Category: Seeing

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Seeing the Unseen

Time shift, ICM, intentional blur

Photography is unique in the arts. It can record things we cannot see or imagine. Photography can be an adventure in seeing the unseen.

Unique

Photographers are sometimes made to feel inferior. Usually by proponents of the “real” arts, like painters or sculptors. Get over it. Photography has qualities that go beyond any other arts. Qualities that make them envious.

Photography is a technology-based art. That technology can be used along with our artistic vision to capture and create things regular art cannot. We can peer into things the human eye cannot see. We can freeze time to examine events the human eye cannot show us. Likewise, we can extend time to show the effects of movement in new ways.

Exposure

The human eye is amazing. But it has limits. Even though it can see a huge range of light, photographic sensors can push beyond our eye’s limits.

When you look at the stars, for instance, we can see what seem to be an immense number. But I have astronomer friends who have a process of taking hundreds of frames of 1 point in the sky. Then they use special stacking software to combine them and sharpen them to create levels of detail far beyond what the eye can see. Even my amateur astronomer friends routinely show me pictures they have taken of distant galaxies that cannot be detected at all with the eye.

Those same astronomer friends have solar filters – essentially completely black glass – that let them view the surface of the sun! They can see and photograph sun spots and the corona. Things that would destroy our eye if we tried to look directly at them.

The technology and practice of photography allows these things.

Light range

And “normal” (non-photographic) art is all done in the visible light range. Makes sense, That is all we can see.

But most of us have seen infrared imaging. This is done using a special dark red filter that excludes most light we can see. What is left is what we would consider heat – the world of longer wavelengths beneath the red response of our eye. It gives us a subtly different perception of the world around us. A paint artist could not do that without taking an infrared image of the scene then painting from the photograph.

Similar filtering can be done to see the ultraviolet world beyond the highest violets we can perceive. And have you had an X-Ray? That is just imaging done in another range of “light” we cannot see well beyond the ultraviolet.

These are somewhat niche capabilities, but they can bring us information that is exclusive to the photographic world.

Time

Time is one of my favorite variables that is unique to photography. One of the three legs of the exposure triad is shutter speed. By varying the shutter speed we can effectively slow down or speed up time!

People have developed flash systems that can freeze movement in slices of 1 millionth of a second. Even the fastest bullets are frozen in midair. Explosions can be captured as they start. You’ve probably seen pictures of a drop of liquid falling into a dish. The splash patterns are beautiful and interesting. Not many things we come in contact with in our lives are not frozen at this kind of speed.

At less extremes, a waterfall at a fast shutter speed can look like a cascade of diamonds . A bird in flight is completely frozen at about 1/1000th of a second. Every feather is crisp and sharp. We cannot see it this way with our eye.

At the other end, long exposures capture movement over time. This is the area I like to work. Not super long. Just long enough to change our perception of what is happening.

We have all seen long exposure pictures of waterfalls or cascades, where the water is smooth and silky. It is so common that it is in danger of being cliche. But the reason you see it a lot is because it is a pleasing effect. Some photographers make exposures of minutes. This makes clouds streak and water blur to a milky texture. Not really my thing, but I appreciate the reality distortion caused by the time shift.

Movement

A subset of this idea of time is where the camera is moving relative to the subject or the subject is moving relative to the camera. The camera motion side has become popular as Intentional Camera Motion (ICM).

Like many techniques in photography, it is easy to do but hard to do excellently. Anyone can take a blurry picture because the shutter speed was too long to stop the action. Most of us have to work to overcome this. ICM deliberately pushes this “fault” to a point of art. I do ICM for some projects and I have seen a lot of ICM that I consider excellent art. And I have seen a lot more where I have to think, “yep; that’s your standard ICM”. That’s OK. Most experiments in doing something new and creative fail.

One interesting aspect of techniques that involve movement and time is that it is almost impossible to take the same picture twice. There is always variation. The variation often leads to pleasant surprises.

Stretch the notion of reality

So photography is unique in giving us alternate views of “reality”. With conventional arts, like painting, nothing can be created that the artist does not first see or imagine. Photography can show us worlds or effects we did not imagine. This sometimes opens up new creative paths to explore. And the exciting thing is it is actually reality. If the camera captures it out in the “real world” (whatever that is), it is reality. What we get may be a complete surprise, but that is part of the exhilaration.

