I don't know that this will teach anything, but it's cool, and it gets at some stuff I've been thinking and writing about.
Go get a physical photograph. A page from a magazine will do, or a print, or a page of a book, whatever. You needn't tear it out, just get it in front of you so you can touch it.
First examine it as a physical object. It's a sheet of paper, probably. Some thickness. It smells, feels, sounds, a certain way. It has some sort of pigments or metallic deposits on its surface.
Now consider the pattern of tone and color on the surface, created by those pigments or deposits. What are the colors? Are they complementary, or what? What's the range of tone? What patterns are present in shapes and lines and masses of tone and color, on the surface of this piece of paper?
Descend further. Step through the frame now, in a sort of Matrix-like transition: What's it a picture of? Note the visual details. Is the man wearing a tie? Is that a mountain in the distance? Inventory the contents of the frame and place them in space relative to one another. Consider those relationships a little, and how that translates into visual relationships on the page.
Further. What is she thinking, is it hot or cold there, how heavy is that thing he is holding? What do you imagine about the scene?
A picture is always many things, and a photograph has the additional feature of having once been something real (usually).
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Seeing Photographs
One often comes across people on the internets who are offering critique, or who are making their own pictures, who don't seem to actually see the work. The critique is all about white balance. The work is technically superb in one dimension, terrible in others, and ultimately a crummy picture. Sometimes the guys who "have been shooting professionally for 20 years" are the worst. The picture is sharp, the white balance in the sky is perfect, but the subject's skin looks like bright red plastic.
My theory is that these people are mostly getting drawn in to technical details, and by diving deep into such details they lose sight of the overall image. A photographer who likes cameras but not photographs is especially prone to this.
How can you avoid being one of those guys? How can you train yourself to see the picture instead of a rectangular array of technical trivia? I'm going to take a crack at devising some exercises which might help you train yourself. The goal of these exercises if to create a little mental distance between you and a photograph, and to try to make it easier to see the image holistically, as a single complete thing in and of itself.
Exercise #1
Find a picture, ideally something you like. Look at it for at least one minute, trying to memorize it. Look at details, patterns, textures, contrasts, whatever elements you think will help you remember the image. Now go away for a couple of minutes. Listen to some music, do some pushups, read a magazine. Take at least 2 or 3 minutes away, maybe more, until you're fully immersed in something else.
Now close your eyes and try to reconstruct the picture in your mind's eye. Paint in, in your imagination, as much detail as you can remember. Contemplate that imagined picture for a while, and then open your eyes and go look at the original some more.
Exercise #2
Step back from the photograph. Stretch your arm out full length in front of you, and hold out your hand. When the photograph is about the same size as your hand, stop. Look at it. You're physically quite far away, details should be obscure. You can apprehend the image as a single thing, without really moving your eyeballs. Pause. Look at the image and think about the image, think about what it is a picture of.
Look at the photograph from varying distances, but always far enough away to obscure technical details to a degree. Sharpness, exact focus, and so on. The overall color palette and contrast treatment will still be visible, but try at any rate to put physical distance between yourself and the image. What do you notice about the image at one distance? What about when you step back 3-4 feet further?
Exercise #3
Look at the photograph under very dim light. Things like contrast and color balance should be hard to see now, and perhaps you can ignore them more easily. What do you see now?
Again, the goal is to hide technical detail, and to force you to look at the image as an image. Does it work? Again, think of it as a picture of something and not a technical exercise in photography and post processing.
Exercises #4 through infinity
Invent any new physical process for looking at pictures. Blink rapidly, use peripheral vision, put your nose against it, and so on. Anything you do differently has a chance of breaking you out of the process of looking at the image as a collection of degree-of-contrast, sharpness, white balance, and other technical features.
When you're looking at your own work, whether a photograph you have taken, or a photograph you are "working on" in some photo editor, ask yourself always "does this look natural?" or "does this look right?" Don't ask questions about contrast or sharpness of color balance. Ask if it looks right. To be sure, when you're adjusting contrast, you should be asking yourself if the contrast is right. But then, step back and ask if the picture itself is also right.
My theory is that these people are mostly getting drawn in to technical details, and by diving deep into such details they lose sight of the overall image. A photographer who likes cameras but not photographs is especially prone to this.
How can you avoid being one of those guys? How can you train yourself to see the picture instead of a rectangular array of technical trivia? I'm going to take a crack at devising some exercises which might help you train yourself. The goal of these exercises if to create a little mental distance between you and a photograph, and to try to make it easier to see the image holistically, as a single complete thing in and of itself.
Exercise #1
Find a picture, ideally something you like. Look at it for at least one minute, trying to memorize it. Look at details, patterns, textures, contrasts, whatever elements you think will help you remember the image. Now go away for a couple of minutes. Listen to some music, do some pushups, read a magazine. Take at least 2 or 3 minutes away, maybe more, until you're fully immersed in something else.
Now close your eyes and try to reconstruct the picture in your mind's eye. Paint in, in your imagination, as much detail as you can remember. Contemplate that imagined picture for a while, and then open your eyes and go look at the original some more.
