You have probably heard the old phrase “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”. It can actually be pretty good advice for some situations. Sometimes it is better to abandon your preconceived assumptions and respond to the actual conditions.
Previsualization
Many famous artists, from Ansel Adams onward, preach that we should previsualize the end result before we shoot. One accepted meaning of it is that the photographer can see the final print before the image has been captured. In other words, based on his experience, the photographer knows what end result he will be able to achieve before pressing the shutter release.
Mr. Adams, ever the teacher, broke it down into 4 steps:
Need or desire for the picture. Why are you taking it?
Discovery. Recognize the essential composition that can be made.
Visualization, the process of anticipating what the result will look like.
Execution. Doing everything right to make it happen. This is image capture through post processing.
I would not go on record as disagreeing with Ansel Adams, but I think there are a few assumptions wrapped up in this that we can look at. The advice may not be a universal truth.
For one thing, if you are a commercial photographer contracted to get a certain image for a client, yes, planning and previsualization is important. Also, if it is a “one in a lifetime” situation where you know the opportunity will never repeat for you, be very diligent and make sure you get the shot you want when you have the chance.
But another angle I don’t think I have heard talked about is personality. Some people are naturally planners. They work best when they are following a carefully thought out script. They need a high degree of structure in their environment. Other people don’t work that way.
Generational changes
And consider the differences in technology and capability of editing now compared to Mr. Adam’s day. You can see that we tend to favor a different style of capturing images.
For Mr. Adams, making an image was slow and expensive and fairly difficult. A lot of heavy gear had to be set up. Looking at the upside down color image on the ground glass of his view camera and trying to visualize the resulting black & white print took a lot of skill and experience. And the 8×10 film sheets were expensive and he could only carry a limited number with him in the field. So yes, previsualization was necessary in that generation.
Now, though, digital imaging is “free”. And we have great sensors and real-time histogram displays. Most of us can immediately see a fair representation of the captured image on our camera screen. We know what we captured.
Since the images are basically free and quick to do, we can “work a scene”, shooting and looking at the captured images while we hone in on the result we want. We should seldom have any question of whether of not we captured the image correctly. The larger question is, did we get what what we want. It is not uncommon to shoot several or even dozens of images to finalize the result we want.
Trying to force it
Now I will readily admit that I am much more in the “no planning” side. I enjoy spontaneity.
Something I see at times that makes me sad is photographers who go out with a rigid expectation of what they will accept. Many of them tend to battle against conditions they cannot overcome and go away disappointed. Maybe even feeling like a failure.
In deference to the planners, I love this quote from a great planner:
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
Thinking through the situation and trying to anticipate what may happen can give great insight on what we may decide to do. However, once the battle starts, e.g. we are in the field to make the image, nothing is likely to go as planned.
Adapt
When we discover that our plans are falling apart, we can double down and try to force it to work, or we can adapt and reevaluate what we can do.
One aspect of creativity is to be flexible, to adapt to the situation and make the best of it. Make the best of the situation. Perhaps you got to the great scene and it is raining or snowing. Not what you planned. Use it. Get what you can. The result may be even better than what you planned.
One of the principles of improvisation artists is that each step is “yes, and…”. That carries the momentum forward to the next step. Whenever you say “no”, it blocks the flow and makes it hard to go forward. So don’t block your flow. Respond to whatever situation you encounter and creatively figure out how to use it.
Let it flow
As artists, we are trying to creatively interpret the world around us. I find an ideal to enable this is to get into a flow state. This seems to be a peak of creativity and energy and concentration. This lets us work with the situation rather than fight it.
Previsualization can give us an idea of what we want to achieve. We might even make the image as planned. But never overlook the opportunity to make a more compelling and engaging image.
Maybe we do not get the image we anticipated. Often we get a better one. But even if it is a disappointment, as long as we did the best possible in the situation, we should be happy. I have said before that it is better to be lucky than good. But this is not luck. It is creatively adapting to circumstances.
