people like to make pictures with a camera, that is, they want to possess pictures (like the first group) but they also want to have made those pictures. Obviously no single person falls cleanly into one camp or another, each of us partakes a little of each. Still, as elements of markets perhaps, people are primarily driven by one or the other. Let us assume, to simplify things for this little essay, that there are people who want to possess a camera for one reason or another, and there are people who want mainly to possess pictures.
In the 19th century, if you wanted a picture, you went to an artist or a photographer, you paid a fee, and a picture was made for you. If you wanted a camera, well, you could buy one of those as well, starting a few decades into the century. Many fewer people bought cameras than bought pictures. Lots and lots and lots of people bought tintypes. Lots. Many people bought cameras, so they could sell tintypes. A few people bought cameras to possess a camera, or to make art, or something.
When George Eastman brought out his Kodak in 1888, all this changed. People who wanted pictures but didn't much care about cameras could, suddenly, just go take some pictures. 10 cents apiece (3-4 dollars in today's US currency, ouch), and you controlled what the picture was of. You could take a picture of.. THAT THING RIGTHT THERE! It was wonderful. The people who just wanted pictures were suddenly empowered.
Right now there are pundits rushing around yowling about the impending death of the photography industry, or large portions of it. In this way the current times differ in no interesting ways whatsoever from any time in the last 150 years. Still, we can take a peek under the covers, a bit.
I regret that I can't find any sales figures for Eastman's camera. However, in the early 1970s we find that Polaroid was selling in the area of 5,000,000 cameras per year, while Japan is selling in the area of 2,500,000 SLR cameras per year. If we consider the average Polaroid customer to be someone who wants to buy pictures, and the average SLR customer someone who wants a camera, this suggests, very very roughly, that in the 1970s the camera-buying public was actually about 2/3 picture buyers.
More modern numbers from say 2005-2010 comparing compact digital cameras to DSLRs, with a similar assumption, suggest that 85 to 95 percent of the camera buying public is actually buying pictures, not cameras.
All this is complicated by the changing prices of things, opening and closing markets. As devices get cheaper (down to "free" with a cell phone) more and more picture buyers will get into the game, skewing the percentages toward that group. Probably. Maybe.
What does this all mean?
Right now, DSLR sales seem to have turned the corner and begun to decline. This has lead to outcries of the end of the world. The DSLR will be dead shortly!
I disagree. I think that the people who want pictures will all be using their phones in 5 years. Virtually all of them are using their phones now, the DSLR they bought 2 years ago just sits on the shelf. People who just want pictures, even good pictures, won't be buying any DSLRs ever again. So it goes. The heyday of that market has passed. The market will shrink, perhaps to as little as 10% of what it was at its peak. Given that the DSLR market is weighted toward camera people, and away from picture people already, I think the 10% number is quite conservative. Sales will drop, substantially, and then will flatten out as the market is reduced to the "enthusiasts," the people who want, mainly, to own a camera. Then the long tail begins with sales declining year to year more or less to infinity.
Same as it ever was. There's almost always a long tail. The only photographic technology I can think of that it legitimately and completely gone is dry plate, and I'm not sure about that. Everything else remains with us, and shows no sign of ever going away any time soon.
Some people, most people, just want pictures. Some people want to possess a camera. Some people like to make pictures with a camera, that is, they want to possess pictures (like the first group) but they also want to have made those pictures. Obviously no single person falls cleanly into one camp or another, each of us partakes a little of each. Still, as elements of markets perhaps, people are primarily driven by one or the other. Let us assume, to simplify things for this little essay, that there are people who want to possess a camera for one reason or another, and there are people who want mainly to possess pictures.
In the 19th century, if you wanted a picture, you went to an artist or a photographer, you paid a fee, and a picture was made for you. If you wanted a camera, well, you could buy one of those as well, starting a few decades into the century. Many fewer people bought cameras than bought pictures. Lots and lots and lots of people bought tintypes. Lots. Many people bought cameras, so they could sell tintypes. A few people bought cameras to possess a camera, or to make art, or something.
When George Eastman brought out his Kodak in 1888, all this changed. People who wanted pictures but didn't much care about cameras could, suddenly, just go take some pictures. 10 cents apiece (3-4 dollars in today's US currency, ouch), and you controlled what the picture was of. You could take a picture of.. THAT THING RIGTHT THERE! It was wonderful. The people who just wanted pictures were suddenly empowered.
Right now there are pundits rushing around yowling about the impending death of the photography industry, or large portions of it. In this way the current times differ in no interesting ways whatsoever from any time in the last 150 years. Still, we can take a peek under the covers, a bit.