Exercise #2
Step back from the photograph. Stretch your arm out full length in front of you, and hold out your hand. When the photograph is about the same size as your hand, stop. Look at it. You're physically quite far away, details should be obscure. You can apprehend the image as a single thing, without really moving your eyeballs. Pause. Look at the image and think about the image, think about what it is a picture of.
Look at the photograph from varying distances, but always far enough away to obscure technical details to a degree. Sharpness, exact focus, and so on. The overall color palette and contrast treatment will still be visible, but try at any rate to put physical distance between yourself and the image. What do you notice about the image at one distance? What about when you step back 3-4 feet further?
Exercise #3
Look at the photograph under very dim light. Things like contrast and color balance should be hard to see now, and perhaps you can ignore them more easily. What do you see now?
Again, the goal is to hide technical detail, and to force you to look at the image as an image. Does it work? Again, think of it as a picture of something and not a technical exercise in photography and post processing.
Exercises #4 through infinity
Invent any new physical process for looking at pictures. Blink rapidly, use peripheral vision, put your nose against it, and so on. Anything you do differently has a chance of breaking you out of the process of looking at the image as a collection of degree-of-contrast, sharpness, white balance, and other technical features.
When you're looking at your own work, whether a photograph you have taken, or a photograph you are "working on" in some photo editor, ask yourself always "does this look natural?" or "does this look right?" Don't ask questions about contrast or sharpness of color balance. Ask if it looks right. To be sure, when you're adjusting contrast, you should be asking yourself if the contrast is right. But then, step back and ask if the picture itself is also right.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Learning to See III
I've spent some time telling people to look at photographs. This is still good advice. A novelist might read 1000 novels for every one written, a poet might read a 1000 poems. A plumber looks a lot of plumbing before installing a system. A naval architect in training is admonished to go to the boat show and look at a lot of boats, years before the first finished design comes off the board.
Now I am suggesting that you look at the world, but with a photographic eye. Leave the camera at home, it'll get in the way as you fuss with dials and buttons and timing. Just look at the world, and think about what would make a good photograph. The aim here is to get past the that's a cool thing or ooo I want to capture that and proceed to that would make a good photograph.
Throw imaginary frames around things, or hold up your hands and make a rectangle with your fingers so everyone knows you're an Artist. Most cool things stop being cool when you put them down in a two dimensional rectangle, it turns out.
Think about the objects that you see and their relationship to one another. Do they appear larger or smaller? Does one obscure the other? Are there contrasting textures, or repeated shapes? What is the balance like in your imaginary frame? How would all this change if you were lower down or higher up? How would it change if you moved left, right, or all the way around to the back?
Look at people. Watch the human interactions, look at the body language. What are they looking at? Are there instants in these human interactions that are interesting, versus other instants that are not? When she buys a cup of coffee, what is the instant in the transaction that most perfectly clarifies expresses the moment?
Now I am suggesting that you look at the world, but with a photographic eye. Leave the camera at home, it'll get in the way as you fuss with dials and buttons and timing. Just look at the world, and think about what would make a good photograph. The aim here is to get past the that's a cool thing or ooo I want to capture that and proceed to that would make a good photograph.
Throw imaginary frames around things, or hold up your hands and make a rectangle with your fingers so everyone knows you're an Artist. Most cool things stop being cool when you put them down in a two dimensional rectangle, it turns out.
Think about the objects that you see and their relationship to one another. Do they appear larger or smaller? Does one obscure the other? Are there contrasting textures, or repeated shapes? What is the balance like in your imaginary frame? How would all this change if you were lower down or higher up? How would it change if you moved left, right, or all the way around to the back?
Look at people. Watch the human interactions, look at the body language. What are they looking at? Are there instants in these human interactions that are interesting, versus other instants that are not? When she buys a cup of coffee, what is the instant in the transaction that most perfectly clarifies expresses the moment?
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Glenn Gould, Provenance, and Art
In an essay on Richard Strauss, Glenn Gould proposes the following thought experiment:
Suppose that a talented musician were to improvise a piece in the style of Haydn. A good solid piece of work, drawing strongly on the musical idioms in which Haydn worked, a fine piece of music and distinctly Haydn, or at any rate Haydn-era.
If the musician was truthful and passed the piece off as a contemporary improvisation in-the-style of, it would be treated as a fine piece of work, but ephemeral. Almost nobody would remember it in a year.
If the musician instead passed it off (successfully) as a previously unknown work of Haydn, it would be accepted into the canon, featured in Haydn performances for a while, and then blend seamlessly into the rest of Haydn's catalog.
If the musician instead passed it off as the work of Mendelssohn, a slightly later composer, the reaction would probably be more negative. This is inferior Mendelssohn, probably from his youth. A mere aping of an earlier era. It would rarely, if ever, be played.
