Let's talk making great images.

[Lost Canadian]

"Why would someone want dark shadows or not as the case may be? What is it about certain light that trasforms the poo into a thing of a thing of beauty?"

You are talking about Minor White and probably not realising it ...

I'm talking about the language of photography, which is light. It's not simply one style, type, look, or persons work. Light is the language of every every image maker.

 

[SeaRubi]

I'm talking about the language of photography, which is light. It's not simply one style, type, look, or persons work. Light is the language of every every image maker.

Consider for a moment that emotion and the realm of the spiritual is the language. For the photographer, light provides merely a small vocabulary of words with which he may attempt to express himself.

I suggested Minor White because he first became known exactly for what you describe - making beautiful photographs out of the mundane: doorways, barns, peeling paint. His essay on Equivalence is highly relevant I think to what you are trying to assert. White co-founded the photography journal Aperture with Ansel Adams in 1952; later he taught photography at MIT until his death.

http://www.jnevins.com/whitereading.htm

cheers,
-ike

 

[Michael Slade]

There it is. I was hoping you'd say something like that, and considering you're a teacher of the photographic arts I'm so glad you did. Me saying it just doesn't hold nearly as much weight as you.

Bulls*^t.

Just because I say it doesn't mean anything. If it rings true for people because I am a teacher and have two advanced degrees, then I would question those people why they feel that way. In all the commercial work I have ever done, NOT ONE art director ever asked me where I went to school or if I had a degree. All they cared about was my book.

In art you prove you know what you are talking about by delivering the goods.

In education you prove you know what you are talking about by having a diploma. Just because you have a diploma doesn't mean you know what you are talking about. But, when you can deliver the goods it proves you DO know what you are talking about.

I would hope that no one here thinks that just because I am teaching photography and have an MfA that I know what I'm talking about. No one is above reproach or critique, and no one certainly walks on water. I would say that BECAUSE I have a degree and BECAUSE I teach photography you should criticize and scrutinize my ideas even harsher than the general public.

Never quit second guessing or having an opinion. I am never harsher on my students than when they say "I handed this in because I thought you would like it". They are guaranteed to fail when they do so.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Bulls*^t.
In art you prove you know what you are talking about by delivering the goods.

LOL. Trust me when I say everyone here knows you can deliever the goods! I'm not downplaying or minimizing the impact of my own work or level of understanding, but I can most certainly recognize, acknowledge, and accept that some people simply have a wealth of knowledge and understanding of artistic concepts beyond my current level of learning. Don't take that as kissing your a*s, momma didn't raise no kiss a*s, it's just a matter of assesment and a reflection. That's my own modest opinion of course, but as you say, others can judge for themselves.

 

[Michael Slade]

LOL. Trust me when I say everyone here knows you can deliever the goods!

I must have come off as all wrong. What I meant to imply is that if you say it it is as true as if I say it. You can deliver the goods, so by extension YOUR opinion is valid.

I'm glad you're not kissing my *****. It's dirty down there.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Consider for a moment that emotion and the realm of the spiritual is the language. For the photographer, light provides merely a small vocabulary of words with which he may attempt to express himself.

I understand what you are saying but I would disagree with your approach as it is presented above. Certainly emotion is a concept that one wishes to convey in an image but in order to do so one must first speak the language. When we talk photography, the inherent limitations we place on ourselves by using the tools that we do, namely the camera, ties us to the very simple language that those tools speak. In the case of a camera the only language it understands is light. The camera does nothing beyond that. Our choices with regards to what light enters the camera is what determines how well we communicate emotion. I.E. The color blue is widely seen as cool, calm, sometimes downright depressing, other colors are considered warm, invigorating, and uplifting. Our choice as to the qualities of light is how we suggest to the viewer what our intent is. Piecing together certain qualities of light is how viewers interpret meaning. Some photographers are better communicators than others because they understand the very simple notion that the qualities of light displayed will define the photos meaning. As a quick side note, when we are communicating with a limited language such as light, simplicity rules. We can get into that more later though.

Most people who never think about their shots, take your typical point and shoot shot for instance, rarely communicate the emotion the shooter felt at the time of capture because they are not using the right words or concepts to convey the message clearly. Typically most people produce what I consider a complicated mess, a mess which typically can only be interpreted by the person who shot it, and thus irrelevant to everyone else.

 

[Michael Slade]

I have no budget to get you down here, but can you visit and lecture to my Seniors? This is good stuff.