I regret that I can't find any sales figures for Eastman's camera. However, in the early 1970s we find that Polaroid was selling in the area of 5,000,000 cameras per year, while Japan is selling in the area of 2,500,000 SLR cameras per year. If we consider the average Polaroid customer to be someone who wants to buy pictures, and the average SLR customer someone who wants a camera, this suggests, very very roughly, that in the 1970s the camera-buying public was actually about 2/3 picture buyers.
More modern numbers from say 2005-2010 comparing compact digital cameras to DSLRs, with a similar assumption, suggest that 85 to 95 percent of the camera buying public is actually buying pictures, not cameras.
All this is complicated by the changing prices of things, opening and closing markets. As devices get cheaper (down to "free" with a cell phone) more and more picture buyers will get into the game, skewing the percentages toward that group. Probably. Maybe.
What does this all mean?
Right now, DSLR sales seem to have turned the corner and begun to decline. This has lead to outcries of the end of the world. The DSLR will be dead shortly!
I disagree. I think that the people who want pictures will all be using their phones in 5 years. Virtually all of them are using their phones now, the DSLR they bought 2 years ago just sits on the shelf. People who just want pictures, even good pictures, won't be buying any DSLRs ever again. So it goes. The heyday of that market has passed. The market will shrink, perhaps to as little as 10% of what it was at its peak. Given that the DSLR market is weighted toward camera people, and away from picture people already, I think the 10% number is quite conservative. Sales will drop, substantially, and then will flatten out as the market is reduced to the "enthusiasts," the people who want, mainly, to own a camera. Then the long tail begins with sales declining year to year more or less to infinity.
Same as it ever was. There's almost always a long tail. The only photographic technology I can think of that it legitimately and completely gone is dry plate, and I'm not sure about that. Everything else remains with us, and shows no sign of ever going away any time soon.
Monday, October 28, 2013
Experience
One of the most common themes in the pedagogy of photography is that it simply takes time and experience to learn to take pictures. The single most common theme, of course, is "take my workshop" so this is probably the second most common theme. We see Cartier-Bresson quoted ad nauseum to the effect that your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. We see blog posts chattering away about how there is no royal road to great pictures, and so forth. I've even written some of them. Implicit in all of these is that you can expect to be terrible for years and years and years, but keep at it, and you'll eventually become good.
Unpacking that a little, we find the planted axiom that very little about photography is teachable. You simply have to go work it all out on your own, except for a few technical things here and there which are themselves quite difficult to master.
There is, of course, a germ of truth hiding in here someplace, but most of it is complete rot.
You can learn calculus of one variable in two semesters, while taking other courses at the same time. You can learn to speak a language passably in two years, if you apply yourself. Mastering the camera is, relatively, trivial.
You can learn the details of exposure and which controls do what with about 50 well designed exposures in a decently designed program of education. It might take you an afternoon to fully grasp how your camera works, and what shutter speed, aperture, and ISO do. It will, of course, take some more time to internalize these things.
You can surely learn the basics of composition, at least enough to have a working grasp of some useful ideas, in a couple of weeks and a couple hundred more well managed exposures. I have written a handy little book based on this idea. There's an endless supply of material to learn about composition, both general ideas, as well as the specifics of certain idioms. Still, a basic toolkit of composition is short and easy to master. Again, of course, the problem of internalizing it rears its head. As an aside: here, specifically, we have a problem with masses of misinformation out there, which can really confuse the newcomer and slow forward progress.
You can learn the basics of photographic lighting in a couple of afternoons, if that sort of thing interests you. Again, there are endless permutations and idioms to learn, but a basic toolkit is compact and easy to grasp. The same issues of internalizing it apply, of course.
In short, the material you need to know to take a pretty good picture pretty consistently is maybe a month or two of work. You're not a great artist at this point, but you can take a reasonable picture much of them time, and you can recognize good ones most of the time and even explain why they're good. In fact, anyone can recognize the good ones, that's sort of the point of "good" after all, so what's important is the ability to explain why they're good.
Of course all this assumes that you're in the hands of someone who's good at teaching, and who isn't invested in the ideas that this material is years and years of labor, that it's very hard, and that you have to figure it all out yourself. It might reasonably take you more than a month or two to figure things out, but I think it is reasonable to say that if you have been applying yourself at least a little for a year, and still cannot take a properly exposed picture with the focus in the right place and which is pleasing to the eye, except by accident, something in the pedagogical process has gone horribly wrong.