Finally, if the musician passed the piece off as a work of Vivaldi, who was working 70 years earlier than Haydn, the work would be greeted as a triumph. Proof of Vivaldi's genius, that he could reach into the future and deploy musical vocabulary so inventive and fresh, so far ahead of his contemporaries. It would be played frequently, it would occupy a prominent place in Vivaldi's catalog.
Glenn Gould had many problems, but lack of erudition and lack of understanding of contemporary classical music culture were definitely not among them. We may take his discussion as entirely accurate. What he is driving at is that the provenance of a piece figures largely in how we experience the piece (and also that music critics tend to place too much importance on provenance). The same is true of any art form.
The provenance of a piece certainly affects one's experience of the piece. My attitude is that art is essentially about the viewer's (or auditor's) experience of it, so I cannot discount provenance. We experience a Weston print differently if we know it to have been printed by Weston himself. The experience varies according to whether we know who Weston was, and whether we think of him as a master printer or not. In all cases, though, the little note next to the frame reading "the man who took the photograph also printed it" surely has some effect on us. Provenance is one of the many pieces of context surrounding a photograph, it affects our experience of the photo in much the same way adjacent text does.
We could argue at this point about whether provenance is truly part of the art-ness of the piece or whether it is merely contextual. While I am drawn to argue the latter, I can see no way in which that discussion is not the merest of pointless semantic wankery. I enjoy semantic wankery, but try to keep the mere sort out of this blog.
Nonetheless, we need to be cautious about provenance. While we surely experience a Vermeer differently knowing that it is a Vermeer, we should not blather on about how only Vermeer could have executed that brushwork. We experience a Cartier-Bresson differently, knowing it to be Cartier-Bresson, but we should avoid making claims that only that photographer could have captured that circumstance of geometry. The brushwork is good, or it is not. The geometry is good, or it is not. The light is handled superbly, or it is not. That one artist did it and another did not affects the light not one whit.
Suppose that a talented musician were to improvise a piece in the style of Haydn. A good solid piece of work, drawing strongly on the musical idioms in which Haydn worked, a fine piece of music and distinctly Haydn, or at any rate Haydn-era.
If the musician was truthful and passed the piece off as a contemporary improvisation in-the-style of, it would be treated as a fine piece of work, but ephemeral. Almost nobody would remember it in a year.
If the musician instead passed it off (successfully) as a previously unknown work of Haydn, it would be accepted into the canon, featured in Haydn performances for a while, and then blend seamlessly into the rest of Haydn's catalog.
If the musician instead passed it off as the work of Mendelssohn, a slightly later composer, the reaction would probably be more negative. This is inferior Mendelssohn, probably from his youth. A mere aping of an earlier era. It would rarely, if ever, be played.
Finally, if the musician passed the piece off as a work of Vivaldi, who was working 70 years earlier than Haydn, the work would be greeted as a triumph. Proof of Vivaldi's genius, that he could reach into the future and deploy musical vocabulary so inventive and fresh, so far ahead of his contemporaries. It would be played frequently, it would occupy a prominent place in Vivaldi's catalog.
Glenn Gould had many problems, but lack of erudition and lack of understanding of contemporary classical music culture were definitely not among them. We may take his discussion as entirely accurate. What he is driving at is that the provenance of a piece figures largely in how we experience the piece (and also that music critics tend to place too much importance on provenance). The same is true of any art form.
The provenance of a piece certainly affects one's experience of the piece. My attitude is that art is essentially about the viewer's (or auditor's) experience of it, so I cannot discount provenance. We experience a Weston print differently if we know it to have been printed by Weston himself. The experience varies according to whether we know who Weston was, and whether we think of him as a master printer or not. In all cases, though, the little note next to the frame reading "the man who took the photograph also printed it" surely has some effect on us. Provenance is one of the many pieces of context surrounding a photograph, it affects our experience of the photo in much the same way adjacent text does.
We could argue at this point about whether provenance is truly part of the art-ness of the piece or whether it is merely contextual. While I am drawn to argue the latter, I can see no way in which that discussion is not the merest of pointless semantic wankery. I enjoy semantic wankery, but try to keep the mere sort out of this blog.
Nonetheless, we need to be cautious about provenance. While we surely experience a Vermeer differently knowing that it is a Vermeer, we should not blather on about how only Vermeer could have executed that brushwork. We experience a Cartier-Bresson differently, knowing it to be Cartier-Bresson, but we should avoid making claims that only that photographer could have captured that circumstance of geometry. The brushwork is good, or it is not. The geometry is good, or it is not. The light is handled superbly, or it is not. That one artist did it and another did not affects the light not one whit.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
A New Thing?
Consider the following, which can be taken as a thought experiment or as an actual idea for something one might do. Either viewpoint should be interesting.
Select some source of snapshots. Say, flickr, for now, but any large and active archive of people's snapshots on the internet. A large, publicly viewable archive, ideally with some sort of button that makes it easy to look at one image after another more or less at random. Ideally most or all of the images in the archive should be snapshots, little slices of life made by people who do not identify as artists, particularly.