Photographers, never feel inferior in the arts. Know that what we do is as valid as any other kind of art. And try not not to be smug knowing we have the option of being more creative than most other forms of art.

Go explore the unseen and enjoy your discoveries.

Live always at the ‘edge of mystery’ – the boundaries of the unknown. – J. Robert Oppenheimer

Today’s image

This is part of a series I did fairly recently. It combines ICM and time and subject motion and some secret sauce optical techniques to create this look. I consider it a creative view on a reality that happens around us all the time, but only photographers can see.

Is it “real”? Yes, absolutely. It is a minimally modified shot of a real, physical subject. It is a subject most of us can find right around our town.

To find out more about what it is, go to my web site and find a similar looking image in Projects.

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Created From Joy

Radiance. Sun beams over mountains on a summer sunset.

There are many motivations and reasons for creating art. I can’t say any are wrong if the result is art that truly pleases the artist. For me, I am sure my art is created from joy.

Many motivations

What is it that motivates artists to create? Trauma? Money? Desperation? Joy? I am not qualified to say, because I can only speak for myself. Without being in the mind of another artist and experiencing their motivations, I cannot know.

Much has been written on this, but, again, i am not sure we can fully know what motivates someone else.

We can look at some works and believe they were created as the artist tried to work out some grief or tragedy or great wrong. Or maybe just try to understand life.

Guernica

Picasso’s Guernica seems to be a deep reaction to the horrors of war. Actually, he had been given a commission by the Spanish Republicans to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. He was not making much headway on it and did not seem highly motivated. Then on 26 April 1937 the Nazis bombed the village or Guernica. Picasso was urged to make this his theme and, after reading eye witness accounts of the attack, he did.

Yes, he was Spanish, although he did not live there at the time and never would again. But rather than being a deeply personal experience for him, he seemed to be able to empathize well enough to bring the emotion through. Anyway, it is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

This does not prove or disprove anything. It just shows that artists motivations are deeply internal and personal. As much as critics try to analyze and dissect a work, they are groping in the dark unless the artist enlightens them.

Joy motivates me

I have discovered myself well enough to understand that joy is my primary motivation when I am making images. Even though I am old and increasingly cynical, joy is what enlightens my work.

Joy can be a small thing like finding a dew covered spider web in the niche of a wall or it can be the sweep of a grand landscape at the right time, like the image with this article. It is not a particular thing or place or time. It is my reaction to it. How does it move me? What does it bring to me at the moment?

Finding these moments of joy draws me on from one to the next. The act of selecting a scene to photograph, framing it, composing it, deciding on exposure settings, etc. is a skill. Doing it is a calming and pleasant activity to immerse myself in for a few moments. Everybody takes pictures. To take one that people stop to look at or talk about is art.

My joy is in capturing and expressing a scene in a way that will be memorable. But even if no one other than me sees it or enjoys it, it is joy and it is my art. No critic or reviewer can take that joy away from me. It matters little what other people think about an image. It can still give me joy.

Not happiness

We need to distinguish between happiness and joy. Many people take them as about the same, but they are quite different. Happiness is a pleasant feeling because circumstances made us content at the moment. A warm cup of cocoa on a cold day. An unexpected letter from a friend.

The next moment, something can take away our happiness.

Joy is a long term view of life. It comes from within and is not completely dependent on what is happening around us. We tend to be joyful when the way we are living our life is aligned with our values and beliefs.

Making images that bring me joy definitely aligns with my values and closes the loop. It reinforces my joy. That is, my images come from joy and making them increases my joy. For me, they are created from joy.

Values

Do you ever consider your values? The principles you build your life on are too important to go un-analyzed. We are more fulfilled when what we do is aligned with our values and we tend to be frustrated and unhappy when we are opposing them. Think about what you believe.

I’m not saying everything we do needs to be for some grand social cause. Not at all. I think that tends to make our work stiff and preachy. I am just suggesting we will be happier and do better work if we are doing it for the joy of our feelings and the pleasure of the creativity.

Try it. You might find more joy in your art and it might come across that way to your viewers.

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Why Photography?