The germ of truth, and what Cartier-Bresson was surely talking about, is that having mastered these technical issues you are now faced with the problem of internalizing this material, letting it become second nature to you, and of simultaneously finding your own vision and voice. These things go hand in hand. You need to discover what you like to look at, what you like to make, how to make that stuff, and how to make it without laboriously thinking through what aperture does to a picture.
This is not merely a years long process, this is a journey without end. It is arguably a lot of time to get from simply making copies of things you've seen to making things that look like your pictures. Some people get there remarkably fast, others never get there.
Still, this is the fun part. You're done with the "education" when you can take a nice picture with the exposure and focus and focal length that you want. Now you're discovering your art. Now you're "working" and not "learning" in some reasonable sense.
Unpacking that a little, we find the planted axiom that very little about photography is teachable. You simply have to go work it all out on your own, except for a few technical things here and there which are themselves quite difficult to master.
There is, of course, a germ of truth hiding in here someplace, but most of it is complete rot.
You can learn calculus of one variable in two semesters, while taking other courses at the same time. You can learn to speak a language passably in two years, if you apply yourself. Mastering the camera is, relatively, trivial.
You can learn the details of exposure and which controls do what with about 50 well designed exposures in a decently designed program of education. It might take you an afternoon to fully grasp how your camera works, and what shutter speed, aperture, and ISO do. It will, of course, take some more time to internalize these things.
You can surely learn the basics of composition, at least enough to have a working grasp of some useful ideas, in a couple of weeks and a couple hundred more well managed exposures. I have written a handy little book based on this idea. There's an endless supply of material to learn about composition, both general ideas, as well as the specifics of certain idioms. Still, a basic toolkit of composition is short and easy to master. Again, of course, the problem of internalizing it rears its head. As an aside: here, specifically, we have a problem with masses of misinformation out there, which can really confuse the newcomer and slow forward progress.
You can learn the basics of photographic lighting in a couple of afternoons, if that sort of thing interests you. Again, there are endless permutations and idioms to learn, but a basic toolkit is compact and easy to grasp. The same issues of internalizing it apply, of course.
In short, the material you need to know to take a pretty good picture pretty consistently is maybe a month or two of work. You're not a great artist at this point, but you can take a reasonable picture much of them time, and you can recognize good ones most of the time and even explain why they're good. In fact, anyone can recognize the good ones, that's sort of the point of "good" after all, so what's important is the ability to explain why they're good.
Of course all this assumes that you're in the hands of someone who's good at teaching, and who isn't invested in the ideas that this material is years and years of labor, that it's very hard, and that you have to figure it all out yourself. It might reasonably take you more than a month or two to figure things out, but I think it is reasonable to say that if you have been applying yourself at least a little for a year, and still cannot take a properly exposed picture with the focus in the right place and which is pleasing to the eye, except by accident, something in the pedagogical process has gone horribly wrong.
The germ of truth, and what Cartier-Bresson was surely talking about, is that having mastered these technical issues you are now faced with the problem of internalizing this material, letting it become second nature to you, and of simultaneously finding your own vision and voice. These things go hand in hand. You need to discover what you like to look at, what you like to make, how to make that stuff, and how to make it without laboriously thinking through what aperture does to a picture.
This is not merely a years long process, this is a journey without end. It is arguably a lot of time to get from simply making copies of things you've seen to making things that look like your pictures. Some people get there remarkably fast, others never get there.
Still, this is the fun part. You're done with the "education" when you can take a nice picture with the exposure and focus and focal length that you want. Now you're discovering your art. Now you're "working" and not "learning" in some reasonable sense.
Friday, October 25, 2013
Amateurs and Professionals
I ran across a guy trotting out the usual "these amateurs are ruining everything" line on his blog/podcast thing recently. He's some sort of C-list pro, shoots a little bit of everything, does workshops, sells photoshop actions, the usual mess of stuff. The "these amateurs are ruining everything" line was aimed at his photographer customers, not his photography customers, of course. I'm not going to give a link, because I begrudge him even a single click.
This is a very very tired routine. Henry Peach Robinson was using it in 1869, when he was selling his book, and people selling things to photographers have been using it ever since -- and probably before, as well. It works. The message is "there are a bunch of lousy amateurs out there making terrible pictures but I am above all that, and so will you be, if only you buy my product." This is remarkable effective on photographers, who rather fancy themselves artists but frequently are not.