Flip through images at a fairly brisk pace. When you stumble across one that's good, save it away, or mark it, or something. Do whatever you need to do to make sure you can find it again. There will be good ones every 1000 or 10,000 photos, or something. There's a rate. Continue until you have accumulated a few hundred or a few thousand good images. Now edit this down to a small collection, say a dozen of so. You should be able to pull together a collection of a couple dozen excellent images, eventually. My thesis here is that I, or anyone else, could pull together a modest portfolio of outstanding images in this way in a reasonable period of time, a matter of some weeks.
So what?
First, this activity I have describes resembles photography itself in an interesting way. You look, you see, and you record. What makes it different from photography, other than the superficial lack of equipment, is that there is no pre-visualization, there is no opportunity for composition (which is really an aspect of pre-visualization). This truth makes the activity of curating flickr fundamentally different from photography; nonetheless I think it can be argued convincingly that this activity is close kin to photography.
We can consider this in the light of the issue of intent. Consider a snapshot which happens to be an outstanding image, selected by a curator. The image was most likely shot with no artistic intent whatsoever (perhaps it was, but most pictures simply are not so taken, so statistics are on our side here). If intent is a necessary component of art, it was not art. It was selected by our curator, with artistic intent, however. That selection resembles in important ways the act of photography, and we agree, I trust, that an outstanding photograph, taken with artistic intent, can be art. Has this snapshot been mystically imbued with art-ness by our curator? Surely it is art, now? I think it is absurd to imagine this, but opinions vary. The conceptual art people would likely argue that the "art" is in the idea and the execution of the curation process, and that the outstanding image itself is irrelevant.
I, on the other hand, think that this experiment (thought or real) gives convincing evidence that the "art" of a photograph, if any, resides in the piece itself.
Enough nerding out about the semantics of "art". For now.
Secondly, is this proposed curation activity itself a new form? I think it would be interesting to see a show or a book of material curated from flickr or instagram. Most emphatically I don't want to do this myself, it sounds fiendishly dull. Perhaps someone else would find it less so. Our brave new world with its massive river of images produced second by second by billions of people opens up new possibilities. Like all new opportunities, there are surely horrible options. I am sure that for every book of material I liked there would be 100 books full of the most incredible garbage.
So be it. Most of what is made as art is garbage. If a new way of working produces a small sediment of gold in the bottom of the pan, then it's working as designed, and I approve.
Select some source of snapshots. Say, flickr, for now, but any large and active archive of people's snapshots on the internet. A large, publicly viewable archive, ideally with some sort of button that makes it easy to look at one image after another more or less at random. Ideally most or all of the images in the archive should be snapshots, little slices of life made by people who do not identify as artists, particularly.
Flip through images at a fairly brisk pace. When you stumble across one that's good, save it away, or mark it, or something. Do whatever you need to do to make sure you can find it again. There will be good ones every 1000 or 10,000 photos, or something. There's a rate. Continue until you have accumulated a few hundred or a few thousand good images. Now edit this down to a small collection, say a dozen of so. You should be able to pull together a collection of a couple dozen excellent images, eventually. My thesis here is that I, or anyone else, could pull together a modest portfolio of outstanding images in this way in a reasonable period of time, a matter of some weeks.
So what?
First, this activity I have describes resembles photography itself in an interesting way. You look, you see, and you record. What makes it different from photography, other than the superficial lack of equipment, is that there is no pre-visualization, there is no opportunity for composition (which is really an aspect of pre-visualization). This truth makes the activity of curating flickr fundamentally different from photography; nonetheless I think it can be argued convincingly that this activity is close kin to photography.
We can consider this in the light of the issue of intent. Consider a snapshot which happens to be an outstanding image, selected by a curator. The image was most likely shot with no artistic intent whatsoever (perhaps it was, but most pictures simply are not so taken, so statistics are on our side here). If intent is a necessary component of art, it was not art. It was selected by our curator, with artistic intent, however. That selection resembles in important ways the act of photography, and we agree, I trust, that an outstanding photograph, taken with artistic intent, can be art. Has this snapshot been mystically imbued with art-ness by our curator? Surely it is art, now? I think it is absurd to imagine this, but opinions vary. The conceptual art people would likely argue that the "art" is in the idea and the execution of the curation process, and that the outstanding image itself is irrelevant.
I, on the other hand, think that this experiment (thought or real) gives convincing evidence that the "art" of a photograph, if any, resides in the piece itself.
Enough nerding out about the semantics of "art". For now.
Secondly, is this proposed curation activity itself a new form? I think it would be interesting to see a show or a book of material curated from flickr or instagram. Most emphatically I don't want to do this myself, it sounds fiendishly dull. Perhaps someone else would find it less so. Our brave new world with its massive river of images produced second by second by billions of people opens up new possibilities. Like all new opportunities, there are surely horrible options. I am sure that for every book of material I liked there would be 100 books full of the most incredible garbage.
