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Re: [OM] To improve, take more photos.. but to improve, take fewer phot

Subject: Re: [OM] To improve, take more photos.. but to improve, take fewer photos?
From: "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 22:40:57 -0500
At 16:12 3/12/02, Dan Mitchell wrote:
 A general photography question -- I've seen many many places recommending
that the way to improve as a photographer is to take more photos, because
you only get better with practise. Sure, that makes sense -- but I've also
seen a lot of recommendations to shoot _fewer_ shots and spend more time
thinking about each one rather than just rattling off thoughtless snapshots.

[rest snipped out]

Dan,
Been watching this thread . . .

Visualization:
The fundamental purpose with practice is learning visualization, and it must be done in an organized fashion. I critique every photograph; The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. My criteria is how well it achieves what I visualized, both technically (focus, exposure, etc.) and artistically (does it convey what I want it to). What is "visualization?" It is being able to envision the desired photograph in the mind, definitely before opening the shutter, and eventually before picking up the camera and looking through its viewfinder! I now visualize some landscape photographs at locations with which I'm familiar before leaving home. Other times, regardless of location or familiarity with it, I look and a photograph instantly visualizes from the scene before me. If it's a location with which I'm unfamiliar, I often must spend some time becoming familiar with it. This doesn't need to take that long, but it's a very deliberate and conscious effort to "see" what's there and consider composition first (color, lines, shapes, vanishing points, significant object locations and relationships between them, etc.). Does this always mean a complete mental image of a finished photograph? For some, maybe. Mor me, not always, especially when I'm not there, but somewhere else, usually at home. At the least it contains all the elements and the underlying concept(s) essential to making the photograph "work" (its key characteristics). It is verified and "completed" when looking through the viewfinder when the photograph is made.

First Principle #1:
Photographs are made, not taken. This goes to the core of learning visualization. It is a deliberate process that takes control of everything possible that can be controlled instead of blindly pushing a shutter release and grabbing whatever just happens to be there randomly or even semi-randomly. [Engineers call these "First Principles," Mathematicians call them "Axioms" and Physicists call them "Laws of Nature."]

First Principle #2:
Photography is about light and nothing but light. It's the only thing that passes through a lens aperture and past an open shutter to the film. It's the only thing film was designed and intended to react to. When a photograph is made, it is not objects that are photographed, it's light radiated or reflected by the objects that is photographed. Someone will undoubtedly get sticky about this and cite how IR and UV films have somehow been excluded. IR and UV are electromagnetic radiation just below and just above the visible spectrum. Same First Principle; just change the phenomenon from "light" to "IR" or "UV" as appropriate.

Learning Visualization:
All photographs have a purpose defined by the photographer. How well they achieve that purpose depends entirely on the skill of the photographer. Learning how to visualize begins with deliberately thinking about two essential questions and using some tools to help think about what the image will be.

Essential Question #1: "Why am I making this photograph?"
The answer need not be that complicated, or have some deep, mystical meaning (helps to impress some of *wannabe* Fine Art crowd though). Some of my landscapes are purely representational, but there is some aspect about the scene that *is* the purpose for making the representational photograph of it.

Essential Question #2:  "Who is the photograph for?"
A still photograph is a static two-dimensional image that can only convey visual information to its viewer. The viewer's experiential frame of reference is the sole basis on which a two-dimensional image is interpreted by the viewer. Although its title (if given one) can be a cue, it is to some extent a crutch. With the intended viewer(s), the very best photographs do not need one. If the photographer's purpose for the photograph is to succeed, it must convey its "message" in a manner the viewer will comprehend using the intended *viewer's* experiential frame of reference, which may or may not be the same (as comprehensive) as the photographer's.

The answers to these two essential questions are used to define what's required of the visualization (its specifications) and helps create it. The visualization in turn defines the cameras, lenses, film, print materials, etc., necessary to bring that visualization to fruition with a photograph.

Basic Tools to Aid in Answering the Essential Questions:

Characteristics of Objects (a Taxonomy):
Aristotle defined "causes" to describe fundamental characteristics of objects the universe around us. These can be used to help think about why the photograph is being made and decide what to "celebrate" about the subject material (with some examples of each). (a) Material: What something is made of; its texture usually defines that visually.
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om81.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om97.html
(b)  Formal:  Structure, shape and form.
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om17.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om103.html
(c) Efficient: How something came to be; the reason it was created and "how" it was built (versus what it's made of).
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om72.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om136.html
(d) Final: Purpose or goal. What it currently does or intends to do. How it interacts with its environment and how the environment interacts with it.
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om67.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om151.html

Types of Imagery (a taxonomy):
I often use another set of tools in conjuction with the above. Aristotle's "causes" are usually considered first, but it's not always a serial process, and as the visualization develops, consideration of these often becomes intertwined with it, especially in determining how best to "celebrate" the desired "cause(es)" in a manner that will convey it to the intended viewer(s). I classify visual imagery into the following (with some examples of each): (a) Representational: Could also be called "documentary" but that seems ambiguous to me. Very straightforward and almost always static; what you see is what it is.
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om22.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om80.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/zi/gallery/contax22.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/mamiya/gallery/mamiya01.html
(b) Romantic: In the same usage as for poetry or music, it tells a story about the subject material. Although not required, anything that is dynamic and conveys a sense of motion directly related to what the subject material is easily "romantic."
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om125.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om132.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/mamiya/gallery/mamiya02.html
(c) Impressionistic: Conveys a feeling, emotion, or concept that need not be directly related to the *specific* subject material.
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om73.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om103.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/mamiya/gallery/mamiya03.html
(d) Abstract: An abstraction of some facet of the subject material in which what the subject material actually is does not matter (although that may not be completely obscured). Usually deals with characteristics such as shapes, colors, textures, and their relative positions/locations.
    file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om17.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om78.html
     file:///G|/TripodWebSite/oly/gallery/om82.html


Compositional Tools:

First Principle #3:
Unlike other graphic arts, composition in photography is primarily a "subtractive" process. It begins with all of reality and subtracts out that which does not enhance or contribute to the purpose of the photograph. One could argue that using a flash is "additive." I don't think that way. It's subtractive. What is it subtracting? By adding a light source, the visual *effects* of existing, ambient lighting is being overwhelmed (or at least modified) and therefore some or all of these effects are subtracted from the image, as if it didn't exist. The same with using a backdrop; it subtracts what would be in the background if the backdrop were not there.

There are other compositional guidelines about how to arrange and position objects in a photograph to create a visually interesting image. Included are methods to draw viewer attention where it's desired and/or draw it away from where it's not desired. Rather than try to list them all here, see the following:
  file:///G|/TripodWebSite/art/artframe.html
These are not hard and fast "rules" but things that can be used individually and in combination to make a photograph visually interesting. Very few photographs will use *all* of them and one must look to *see* what is present that can be easily employed. On more than one occasion, an potentially distracting object/element and been used simply by shifting location and changing perspective to make it contribute to the purpose of the image.

As you "practice," experiment with all these things, and most important, *use* them to reverse engineer photographs you like and photographs you dislike. Learn from not only what you do, but others have done as well. Make one step at a time and keep chipping away at adding additional techniques. Every photograph I make is considered "practice" as part of "continual improvement" in technique.

-- John


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