Here is an important point to keep in mind. Those lousy amateurs, those incompetents who wouldn't know a good picture if it fell on them? Those horrible people, that you are so much better than? Photography is their game, it's their ball and mitt, it's by them, for them, and about them. If you are a wedding photographer, or a fine art photographer, or any of those things, you need to remember that you are basically a rat living in the walls of someone else's house. Without the monied, passionate amateur, you people would still be flowing homemade collodion across glass plates. It's the passionate amateur, taking his terrible pictures, and yearning to make art or yearning to preserve his memories or his family, that has bought and paid for every technological advance.
The industry has been built, for almost 200 years, on the need to deliver easier, simpler, cheaper ways for those amateurs to follow their ugly, skinny little muses. Not only is the professional market not very big relative to the amateurs, professionals are complacent. At every step of the way, the people who have mastered the current technology: wet plate, dry plate, exploding film, roll film, digital, have wanted progress to please stop right there. As a community, they have bitched and complained about the advances driven by the amateur market.
There's nothing that actually prevents the rats in the wall from bitching about the remodeling project, but they haven't exactly got the moral high ground on this argument. The industry is moving on, it's going to continue to move on. Get used to it.
Here's a little view into the future. Some day, pretty soon, the casual amateur will be able to take pictures with her cell phone that are every bit as good as the professional work you are doing now. Optics, sensors, and so on will produce plenty of resolution. Software will select the best composition out of a burst of 100 frames. More software will fix the lighting so that it is beautiful. The work will be, legitimately, just as good as what you're charging a bunch of money for. How do I know this? I know this because I can slap a straightedge down on a trend line and follow it to the right another inch. I know this because these are all solvable problems, and I am confident that these are problems those horrible amateurs will spend a little money to buy solutions to.
Your challenge is to figure out how to make money in that world, not this one. The professionals figured out how to make money when dry plate rendered wet plate obsolete. They figured out how to make money when roll film made photography accessible to a whole gigantic market numbering in millions. They'll figure it out again. Go figure it out yourself, or find another trade.
This is a very very tired routine. Henry Peach Robinson was using it in 1869, when he was selling his book, and people selling things to photographers have been using it ever since -- and probably before, as well. It works. The message is "there are a bunch of lousy amateurs out there making terrible pictures but I am above all that, and so will you be, if only you buy my product." This is remarkable effective on photographers, who rather fancy themselves artists but frequently are not.
Here is an important point to keep in mind. Those lousy amateurs, those incompetents who wouldn't know a good picture if it fell on them? Those horrible people, that you are so much better than? Photography is their game, it's their ball and mitt, it's by them, for them, and about them. If you are a wedding photographer, or a fine art photographer, or any of those things, you need to remember that you are basically a rat living in the walls of someone else's house. Without the monied, passionate amateur, you people would still be flowing homemade collodion across glass plates. It's the passionate amateur, taking his terrible pictures, and yearning to make art or yearning to preserve his memories or his family, that has bought and paid for every technological advance.
The industry has been built, for almost 200 years, on the need to deliver easier, simpler, cheaper ways for those amateurs to follow their ugly, skinny little muses. Not only is the professional market not very big relative to the amateurs, professionals are complacent. At every step of the way, the people who have mastered the current technology: wet plate, dry plate, exploding film, roll film, digital, have wanted progress to please stop right there. As a community, they have bitched and complained about the advances driven by the amateur market.
There's nothing that actually prevents the rats in the wall from bitching about the remodeling project, but they haven't exactly got the moral high ground on this argument. The industry is moving on, it's going to continue to move on. Get used to it.
Here's a little view into the future. Some day, pretty soon, the casual amateur will be able to take pictures with her cell phone that are every bit as good as the professional work you are doing now. Optics, sensors, and so on will produce plenty of resolution. Software will select the best composition out of a burst of 100 frames. More software will fix the lighting so that it is beautiful. The work will be, legitimately, just as good as what you're charging a bunch of money for. How do I know this? I know this because I can slap a straightedge down on a trend line and follow it to the right another inch. I know this because these are all solvable problems, and I am confident that these are problems those horrible amateurs will spend a little money to buy solutions to.
Your challenge is to figure out how to make money in that world, not this one. The professionals figured out how to make money when dry plate rendered wet plate obsolete. They figured out how to make money when roll film made photography accessible to a whole gigantic market numbering in millions. They'll figure it out again. Go figure it out yourself, or find another trade.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Shooting Fashion
Something we see on the internet from time to time is guys shooting in what they fondly imagine to be the fashion style. The hire a model, get some clothes together, some lights, and off they go. They chuck the model in a defunct factory, or in an alley, because they usually haven't got a mansion or a Rolls-Royce, and the results are... well, they're not that good, often.