So be it. Most of what is made as art is garbage. If a new way of working produces a small sediment of gold in the bottom of the pan, then it's working as designed, and I approve.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Eschew EXIF
There are forums out there on the internet where people spend far too much time looking at EXIF data for photographs, and not enough time looking at the photographs. I've even seen cases where people got irate because a photograph lacked EXIF data. Apparently, some people need to know what shutter speed was used for your photograph, before they can tell you what's wrong with it.
In the first place, don't listen to these people. They have nothing to say.
In the second place, don't be one of those people.
EXIF data, histograms, all that technical ancillary data, it tells you nothing that matters which cannot be seen in the photograph. Look at the photograph. EXIF and so on can be used to test yourself, to help you learn and judge whether you're seeing correctly, but it's never authoritative.
If you can't tell roughly what focal length was used to shoot a photograph (relative focal length, the number of millimeters doesn't matter and depends on a bunch of factors -- all I mean is "super wide", "wide", "normal", "long", "super long") then one of two things is true:
There are plenty of photographs where the focal length doesn't matter, because the scene is pretty much two dimensional. In that case, who cares what focal length was used? Anything will do. If it does matter, and you still can't tell, learn to see better. Practice. This is where looking at EXIF can help you. Just don't talk about it, do it quietly.
Aperture? Can't you tell by looking? Either it doesn't matter, or you can't see. Shutter speed? Ditto. Exposure? Contrast range? Don't you be looking at the histogram! Not until you've made an honest guess, at least.
Lighting? Don't go asking about what lights went where. Look at the photo. Any light that matters made itself known by casting some light. Go find that light.
And whatever else you do, criticize anyone based on their EXIF data. Don't be a stupid nerd! Look at the photo and talk about that.
In the first place, don't listen to these people. They have nothing to say.
In the second place, don't be one of those people.
EXIF data, histograms, all that technical ancillary data, it tells you nothing that matters which cannot be seen in the photograph. Look at the photograph. EXIF and so on can be used to test yourself, to help you learn and judge whether you're seeing correctly, but it's never authoritative.
If you can't tell roughly what focal length was used to shoot a photograph (relative focal length, the number of millimeters doesn't matter and depends on a bunch of factors -- all I mean is "super wide", "wide", "normal", "long", "super long") then one of two things is true:
- it doesn't matter to the photograph
- you can't see very well
There are plenty of photographs where the focal length doesn't matter, because the scene is pretty much two dimensional. In that case, who cares what focal length was used? Anything will do. If it does matter, and you still can't tell, learn to see better. Practice. This is where looking at EXIF can help you. Just don't talk about it, do it quietly.
Aperture? Can't you tell by looking? Either it doesn't matter, or you can't see. Shutter speed? Ditto. Exposure? Contrast range? Don't you be looking at the histogram! Not until you've made an honest guess, at least.
Lighting? Don't go asking about what lights went where. Look at the photo. Any light that matters made itself known by casting some light. Go find that light.
And whatever else you do, criticize anyone based on their EXIF data. Don't be a stupid nerd! Look at the photo and talk about that.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Advice for New Photographers II
This post is a followup to this post and this post.
This is the part where you practice, purposefully.
Take some pictures of some things, and look at those pictures. At some point, maybe before shooting, maybe while looking at the pictures, some ideas should come to you. Perhaps it's the idea of an emotion you want the photograph to convey, or a sense of place, or an optical illusion, or the relationship between two objects, or something. Any idea that's a step beyond "a sharp picture of my dog" will do. Let's call this idea your Concept.
Look at your pictures again, and ask yourself how you could make your Concept clearer or stronger. A different point of view, different light, a different arrangement of props. Go re-shoot, testing these ideas. Look at the results. Does your Concept come across more or less clearly? Do you have a new, better, Concept?
Repeat. This is science, this is practicing purposefully: you are formulating a hypothesis, and testing it. Perhaps that by getting down on the floor, the Concept of "angry chair" will be enhanced, will come across more clearly in the resulting image. Test the hypothesis by getting down on the floor and shooting. Look at the result, see if that worked.
You don't have to shoot and re-shoot every subject over and over, but it's very instructive to shoot and re-shoot a subject over and over, from time to time. You may be surprised at how, even after an absurdly large number of exposures, you're still able to easily pick out the one that you consider the best.
This is the part where you practice, purposefully.
Take some pictures of some things, and look at those pictures. At some point, maybe before shooting, maybe while looking at the pictures, some ideas should come to you. Perhaps it's the idea of an emotion you want the photograph to convey, or a sense of place, or an optical illusion, or the relationship between two objects, or something. Any idea that's a step beyond "a sharp picture of my dog" will do. Let's call this idea your Concept.
Look at your pictures again, and ask yourself how you could make your Concept clearer or stronger. A different point of view, different light, a different arrangement of props. Go re-shoot, testing these ideas. Look at the results. Does your Concept come across more or less clearly? Do you have a new, better, Concept?
Repeat. This is science, this is practicing purposefully: you are formulating a hypothesis, and testing it. Perhaps that by getting down on the floor, the Concept of "angry chair" will be enhanced, will come across more clearly in the resulting image. Test the hypothesis by getting down on the floor and shooting. Look at the result, see if that worked.