Today’s image
This is a “bored at an airport” image. While waiting for a flight I wanted to capture scenes of airport operations. But I was frustrated by the reflections I could not eliminate. They were interfering with the image I had in mind to create.
But on some thought, I discovered that maybe the reflections were integral to the scene. People waiting patient and trusting while a huge amount of complex logistics of running an airport went on just outside. Outside of their interest and curiosity. They just wait like cattle until their flight is called.
This was definitely a “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” situation. I think the resulting image is better than what I originally set out to make. What do you think?
Some art lays everything out for you. What you see is what you get. Some art, though, seems to bring mystery to the image. You, the viewer, must become involved with it and imagine what you cannot see. I find I am being drawn more to the mystery side.
Note: this article was inspired by an article "The Imaginary Shadows" in Better Photography Magazine #112.
Reveal all
I used to think full tonal range realism was the ideal for most art and photography in particular. I loved hyper realism. Honestly, I still do. Super detail throughout, Textures so crisp you think you can feel them. That is one reason I use a camera with good lenses and lot of pixels.
You know the drill, especially if you are were in a camera club. Expose to the right, but no blown out highlights. Full histogram down to a few spots of rich blacks. The subject must be in the sharpest possible focus. Well sharpened overall, but with no halos. Printed using the best available paper and techniques so another photographer can come right up to the print as close as he can see and it all looks smooth and sharp to his critical eye.
All these things are good ideas, but not a formula for making great art. I spent years honing my craft to be able to capture all those pixels in the best way. And more learning how to process the files to bring out all that detail. The technician in me loves the technical challenge. And the purist in me loves to see all that gorgeous detail and texture.
Contrasts
There is a problem I am starting to see, though. When you clearly show the viewer everything there is to see, it gets boring quickly. There is little holding power in the image. It is like a movie preview that gives away the whole plot. There is no mystery left. Viewers pass on fairly quickly.
It is starting to sink in to me that in art and life, a lot is about contrasts. Contrasts put things in opposition. We are drawn to regions of sharp contrast. It is in our hard wiring.
Contrasts are a way of comparing things by showing opposing qualities. The contrasts can be light vs dark, in focus vs out of focus, warm colors vs cool colors, moving vs still, hard vs soft, textured vs smooth – there are too many to enumerate.
But we instinctively know that contrasts define a comparison that is important to the image. So we are drawn to the contrasted areas. We spend time looking and trying to figure out the meaning or importance of the contrast.
It helps guide our understanding of the image and we become more involved in figuring out the artist’s intent.
Use contrasts
So, perhaps, viewers actually appreciate some need to think about and spend some time with an image. I call this introducing mystery. The viewer wants to get engaged and invest some energy in it. Contrasts are one primary way to do this.
Unlike just a flat field of pixels, contrasts help the viewer understand the artist’s intent. It shows what relationships the artist wants to point out. What comparisons he wants to make. Contrasts help point out what the artist wanted us to notice.
The mystery of black
There is a special type of contrast often used in black & white images: areas of black. An article by Len Metcalf in a recent issue of Better Photography magazine brought this to my attention. It was kind of an “Aha” moment. You know how when you know something subconsciously, but then you see it written down and it is like a flash of insight?
Len is an excellent photographer and teacher in Australia. He was describing a realization that came to him while teaching one of his master classes. They were surrounded by prints from great photographers, from Ansel Adams to contemporary artists. He says
As I looked around the room, I became acutely aware of the intense blackness in each of the prints. As I stared, I realized that these were not little black speckles as we are cautioned about by judges in camera club competitions. … These were humongous areas of beautiful, deep rich velvety, black black, blacker than black blacks.
He goes on to observe that some artists, like Ansel Adams and Bill Brandt for example, tended to make their prints darker and darker as they got older.
Why? What were they seeing?
Hold back
One of his conclusions was that they realized that, in some cases, the less said, the better. That is, areas of blacks added a new quality to the images.