I understand what you are saying but I would disagree with your approach as it is presented above. Certainly emotion is a concept that one wishes to convey in an image but in order to do so one must first speak the language. When we talk photography, the inherent limitations we place on ourselves by using the tools that we do, namely the camera, ties us to the very simple language that those tools speak. In the case of a camera the only language it understands is light. The camera does nothing beyond that. Our choices with regards to what light enters the camera is what determines how well we communicate emotion. I.E. The color blue is widely seen as cool, calm, sometimes downright depressing, other colors are considered warm, invigorating, and uplifting. Our choice as to the qualities of light is how we suggest to the viewer what our intent is. Piecing together certain qualities of light is how viewers interpret meaning. Some photographers are better communicators than others because they understand the very simple notion that the qualities of light displayed will define the photos meaning. As a quick side note, when we are communicating with a limited language such as light, simplicity rules. We can get into that more later though.

Most people who never think about their shots, take your typical point and shoot shot for instance, rarely communicate the emotion the shooter felt at the time of capture because they are not using the right words or concepts to convey the message clearly. Typically most people produce what I consider a complicated mess, a mess which typically can only be interpreted by the person who shot it, and thus irrelevant to everyone else.

 

[Lost Canadian]

I must have come off as all wrong. What I meant to imply is that if you say it it is as true as if I say it. You can deliver the goods, so by extension YOUR opinion is valid.

I'm glad you're not kissing my *****. It's dirty down there.

LOL, yours too eh. Yeah my wife says the same thing about me when doing the laundry. Bwahaha.

By the way did you capture anything good the other day or on and around the new year?

 

[Lost Canadian]

I have no budget to get you down here, but can you visit and lecture to my Seniors? This is good stuff.

Ha! I 'will' make my way towards you someday, when however,... I have no idea. I do have a couple of rules for lectures I just made up though, 1) I don't do classrooms, so if you can manage to drag those seniors out into that beautiful landscape you have down there, then yeah, I'll attempt to...cough...."enlighten them." Ummm... yeah, that's pretty much it for rules. Well that and the personal tour around the area followed by beers of course. LOL.:elkgrin:

Cheers

 

[Michael Slade]

By the way did you capture anything good the other day or on and around the new year?

Thanks for asking. This is what happened to me this weekend in regards to my shooting.

I have been thinking and imagining a particular shot for about 2 1/2 years now. I have pre-visualized it to death. I KNEW it was going to be good...so I loaded up the 8x20 and headed out.

I camped up near the spot and got up early the next morning to check it out. I drove out to where I wanted to shoot and recognized NOTHING. Nothing I had been seeing in my head about what I planned to shoot was there. Nothing looked familiar. Nothing was catching my eye.

I drove up and down the road and didn't think anywhere else was fitting the bill, so I knew that the spot I had been to initially was correct. Problem was everything was wrong. The shape of the hill was wrong. The light was wrong. The feel was wrong. I ended up concluding that I was wrong.

Initially the shot that I saw 2 1/2 years ago indeed was beautiful...but I had romanticized it in my head to the point where it had transcended reality.

The photograph in my head could not exist in the physical world. It was at this moment that I wished I could paint.

I didn't even get out of the car, much less unload the camera. At $15 per shot I need to be picky. At $15 per shot I have to be picky. At $15 per shot I have still made images that I shouldn't have. It takes me a while to learn some lessons.

 

[photoman]

Typically most people produce what I consider a complicated mess, a mess which typically can only be interpreted by the person who shot it, and thus irrelevant to everyone else.

There are also 'artists' which create work that can only be interpreted by the person that shot it. :sombrero:

 

[photoman]

I would say that BECAUSE I have a degree and BECAUSE I teach photography you should criticize and scrutinize my ideas even harsher than the general public.

I like that line. My high school art teacher can tell you I believed in that one from an early age.

 

[photoman]

I understand what you are saying but I would disagree with your approach as it is presented above. Certainly emotion is a concept that one wishes to convey in an image but in order to do so one must first speak the language. When we talk photography, the inherent limitations we place on ourselves by using the tools that we do, namely the camera, ties us to the very simple language that those tools speak. In the case of a camera the only language it understands is light. The camera does nothing beyond that. Our choices with regards to what light enters the camera is what determines how well we communicate emotion. I.E. The color blue is widely seen as cool, calm, sometimes downright depressing, other colors are considered warm, invigorating, and uplifting. Our choice as to the qualities of light is how we suggest to the viewer what our intent is. Piecing together certain qualities of light is how viewers interpret meaning. Some photographers are better communicators than others because they understand the very simple notion that the qualities of light displayed will define the photos meaning. As a quick side note, when we are communicating with a limited language such as light, simplicity rules. We can get into that more later though.