You don't have to shoot and re-shoot every subject over and over, but it's very instructive to shoot and re-shoot a subject over and over, from time to time. You may be surprised at how, even after an absurdly large number of exposures, you're still able to easily pick out the one that you consider the best.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Advice For New Photographers I
This is really a followup to this post and is followed by this post.
Put the camera down. Or don't, it doesn't matter. This part is about learning to look at a photograph. It has nothing to do with the camera.
Most of us think in words. You can't think about baseball without knowing some words for ball and bat. Look up the meaning of these words: tone, value, hue, saturation, actutance, sharpness, contrast, form, line, weight in the context of photography and visual arts. You will find more words to know as you read about these, so look them up even if you think you know what they mean. Meditate on them a little. Ideally, find definitions that include sample images so you can connect the word, the idea, with the visual reality it represents.
Name three photographers whose work you admire. If you can't, spend some time browsing in a bookstore, library, or even online until you can name three.
Find 100 photographs by one of your admired photographers. You needn't find them all at once, but you will need them eventually. You don't even need 100. Any unreasonably large number will work. Spend a few minutes looking at each one, this will probably feel like forever. Take notes, if you like. What do you like about it? How does it make you feel, and why? Where is the light coming from? Where are the objects in the frame? Note both your reaction to the image, and technical details.
Find a book written by a photographer you admire, or at any rate can tolerate, a book of mostly words, not pictures. Not every photographer writes these things, so your favorites might not have written anything. Pick someone else, then. You want something about process, technical or artistic, it doesn't matter much. Read what that photographer had to say about how they made their photographs. You just want to hang out with that photographer, listening to them ramble on about photography and art. Your local library may be a great resource here.
Don't read anything that looks like a How To book. How to Shoot Portraits or How to Sell Stock Photography.
Go back to looking at photographs. Look over some of the same ones again, do they take you differently? Can you understand them better? If not, go read some more or... something. If your views and ideas are not evolving, something is probably wrong.
Repeat until you can, at least some of the time, explain to yourself why you like a photograph or why you don't. Repeat until, at least some of the time, you can get something of a handle on why a photograph makes you feel the way it makes you feel.
You are beginning to learn to see.
Learning to see, the astute observer will note, involves a lot of looking and not very much shooting.
Put the camera down. Or don't, it doesn't matter. This part is about learning to look at a photograph. It has nothing to do with the camera.
Most of us think in words. You can't think about baseball without knowing some words for ball and bat. Look up the meaning of these words: tone, value, hue, saturation, actutance, sharpness, contrast, form, line, weight in the context of photography and visual arts. You will find more words to know as you read about these, so look them up even if you think you know what they mean. Meditate on them a little. Ideally, find definitions that include sample images so you can connect the word, the idea, with the visual reality it represents.
Name three photographers whose work you admire. If you can't, spend some time browsing in a bookstore, library, or even online until you can name three.
Find 100 photographs by one of your admired photographers. You needn't find them all at once, but you will need them eventually. You don't even need 100. Any unreasonably large number will work. Spend a few minutes looking at each one, this will probably feel like forever. Take notes, if you like. What do you like about it? How does it make you feel, and why? Where is the light coming from? Where are the objects in the frame? Note both your reaction to the image, and technical details.
Find a book written by a photographer you admire, or at any rate can tolerate, a book of mostly words, not pictures. Not every photographer writes these things, so your favorites might not have written anything. Pick someone else, then. You want something about process, technical or artistic, it doesn't matter much. Read what that photographer had to say about how they made their photographs. You just want to hang out with that photographer, listening to them ramble on about photography and art. Your local library may be a great resource here.
Don't read anything that looks like a How To book. How to Shoot Portraits or How to Sell Stock Photography.
Go back to looking at photographs. Look over some of the same ones again, do they take you differently? Can you understand them better? If not, go read some more or... something. If your views and ideas are not evolving, something is probably wrong.
Repeat until you can, at least some of the time, explain to yourself why you like a photograph or why you don't. Repeat until, at least some of the time, you can get something of a handle on why a photograph makes you feel the way it makes you feel.
You are beginning to learn to see.
Learning to see, the astute observer will note, involves a lot of looking and not very much shooting.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Learning to See
How does one learn to see, anyways?
Some people suggest that "seeing" in the photographic sense is simply built in, or it's not. Then, amusingly, they will cite Mozart as an example of someone who simply had music "built in" and conveniently ignore the fact that Mozart had an intense and completely rigorous formal education in music. Some people will always "see" better than others, to be sure. Some people can probably never learn to do it, most people can learn to do it pretty well, and a few people will easily learn to do it wonderfully. Pretty much like any other human endeavor.
In broad strokes, there's only one way we learn to do anything, and that's how you'll learn to "see" photographically, learn to play tennis or golf. It's how you'll learn to drive a car, or sail a boat.
We start by getting some some basic ideas about how to do it. We observe someone else doing it, we have someone show us how to do it, we read a book about how to do it.