He speculates that areas of highlight show all their information clearly. You see everything there is to see. The whole story is laid out clearly for us, so we do not have to work or use our imagination. But the dark areas, the spaces where we can’t see what is going on, hold interest for us. We wonder what is there. We make up our own story. it engages our imagination.
Maybe this is why artists like Ansel Adams printed larger and larger areas of deep black as they evolved in their art. By holding back some information from the viewer the image actually becomes more interesting.
Crush the blacks
So I seem to be on a campaign to crush the blacks. What this means is intentionally pushing some of the darkest grays down to pure black. Yes, it eliminates information from the image. That is something we were always taught not to do.
But it is an artistic choice. It brings the benefits I mentioned about introducing mystery and drama into an image.
It is not for all images in all situations. But when you decide to use it, go for it. Be heavy handed. Overdo it to see how far you want to take it. When I overdo it and back off some, I find that I do not back off as far as I would have if I didn’t overdo it. In other words, after seeing the result, I often want to retain more of the effect that I would have thought
It is surprising. Sometimes less is more. Experiment with making your blacks darker to see how it feels to you. I like what I am seeing so far. I used to consider dark images as somber and melancholy. Now I would more likely refer to them as mysterious. Try it and see if it feels better to you.
Today’s image
For fun and an experiment, I went back to an old image and re-processed it to crush the blacks even more. The result is more dark and mysterious than the original. I like it much better. Maybe it is approaching the “humongous areas of beautiful, deep rich velvety, black black, blacker than black blacks” that Len was talking about.
One other reason for doing this is to investigate a point Len made that an advantage previous generations of photographers had was that, to re-print an image, they had to go through the whole darkroom process. This gave them a chance to think about the image anew and re-interpret it according to their current sensibility. We tend to just hit print to make a new print. No thought involved.
I found, indeed, that I changed the image when I took a new fresh at it.
My last article sang the praises of HDR processing. I don’t want to over sell it. Today I will try to balance it by showing we typically do not need to use HDR.
The good
My previous article attempted to show when and why to use HDR. There is a time and place for it. In general, if a histogram shows more than about 7 stops of needed information then I would consider HDR, if the subject and situation allows it.
The example I used was a scene with the sun visible in the frame but where I also wanted to preserve the deepest shadows. Back in the film days we had to use a split neutral density filter over the lens to try to compress the dynamic range in these situations. Whenever you would have reached for the split ND filter is the time to consider if you can use HDR instead.
The bad
But HDR has some problems and limitations. There is the dreaded “HDR look” that most people want to avoid. In addition, there are problems with subject movement and extra processing steps to do.
When HDR first became available, people tended to go crazy with it. It was almost a symbol of showing off the new technique. The HDR look was over compressed with flat tonality and lack of true whites or blacks. Sure, I could shoot that scene with a 20 stop range and make a print. Too bad it looks weird. It became almost a cliche. Many “serious” photographers shunned it as looking artificial. It got a bad reputation.
But the problem was how people used it, not the technique itself. Almost any technique can be over used to create unappealing images.
There is also the problem I mentioned with subject movement. To create a good HDR image there must be very high correlation between the pixels of each exposure bracket. That is, there can’t be significant movement.
And there is the extra processing. This is not too big of a problem anymore. We can quickly do HDR processing from within Lightroom or Photoshop or your software of choice. It is probably easier now to do it than it was to adjust a split neutral density filter and figure out the exposure.
Why we don’t usually need it
Trust your sensor and the processing software on your computer. Modern high-end camera sensors are amazing. They record the greatest dynamic range of information that has ever been possible in photography. I’m sure it will only get better with new generations of equipment.
My camera records a far greater range of information than it is possible to print. Prints are my gold standard. They are the expected outcome of my work. A surprising fact to many is that, although it is hard to compare because the physics are totally different, the effective dynamic range of print media is around 6 to 8 stops. So making any print has some aspects of dealing with HDR data, since the captured data is probably much greater than the final print.
OK, so I am shooting a high contrast scene. I am careful to allow a little space on each end of the histogram, so say I am dealing with about 12 stops of range. The reality is that, for most needs, this can be used to make a great print.