Airport at night

Photography is my chosen art. Obviously I wouldn’t continue doing it unless I loved it. But why? Why photography?

Faults

I’ll be honest. As a modern art form, there are negative aspects to photography. I’m talking about people’s view of it, not what I believe of it. And I’m not making a pun about photographic negatives. Many “serious” artists and critics view it as a lesser art, if art at all. After all, it is too easy. Just point your camera at something and take a picture. Where is the art?

The critics view photography as a mechanical art. Where the camera does the work and the photographer just holds the camera and pushes a button. How can it be “Art”, with a capital A, if it is fast and easy?

Billions of people are taking trillions of pictures every day. So it is considered a “common” craft. Just for selfies. But those critics discount the difficulty of doing something special in a field that is so crowded. Millions of books are written, but we still celebrate the relatively few authors who creates a standout book.

And photography can be reproduced pretty easily. You can get a stack of prints made at Walmart for a few bucks. This, too, devalues it in many people’s estimation.

And it’s getting to where your AI chatbot can make a fairly realistic picture. Is there any photography anymore? Or painting, for that matter?

Alternate view

But let’s examine some of those statements. I’m a firm believer that something is not correct just because people say it, especially if it is “experts” talking.

It is true that trillions of photos are taken every year. Very few of them are considered art, even by the people taking them. They are for utilitarian purposes, mostly selfies to post on social media. Of the ones whose makers consider them to be art, most are, well, forgettable. In this crowded field where the majority of people on the planet have a camera and take pictures, it is extremely difficult to take a memorable one. It takes a lot of skill and vision and technique and luck to make one of the exceptional ones.

And the fact that they can be reproduced easily should not be a factor, except for top collectors. The ability to make prints is actually democratizing. And a great art print is a very different thing than a cheap drug store copy. The materials and ink and care that goes into an art print sets it apart. If you have seen and handled one you have experienced the quality factor. A great print can be shown on your wall the rest of your life and be passed down to your heirs.

Even painters very often have prints of their works for sale. And they usually request a significant price for them. Does that make their prints not art?

It’s what I can do

I said I was being honest. I long ago discovered I have little talent or patience for drawing or painting, and sculpting is too slow and expensive for me. Does that mean I’m not an artist? Absolutely not. I found areas I have an inclination for.

I originally latched onto photography as a creative outlet to my highly logical, left-brained Engineering career. Intuitively I knew I had to have a balance. It served it’s purpose, even though I wasn’t very good at it.

But being somewhat obsessive and a perfectionist, I later pushed myself to learn and understand why I considered myself mediocre. So I improved my knowledge and education and technique. I learned about design and composition and lighting and editing. And I moved beyond just straight representational images of big landscape scenes and even pushed myself into uncomfortable areas like abstract and surreal.

So when I retired, I was eager to go full time into art as a creative activity. I do not regret it. It has been a great move for me and I feel I have grown rapidly. I would have gotten frustrated and quit if I had tried to force myself into doing art I was not suited for.

Fast moving

A joy to me in photography is that it is relatively fast moving. Move, see, compose, shoot. I get into a flow and can spend hours creating. And likewise in post processing. Unlike some photographers, I like it. Working with the images on the computer is another important part of the creative process of photography. I can edit for hours and not even realize what time it is.

This pace and rhythm of photography is part of what works for me. An important component of my creative energy. I know myself enough to know I would not be happy spending weeks working on a painting, to then have to set it aside and not touch it again.

My images are much more malleable. Even after “finishing” one I can get a new idea and revisit it, maybe alter it, maybe create a new work based on it. What I shoot is raw material. The elements emerge, combine, re-emerge and get re-imagined in a very fluid way. I love this.

Versatile

This immediacy of photography also enables one of the other things I love about it. I can do it anywhere, almost any time. Day or night; walking around town; looking out an airplane window; winter or summer; in the rain or snow or fog; alone or with other people.

If most painters see a scene they want to paint, what do they do? Take a picture. They use that to work up sketches to define their image. I skip directly to the end. My “sketch” may well be the finished image. I’ve done 20 interesting images before they finish a sketch.