This is indeed a pretty interesting concept but it is also limited in scope. Yes all the camera sees is light and that is what you are controlling. For some photos all that you are capturing is the light as it is the subject- the focus of the image. For other images it is movement or emotion that you are after. In these cases the light is just an adjective to the subject not the subject itself. The light does not rule the image it simply enhances it. You are controlling the light to catch the movement or the emotion you wish to capture for yourself and share to the world.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Micheal said someting earlier that I think should not be taken lightly by any of the readers of this thread, he said:

Just because I say it doesn't mean anything.

I agree with that statement and would add that nothing any of us say here or anywhere else for that matter means anything on the surface. In the world of information available to photographers, this is most certainly the golden age of learning, thanks in large part to the internet. The net is a fantastic resource but the signal to noise ratio of good to bad information is also extremely high which makes it very difficult for the novice to sort through and decide who they should listen to. Which brings me to this point, listen to everyone. Some may say, "well that's ridiculous, it will require far too much effort." But effort is exactly what you need to exert if you wish to grow. I've read more ridiculous information than I care to remember but remember I do because it helps me identify the truely useful tidbits of information from all the rest of the nonsense. Efforts on both sides of the camera need to be balanced though as there is certainly a conection that needs to be established and nurtured between understanding and doing. A person can take millions of photographs and never create anything worth displaying if they don't seek conceptual understanding. Conversely a person who spends days, weeks and months studying images and reading about various philosophical points of art without spending a sufficient amount of time behind the lens will never be able to put all that pent up knowledge to good use.

That's why photographers in the know will never simply suggest you go buy a certain book or camera gear because they understand that the books and gear in of itself does not produce results, effort does. You have to be willing to learn, you have to be willing to put in the long hours, at both ends. Anyone who thinks or suggests that photography is easy to do well with little effort is out to lunch. Actually, if someone says it's easy, they would be the exception to the point I made above with regards to listening to everyone.

 

[SeaRubi]

Typically most people produce what I consider a complicated mess, a mess which typically can only be interpreted by the person who shot it, and thus irrelevant to everyone else.

How can any one individual judge an image as being irrelevant to "everyone else"? Do you think Arbus gave a rip about "light" when she photographed freaks in her spare time, beyond what was necessary to make a good-enough exposure of her subjects? Was she agonizing over the details of exposures later in her life when those same demons drove her to suicide? Did Henri stop to consider how light was entering the camera when he snapped people from waist height as they were crossing the street?

Is Jackson Pollock's "#5" not a complicated "mess"?

Did Stieglitz agonize about the artistic merit of his photographs of Georgia O'Keefe?

Have you not attempted to strap your own "rules" onto the masses here, after promoting the idea that we should all forget about them? Photography is a much broader subject than making pretty pictures out of clouds and landscapes!

If you want to make "great" images, as the title of your thread suggests discussing, I would argue that you need to stop relying so heavily on your eyeballs - the only way to "see" is with your soul.

My wish is to constrain new photographers to those throw-away 35mm cameras they sell at the drugstore. The endless masturbation about how someone understands technique or color theory or art theory more than the other has nothing to do about photography. In concrete terms that is what you are suggesting, that photography and one's ability to create photographs is limited by an understanding of how physical light interacts with equipment. I do not agree with that in the least. There are a great number of good photographers that have little more than a rudimentary understanding of their cameras. It's what they choose to reveal about themselves, through images of the world around them, that counts.

cheers,
-ike

I understand what you are saying but I would disagree with your approach as it is presented above. Certainly emotion is a concept that one wishes to convey in an image but in order to do so one must first speak the language. When we talk photography, the inherent limitations we place on ourselves by using the tools that we do, namely the camera, ties us to the very simple language that those tools speak. In the case of a camera the only language it understands is light. The camera does nothing beyond that. Our choices with regards to what light enters the camera is what determines how well we communicate emotion. I.E. The color blue is widely seen as cool, calm, sometimes downright depressing, other colors are considered warm, invigorating, and uplifting. Our choice as to the qualities of light is how we suggest to the viewer what our intent is. Piecing together certain qualities of light is how viewers interpret meaning. Some photographers are better communicators than others because they understand the very simple notion that the qualities of light displayed will define the photos meaning. As a quick side note, when we are communicating with a limited language such as light, simplicity rules. We can get into that more later though.

Most people who never think about their shots, take your typical point and shoot shot for instance, rarely communicate the emotion the shooter felt at the time of capture because they are not using the right words or concepts to convey the message clearly. Typically most people produce what I consider a complicated mess, a mess which typically can only be interpreted by the person who shot it, and thus irrelevant to everyone else.