But that 12 stops of data has darks that are down dangerously close to an unacceptable level of noise. And the brights are dangerously close to clipping. Is that imperfection OK?
How to process extreme ranges
This is not a tutorial on photographic processing. You can find too many of them on the web. I will just give some suggestions. In Lightroom (Classic – the only version I think is worth using) just the 6 controls in the Tones section of the Basic panel can do wonders. And I seldom use Contrast, so there are really 5 most important ones.
Use Whites and Blacks to set the overall white and black points as desired. Then I often use Exposure to balance the overall tonal range. Finally I use Highlights and Shadows to fine tune the tones.
These simple adjustments, along with some tweaks in the Presence section, can do amazing things to “rescue” most images. These are probably an 80% fix for most situations.
Of course, when I select an image to print, I will spend a lot more time working on it. A lot of work will be done with curves and masking and doing fine adjustments. Sometimes I will send it to Photoshop for very detailed tasks that cannot be done in Lightroom. Editing an image can take many hours. Most of us are pretty obsessive about our work.
My point here, though, is that most single captures have enough data to make a great print or other final image. Sometimes we just have to work with it a little.
Maybe you don’t want it
The look of your final image is an artistic decision. It is not dictated by the “reality” of the original scene. You or I as the artist decide the look we want. What we decide is “right”, at least for us.
So I may not want to create a perfectly balanced image that retains all the tones and data of the histogram. I may want to crush the blacks to make a moody, low key image. I may want to over brighten the image to make an ethereal scene. It is not written anywhere that the final print must look exactly and faithfully like the original scene.
This is where artistic intent comes in.
It is not numbers
I want to end with the point that we are creating an image, not manipulating numbers. Well, we are manipulating numbers, but that is not what counts. What counts is the look and expressiveness and quality of the finished product.
Photography is the most technical art, but do not be dictated to by the technology. Do not let someone say you can’t do something because the numbers are wrong. All that counts is the final art you create. Emotional response trumps technical excellence. How does it look to you?
Example
The image today is a full histogram spread. Single capture. I think this kind of thing comes out OK. What do you think?
Sometimes we forget that anything created has a creator. Which is greater, the creator or the thing created? Ask yourself this. Which is more important, the art or the artist who created it?
Creation
I’m mainly talking about art or artistic things here. The idea could apply to much larger contexts.
Anything that exists was created, or at least designed, by someone. By saying “someone” I am stating my belief that an AI is not a creator, because it cannot feel inspiration or passion.
Whether it is a picture or a sculpture or music or poetry or a book, it could not exist unless and until an artist created it. In the context I am talking about here, things do not spring into being out of nothing. There was nothing, then an idea formed in the mind of the creator and something was made real.
The creator can do it again
I guess one reason I felt compelled to write this is because I see people behave in ways I consider unthinking. We tend to be enraptured with some work of art as if it was the most wonderful thing in the world. Ignoring the fact that it was created by someone, and that should make them as the creator even more special than the creation.
Yes, if the creator is dead then the work that is left is a singular entity that cannot be duplicated. This would be true of works by Monet or Mozart or Michelangelo. No more will be created. Respect and admire them as unique works of art. and while you’re doing that, consider the genius of the creators who did them.
But the problem I have, even with dead artists, is our tendency to focus on the creation instead of the creator. If you took any work by a living artist and completely smashed it or wiped it out, the artist could create a new one, probably better. Not a replica, but an entirely new work of creation. That is the amazing thing we seem to lose sight of.
The artist created the amazing work we revere. But he can create a new one, maybe better. That puts the creator in the more important role. The created work may be excellent, but the ability of the artist to create it and others is more important.
Way marker
A great work by an artist represents an idea at one point in time. That is, this was what the artist felt and conceived and had the skill to do at the time. Artists grow. Later he might approach a similar work from a whole new point of view or with new materials or techniques he just developed.