I never have to worry about what pallets of colors I have with me. Did I bring a large enough blank canvas? Do I have the right grades of pencils with me? Are they sharp? Don’t care. I can take a crisp, detailed shot of a rusty truck and turn around and take a time exposure of a stream. The camera is a powerful tool that lets me express my art in a variety of ways. But I am the artist and only I determine what I want to accomplish.

Element of reality

Another aspect of photography that is unique and significant to me is that photography contains elements of reality. The sensor records the scene in front of it as imaged by the camera lens, to the extent I allow it. That is, I may blur it or overexpose it or underexpose it. That is an artistic choice. But I am working with a capture of reality.

Photography is unlike any other art in this respect. To me, there is something honest in that. That, even if I composite or heavily edit or alter the colors or tones to create a completely different scene, still, the component parts are pieces of reality.

I enjoy images of mine that are straight captures of a real scene and I enjoy the ones that are created scenes that do not exist. Both contain reality. One much more directly than the other.

I don’t use Photoshop as a blank canvas to paint imaginary scenes on. I have no problem with those who do that. It is another good talent. But I don’t. Everything I create is built from pieces of reality. In my weird value system, it wouldn’t be photography if it did not contain actual elements captured by a camera.

Easy to reproduce

I love that after editing an image and thinking it is almost ready, I can make a test print on my printer in my studio. In a few minutes. A print on paper is very different from an image on screen. Most of us are only used to seeing images on screens.

But a well done print on high quality paper is an entirely different thing. It becomes a physical object with presence. Our relationship with it is different. We hold it and look at it differently. We feel the texture and the forms and colors of the image are seen in a new way. A print changes our perception.

And this is just a test print. Usually it will have to be edited more and reworked is some ways to eliminate problems we did not notice until it was on paper. After a few cycles I now know how to print this image. This next one that comes out of the printer is one I can be proud of. We eagerly show it off, because it expresses our intent, what we saw and felt when we captured the image. It has become a physical piece of art. And I can push a button and make another one for you. Does this devalue the medium? Not to me. I think that is fantastic.

This is a unique feature of photography. I love it.

Photography is a versatile, fast moving, high quality art form. It has advantages and disadvantages over other types of media. But that is true whenever you compare one type to another. It is the perfect art form for me. I hope I have given you a clear picture of why photography for me.

Today’s image

A busy airport at night is a wonderland of lights and shapes and movement. If you are that nerd who gets his camera out and shoots out the window during takeoffs and landings. I am. I love the colors and abstract forms. 🙂

It also illustrates one advantage of photography I discuss in other places. The ability to record time. Not just a still instant, but movement over a period of time if we wish.

This is one of those scenes you seldom see painted. We cannot see this directly with our eye. The painter would have to take the picture then paint it. But is that different from taking a photograph and making a print?

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The Subject?

A no subject image I had to shoot

I wrote recently about the sometimes ambiguity of the subject. But the subject itself? I’m not sure I care what it is. Is that heresy?

Subject is king

People sometimes travel halfway around the world to photograph a certain thing or event. As I write this, several of my friends are preparing to travel to photograph the upcoming total solar eclipse. Or if a friend corners you to watch vacation pictures or videos, it is of their trip to [______] – fill in the blank of the place you don’t care about.

The point is that it seems most people are highly fixated on getting the best images of particular subjects that are important to them. This is probably perfectly natural. After all, when we go to the trouble of taking a picture, it should be ‘of’ something, shouldn’t it?

Most photo instructors emphasize this. Actually, they initially put beginners through a boot camp and hazing packed with technical details and jargon about aperture and shutter speed and ISO and depth of field and … If a beginner survives that, and are still interested in photography, then they are taught to have a foreground, middle ground, and background and a clear and strong subject. Then you work on composition, lighting, exposure, etc. This is standard practice.

Is it wrong? No, but learning photography is actually a difficult thing. There are many technical levels and esthetic aspects to learn. It takes a lot of practice to get good at all of them. People have different preferred learning styles, so a one-size-fits-all regime may not be appropriate.

A genre

Many well meaning experts firmly recommend that their listeners have to pick a subject area and specialize in it. They say if you are going to make a place for yourself in this over crowded field, you have tp be well known for one particular thing.

Are they wrong? Probably not. It is good advice if your goal is money or fame. So their advice is to become the recognized wildlife photographer, or portrait photographer, or street photographer, or night sky photographer, or … pick your specialty.