Then, we try doing it.
Next, we evaluate the results. How did we do? Did we fall out of the boat? Did we hit the ball?
Now, we think about specific ways we could improve our attempts. Don't fall out of the boat. Keep your eye on the ball. Try it again. We hit the ball! Where did it go? Why?
The point is to not try blindly. Start with some understanding, and then try. Figure out something wrong and fix that on the next try. When you're learning to play tennis, there are probably a lot of things you're doing wrong the first time you step out on the court. You work at fixing them, one by one. You have a notion of what you're doing wrong because you have a coach, or you read a book, or you watched a video about how it's supposed to work.
So we're going to get some basic ideas about how to do it, by looking at good photographs, by reading books, by reading other people's discussions of photographs (our own or others). Then we're going to take some pictures. Then we're going to look at those pictures and think about how well we're doing, and how we could make those pictures better. Finally, we're going to take some more pictures, possibly after doing some more reading or looking at other people's pictures.
Of course, we don't actually do it step by step, probably we're doing all these things more or less at random. The important thing is, as with all practice of everything, is to evaluate our results. If you want to improve your golf game, you don't just bash at the ball. You bash at the ball, and then you think about your swing, and you think about where the ball went.
Bash at the ball, but with purpose.
There are two followup posts, here and here.
Some people suggest that "seeing" in the photographic sense is simply built in, or it's not. Then, amusingly, they will cite Mozart as an example of someone who simply had music "built in" and conveniently ignore the fact that Mozart had an intense and completely rigorous formal education in music. Some people will always "see" better than others, to be sure. Some people can probably never learn to do it, most people can learn to do it pretty well, and a few people will easily learn to do it wonderfully. Pretty much like any other human endeavor.
In broad strokes, there's only one way we learn to do anything, and that's how you'll learn to "see" photographically, learn to play tennis or golf. It's how you'll learn to drive a car, or sail a boat.
We start by getting some some basic ideas about how to do it. We observe someone else doing it, we have someone show us how to do it, we read a book about how to do it.
Then, we try doing it.
Next, we evaluate the results. How did we do? Did we fall out of the boat? Did we hit the ball?
Now, we think about specific ways we could improve our attempts. Don't fall out of the boat. Keep your eye on the ball. Try it again. We hit the ball! Where did it go? Why?
The point is to not try blindly. Start with some understanding, and then try. Figure out something wrong and fix that on the next try. When you're learning to play tennis, there are probably a lot of things you're doing wrong the first time you step out on the court. You work at fixing them, one by one. You have a notion of what you're doing wrong because you have a coach, or you read a book, or you watched a video about how it's supposed to work.
So we're going to get some basic ideas about how to do it, by looking at good photographs, by reading books, by reading other people's discussions of photographs (our own or others). Then we're going to take some pictures. Then we're going to look at those pictures and think about how well we're doing, and how we could make those pictures better. Finally, we're going to take some more pictures, possibly after doing some more reading or looking at other people's pictures.
Of course, we don't actually do it step by step, probably we're doing all these things more or less at random. The important thing is, as with all practice of everything, is to evaluate our results. If you want to improve your golf game, you don't just bash at the ball. You bash at the ball, and then you think about your swing, and you think about where the ball went.
Bash at the ball, but with purpose.
There are two followup posts, here and here.
The Second Worst Advice In The World
More terrible and common advice:
This one drives me pretty wild, too. Somehow, there's a myth that if you can just get the first 10,000 frames out of the way as fast as possible, you'll start being good.
Not that I oppose shooting a lot, there's really no getting around the fact that almost everyone has to fail a lot before they can succeed. Recognizing that you're going to have to play a lot of tennis to get any good is rational thinking; simply going out and swinging a tennis racket around blindly for 10,000 strokes is not.
By all means, shoot, shoot, shoot. But do so with purpose, press the shutter release with an idea in mind, and look at the result with the same idea in mind.
I'll have more to say on this, and some counter-advice if you will, in the next few days.
Just go out and shoot, shoot, shoot!
This one drives me pretty wild, too. Somehow, there's a myth that if you can just get the first 10,000 frames out of the way as fast as possible, you'll start being good.
Not that I oppose shooting a lot, there's really no getting around the fact that almost everyone has to fail a lot before they can succeed. Recognizing that you're going to have to play a lot of tennis to get any good is rational thinking; simply going out and swinging a tennis racket around blindly for 10,000 strokes is not.
By all means, shoot, shoot, shoot. But do so with purpose, press the shutter release with an idea in mind, and look at the result with the same idea in mind.
I'll have more to say on this, and some counter-advice if you will, in the next few days.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
A Sailing Parable
In sailboat racing there are more or less infinitely many things one can do to the boat to make it go faster. You can sand the bottom with 1000 grit sandpaper, for instance. These things will, in general, buy you some few seconds over the course of a typical race. Some of the tweaks will get you a little more, some a little less, and a few things actually matter quite a lot.