The following is my theory of fashion. I don't shoot fashion, because it's hard. There's probably other ways to do it. By looking at a lot of pictures, I have devised this, though, and you might find it interesting or helpful.
A picture can mean almost anything, it can try to convey any sort of feeling or idea. In fashion, there's only one idea: The model looks fantastic, and these clothes and accessories would make you look fantastic as well. Sexy, wealthy, put together. A picture that conveys nothing, or conveys something else, it might be excellent but it ain't fashion.
In any picture, if the model is in an alley, the picture has to sell us a reason for her to be there. Or possibly you're just doing some Dada shit. Most of the time, we're looking for some sort of a reason, some reason to believe that her presence in the alley makes some sort of sense. If this is to be fashion, there is exactly one reason that model can be in that alley: Because it makes her look fabulous and put together.
Look at any fashion photograph. The hallmark is that the photographer appears to be in total control of the frame. There is literally nothing in the frame that doesn't work, that does not fit. There's almost always a very strict color scheme in play: a set of colors form a palette of similar hues, saturations, and values, together with a complementary palette. The bricks behind her, her hair, the purse, and her shoes are all one palette that's complementary to the color of the dress. There's usually strict design, the lines do the leading thing. There are repeated textures and patterns throughout. The tiles echo the pattern of the dress, the puddle echoes the line of the purse strap, and so on.
Sometimes the colors are quite fake, almost always saturation and hue have been selectively adjusted (once you start looking for it), the lights have been gelled for the shoot, and so on. Total control and management of the frame, before and after the exposure.
The reason the model is in the alley is because the brickwork sets off her hair perfectly. The reason she is in the defunct factory is because the graffiti on the broken machine behind her perfectly echoes the drape of her dress; the peeling green paint on the walls completes the palette of colors started by her purse, shoes, and the necklace; and because the bright splash of indigo paint spilled on the floor is the exact color of her dress. Pro tip: The graffiti that matches the drape of the dress was put there by you, as was the indigo paint, and then you adjusted them in photoshop to be exact.
The reason the model is there was created by styling. It is this styling that creates the sense of total mastery of the frame. The frame is perfectly, totally, controlled, because that skillful control is what makes the model and the clothes look incredible.
If you don't hit all the notes pretty much spot on, it's just a girl in an alley, looking lost, stupid, and out of place.
The following is my theory of fashion. I don't shoot fashion, because it's hard. There's probably other ways to do it. By looking at a lot of pictures, I have devised this, though, and you might find it interesting or helpful.
A picture can mean almost anything, it can try to convey any sort of feeling or idea. In fashion, there's only one idea: The model looks fantastic, and these clothes and accessories would make you look fantastic as well. Sexy, wealthy, put together. A picture that conveys nothing, or conveys something else, it might be excellent but it ain't fashion.
In any picture, if the model is in an alley, the picture has to sell us a reason for her to be there. Or possibly you're just doing some Dada shit. Most of the time, we're looking for some sort of a reason, some reason to believe that her presence in the alley makes some sort of sense. If this is to be fashion, there is exactly one reason that model can be in that alley: Because it makes her look fabulous and put together.
Look at any fashion photograph. The hallmark is that the photographer appears to be in total control of the frame. There is literally nothing in the frame that doesn't work, that does not fit. There's almost always a very strict color scheme in play: a set of colors form a palette of similar hues, saturations, and values, together with a complementary palette. The bricks behind her, her hair, the purse, and her shoes are all one palette that's complementary to the color of the dress. There's usually strict design, the lines do the leading thing. There are repeated textures and patterns throughout. The tiles echo the pattern of the dress, the puddle echoes the line of the purse strap, and so on.
Sometimes the colors are quite fake, almost always saturation and hue have been selectively adjusted (once you start looking for it), the lights have been gelled for the shoot, and so on. Total control and management of the frame, before and after the exposure.
The reason the model is in the alley is because the brickwork sets off her hair perfectly. The reason she is in the defunct factory is because the graffiti on the broken machine behind her perfectly echoes the drape of her dress; the peeling green paint on the walls completes the palette of colors started by her purse, shoes, and the necklace; and because the bright splash of indigo paint spilled on the floor is the exact color of her dress. Pro tip: The graffiti that matches the drape of the dress was put there by you, as was the indigo paint, and then you adjusted them in photoshop to be exact.
The reason the model is there was created by styling. It is this styling that creates the sense of total mastery of the frame. The frame is perfectly, totally, controlled, because that skillful control is what makes the model and the clothes look incredible.
If you don't hit all the notes pretty much spot on, it's just a girl in an alley, looking lost, stupid, and out of place.
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