So a work by an artist as a young person may be great, but later works show growth and development and change of attitude. The creation of a great piece of art is not a singular event for an artist. That work does not represent the pinnacle of his career or ability. It is just the pinnacle as of then.
The works are way markers along the journey of the artist. Looking back as a retrospective they may change and evolve over the years, along with the artist.
More coming
I think the proper attitude when discovering a piece of art you love is to say “Wow, that is great. I can’t wait to see what you do next!” The artist is the creative engine. The work is the byproduct.
Our attitude should be to encourage and support the artist. To let them continue to tap into their well of creativity and produce new things to amaze the world. If an artist created a great work, it could have been an accident, a one-off. Probably not, though. Greatness seldom comes out of a vacuum.
A great work is evidence that the artist can create great works and we should expect more to come.
I often write about carrying a camera all the time and even using it as a tool to get into a flow state for photography. I just did the opposite. I went off on a 3 day trip with no camera. Well, my phone, but I didn’t use it.
Why take a camera
I have said that having a camera with me gives me license to think photographically. It is true. This technique often helps be get off dead center and get moving.
Most of the time, the feel of a familiar camera in my hand and the click of the shutter propels me into a creative zone. I start seeing possibilities I was overlooking before. After the first frame or 2 things start to flow.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about side trips and excursions. One example I used was taking my wife to the airport then wandering in the eastern Colorado plains. What i didn’t say was that I drove for a couple of hours without “seeing” anything to shoot. Finally I basically forced myself to get out the camera and shoot a couple of frames. After that I “found” over 300 images by the time I got back that evening. About 1 per mile that I drove. Some were quite good. Many more are ones I’m glad I shot, just for the experimental value if nothing else.
On the other hand, I sometimes, but rarely, deliberately leave the camera at home. I mentioned the trip I took last week where I did not take the camera.
There seemed to be a need to back off some. This is unusual for me, but I sometimes get so far behind in my processing that I feel like I am just shooting blindly and loosing touch with my work. And getting un-creative and un-inspired. So I decided to slow down producing images and work more on assimilating what I have already done.
I have slowed down shooting for a couple of weeks, but I haven’t completely stopped. Given that, though, when this short trip came up, I reluctantly talked myself into altogether abstaining by not even taking my camera. It is the first time I have done that for a long time.
OK, it was frustrating at times, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Granted, this was a fast family trip and I knew the weather would be bad. Those things helped. But before it would not have dissuaded me.
In a strange sense, it was kind of liberating to not feel any pressure to take pictures. It did not stop me from practicing composing images in my mind. But since it was impossible to shoot them, it as all just a fun creative exercise.
Recharge
I’m pretty good about having accurate intuition about what I need to do for my physical and mental health. I think I realized I was getting a little burnt out and needed to back off some. This exercising of depriving myself of the opportunity to shoot was actually kind of refreshing.. It was a recharge.
Just the 3 day event was healthy and useful but not enough. I plan to stay slowed down for a few more weeks. It will let me decompress and get back in touch with my current work and what directions I am going. Some of the time can be used to re-evaluate and do some soul searching. And to catch up with culling and filing and processing.
If you are doing intense physical training it is critical to plan in rest days. Otherwise your body breaks down and you do more harm than good. Likewise if you are doing intense mental activities like studying for finals, you have to take breaks to let your brain catch up and process information.
I think it is the same thing with art. We love doing our art. We want to do it. But we need to realize our body and mind need to rest sometimes.
Go off and do something unrelated. Take walks without a camera. Read a book. Write letters – remember paper and pens? Start a journal. These are good for your mind and your creativity. It recharges us and prepares us for the next intense push.
I consider my experiment of leaving my camera at home on that last trip to be a success. Sometimes it is more productive to not do anything.
The image
The image today is one of the ones I shot on that day I described when I took the excursion in eastern Colorado. I like doing portraits of weathered old houses like this. It was probably abandoned during the Dust Bowl days. Nothing but clouds to the horizon.
I didn’t show any pictures from the trip where I didn’t take a camera, because, well, I didn’t take any. 🙂