Then they tell us to look at what our “competitors” are being successful with and do more like that. While I can’t believe any “authority” would recommend that artists copy what other artists are doing, I can see where it is shrewd advice for maximizing your income. If you don’t care about your art.

Develop a body of work

And then we are told that we have to have a body of work. This sounded mysterious and difficult to me until I figured out they were just saying we have to be able to demonstrate we have done this enough to be taken seriously and we have to show the sustained quality of our work. Oh, well, sure. I have to do that for myself every day. I would call it my portfolio.

But then they say our portfolio must have a consistent subject focus and style and look. One “expert” I heard recently answered a question about this by using an analogy of an aspiring musician. The gist was if you are submitting an audition tape, it should all be similar type and style. You wouldn’t do some Country & Western and some rock and some bluegrass and some rap.

Maybe that is good advice if you are trying to break into the music industry. But I don’t think it works for me in my art.

Conventional wisdom is that our work needs to have a theme or be centered on a cause. After all, we can’t be a “serious” artist unless we are dealing with serious, life and death subjects. Right?

And we need to have a recognizable look that sets us apart. And our work needs to be cropped to a consistent presentation format, like square. Of course, it should have consistent color grading so it all looks like it came from the same artist. And so on.

Omnivorous

Some of us have real trouble with this, though. We are missing that ambition gene that allows us to suborn our artistic vision to the needs of marketing and fame. At least, I suffer from this defect.

I consider my artistic interest to be omnivorous and wide ranging. To the point where I would assert that I don’t care what the subject is. If it interests me, I will shoot it. And almost anything can interest me under the right conditions.

I am coming to see that it is not usually the subject that makes a good image. It is my reaction to it, My relation to it. The interest, even love, that comes across to me and my viewer.

Ultimately, an image can seldom be great unless I love it. And few images of an “interesting” subject will be great to me unless there is a strong connection there. I have heard people debating if you should take a picture if you’re not sure it will be a “portfolio” image. I say, if it interests you, take it. You won’t know until later what your reaction to it will really be.

An artist

Am I an artist? My answer is “yes”. The style and theme of any image in my body of work is a record of what I was drawn to at that place and that time when I made the image. I refuse to restrict myself to only shooting rusty 1950’s Chevy trucks in black & white and square cropped. It would make me crazy if I closed down my options like that. I love rusty 1950’s trucks, but I could not exist on a exclusive diet of them.

I may travel half way around the world to go to a place I am interested in and want to explore. But I don’t go to photograph a subject there. As I explore, I will likely find many images to take. But when I take one, it is because the whole scene grabbed me and tweaked my interest.

Let me give an example to make it concrete. I am unlikely to ever go on a safari in Africa. But if I did, I wouldn’t care if I came back with a great shot of a lion. Why? I don’t really care about lions. I would be more interested in a nicely formed tree in great light with a stormy sky. Or a native tribesman. Or …

What seems to happen is, as I’m looking around, something clicks. My subconscious triggers a message to my conscious mind to let me know “there’s a picture there! Get it!”. When that happens, it is not just about a subject. Its the subject, in this place, at this time, in this light, with me in this mood. Bam. That makes an image. Check my current online portfolio. I try to organize it to make it easier for you to browse, but you will see a wide range of subjects and styles.

The subject

So the subject? Not as important to me as it seems to be to a lot of people. The subject is only part of a good image. And it’s usually not even the most important part. At least to me. So yeah, I will go so far as to say I don’t care about the subject.

This is just my personal approach. You do what works for you. I hope you get the shot you want.

Today’s image

Today’s image is an example of the subject not being as important to me as the overall look and how I felt about it.. You could argue there is no real subject. I loved it and had to shoot it, even though it was difficult. I won’t say here what it is, but if you write me I will at least give you some hints. 🙂

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Find the It-ness

Old rusty International Truck. I finally got it's portrait.

Sometimes you just have to make up a word when you can’t find the right one. In this case Jay Maisel made it up. I think he is referring to seeing beneath the surface. If we find the it-ness, we are starting to get to a level where we understand more about the scene. Then maybe we can show it to our viewers.