Out on the racecourse, there are things you can do, strategic things which involve a lot of observation and estimation and intelligent guessing, largely about things which are not the boat, things like wind conditions, currents in the water, and what other sailors are doing out there. These things will buy you a lot of seconds and sometimes minutes.
The tweaky little things you can do to the boat matter, to be sure. They are important psychological tools, they make the boat slightly faster but they make the sailor faster as well. In close competition, particularly at the highest levels, races are commonly won by a small number of seconds. However, the things you do that are not about the boat matter a great deal more.
There is an analogy here with photography. Photographers are frequently nerds, especially in this modern era of digital photography. They love all that tweaky stuff. Here are some things people obsess over:
Try an experiment. You can do it entirely in your head if you like. Think of an iconic photograph that you really like, something you think is really strong stuff. Now go find a copy of it on the web. It doesn't have to be a good copy, or particularly high resolution. Pull it in to your favorite photo editing software and start playing with it. Blur it a little, not a lot, just as if it was taken with a bad lens. If it's color, play with the color temperature a little, just to see what would happen if the white balance was done badly. Play with the contrast a bit. If it's black and white, try to make it look like whatever you think is a mediocre conversion. Maybe burn and dodge a little bit to mess up the local contrast.
Most especially, mentally list what post-processing procedures you think are most important. Try to make the target image look as if those were done poorly. Not disastrously, just not well.
At what point does this iconic image stop being "good"? Possibly, for a few of you, it stops being good immediately. I will speculate here that for most people, you can get it pretty screwed up before it stops being a great photograph.
In sailboat racing, of course, we need only be faster than the other boats. In photography we want, roughly, to be as fast as possible. Of course all the tweaky little things you do in post make the image a little better, a little stronger. I don't suggest that you stop doing them, only that you accord them the appropriate importance. In particular, if your photo isn't very good then the greatest job of tweaking in the universe isn't going to make it good. Nothing is going to make it good.
Of course, some photographers and some sailors just love tweaking, and don't really care much about the final result. That's ok, too. These people are not serious contenders on the race course, and they're not serious about photographer as "art", as a medium of communication. Let me say it again: THAT'S OK. Enjoy the tweaking, it's fun.
Out on the racecourse, there are things you can do, strategic things which involve a lot of observation and estimation and intelligent guessing, largely about things which are not the boat, things like wind conditions, currents in the water, and what other sailors are doing out there. These things will buy you a lot of seconds and sometimes minutes.
The tweaky little things you can do to the boat matter, to be sure. They are important psychological tools, they make the boat slightly faster but they make the sailor faster as well. In close competition, particularly at the highest levels, races are commonly won by a small number of seconds. However, the things you do that are not about the boat matter a great deal more.
There is an analogy here with photography. Photographers are frequently nerds, especially in this modern era of digital photography. They love all that tweaky stuff. Here are some things people obsess over:
- white balance
- sharpness
- black and white conversion
- local contrast
- the "fine print"
Try an experiment. You can do it entirely in your head if you like. Think of an iconic photograph that you really like, something you think is really strong stuff. Now go find a copy of it on the web. It doesn't have to be a good copy, or particularly high resolution. Pull it in to your favorite photo editing software and start playing with it. Blur it a little, not a lot, just as if it was taken with a bad lens. If it's color, play with the color temperature a little, just to see what would happen if the white balance was done badly. Play with the contrast a bit. If it's black and white, try to make it look like whatever you think is a mediocre conversion. Maybe burn and dodge a little bit to mess up the local contrast.
Most especially, mentally list what post-processing procedures you think are most important. Try to make the target image look as if those were done poorly. Not disastrously, just not well.
At what point does this iconic image stop being "good"? Possibly, for a few of you, it stops being good immediately. I will speculate here that for most people, you can get it pretty screwed up before it stops being a great photograph.
In sailboat racing, of course, we need only be faster than the other boats. In photography we want, roughly, to be as fast as possible. Of course all the tweaky little things you do in post make the image a little better, a little stronger. I don't suggest that you stop doing them, only that you accord them the appropriate importance. In particular, if your photo isn't very good then the greatest job of tweaking in the universe isn't going to make it good. Nothing is going to make it good.
Of course, some photographers and some sailors just love tweaking, and don't really care much about the final result. That's ok, too. These people are not serious contenders on the race course, and they're not serious about photographer as "art", as a medium of communication. Let me say it again: THAT'S OK. Enjoy the tweaking, it's fun.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Point of View
Point of view matters to how a photograph will feel, and thus what it communicates.
Consider a low point of view, an image in which the camera is obviously at the height of a child's eye, looking up. How will this affect an image of:
The results won't be consistent and reliable, but with a little thinking and visualization, you should be able to imagine different feelings and ideas evoked by the combination of viewpoint and subject.
Consider a low point of view, an image in which the camera is obviously at the height of a child's eye, looking up. How will this affect an image of:
- A toy
- A smiling young woman
- An angry man
The results won't be consistent and reliable, but with a little thinking and visualization, you should be able to imagine different feelings and ideas evoked by the combination of viewpoint and subject.
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