See past the obvious

Jay seemed to be telling us to get past the first surface response and burrow down to a deeper response to a subject. The normal mode for a lot of us is to see a scene we like, pull the camera up to our eye, and shoot. Done. Go on.

But I think Jay i suggesting we slow down and not necessarily give in to our first instinct. With a little more thought and introspection we often come to a different relationship with a subject or scene. In other words, stop and think. Get in touch with why you are reacting to it and see if you can bring that out more.

There are 3 very interesting videos about Jay Maisel on Kelby One (I am not affiliated with them and I get no benefit for referring them; but it would be worthwhile to subscribe long enough to watch these 3). In each, Jay is spending a day walking around with Scott Kelby, demonstrating his technique and thought process. They are very worthwhile (when Jay is talking, not Scott). It seems like Jay is shooting quickly and instinctively, but keep in mind you are seeing the result of 50 or more years of finely honed craft. When asked about an image he can always articulate a detailed reason why he took it, what it meant to him, and why he composed it like he did. And when he reviews his seemingly quickly grabbed images, it make you want to tell him “I hate you”.

So maybe there is the promise that, with enough practice, little conscious thought is required.

Wabi-Sabi

I always hesitate to bring wabi-sabi up. It is easy to step off into really deep stuff. Apparently you can’t really appreciate it’s true meaning unless you are a native Japanese steeped in Zen Buddhism. There is no simple English translation.

But that doesn’t deter me from trying. Even though I am American and not at all a Buddhism practitioner. 🙂

Explanations often start from breaking down the two words wabi and sabi. One good definition says:

‘Wabi’ expresses the part of simplicity, impermanence, flaws, and imperfection. On the contrary, ‘Sabi’ displays and expresses the effect that time has on a substance or any object. Together ‘wabi-sabi’ embraces the idea of aesthetic appreciation of aging, flaws, and the beauty of the effects of time and imperfections. The two separate parts when put together, complete each other. They express simplicity and the truest form of an object.

That seems to be an elegantly simple expression of finding the it-ness of something. Regarding a thing with all its flaws and imperfections and appreciating how it changes and weathers and even decays over time is really getting in touch with its essence.

More than the subject

I recently explored the idea of the subject not being the subject. Going on beyond that is this notion of capturing the it-ness of something may be more important that just representing the thing.

The image with today’s post is an example. This old International truck fascinated me for years. It is about 50 miles from my house, not on the way to anywhere, but I visited it many times. I was never satisfied that I had photographed “it”. I took many pictures of the truck, but I never felt I actually got what I felt about it.

Finally, one day I was going by and I knew I needed to visit it one more time. Some junk was starting to encroach on it and, after it setting there rusting for years, it seemed possible that the opportunity might go away.

But this time, instead of jumping out and taking pictures, I just stared and thought a while. I walked around it slowly. All the while I was trying to explain to myself what my feelings were about this truck and how I would take its portrait.

After thinking a long time, I basically just took this one image. To me, it perfectly captures the personality, the story, the history – the it-ness – of the magnificent old truck. I felt a relationship to it.

The next time I came by there, it was all fenced off and junk was stacked all around. The picture opportunity was gone. That makes me sad, but I finally had the picture I wanted. I believe this is a true and accurate portrait of this giant of the Colorado plains. This will always be my memory of that good old truck that I have known a long time.

This is a wabi-sabi story. It is also an example of another of Jay Maisel’s maxims: shoot it now, because it won’t be there when you come back.

Find interest

I have said several times that we can find interest in almost anything if we try. We have to get over looking just at the surface. Maybe it’s not the prettiest of its kind. Maybe there are imperfections. Do those give it character? Does it tell a story of it’s past?

As an extreme example, we have had a lot of forest fires here in Colorado in the last few years. As have many places. It is sad to see a beautiful forest destroyed. But I have found great beauty in burn scars and the re-growth that is happening.

It seems to be more and more a case for me that interest does not equate to pretty. Almost to the extent of being a negative correlation, where pretty implies less interest. So a perfect flower is a thing of beauty, but does that make it the most interesting? I’m not saying it is always true for me, but a “past its prime” specimen may tell a more interesting story of struggle, survival, endurance, and the passing of time.

Try it. Like my example of working on the truck, slow down. Think more. Figure out the it-ness of the thing. Then shoot to capture that.