What do images say about the photographer

[Mike Milton]

Up until now I’ve just been taking snaps of things that interest me. I’ve only just started to learn how to take photographs and think about things like composition, values, background etc. The first lesson I’m learning is that just because I’m fond of the subject doesn’t mean that it will automatically make a good photo

Hmmmm... Well, one can certainly make a technically excellent image of things one is not invested in but, in my experience, one can only make an impassioned image when the subject speaks from and about one's heart.

I often consider a thing by 'working' images of it to see what I think and feel about it.

So, I suspect that fondness is a necessary, if not sufficient, ingredient.

 

[Pete Askew]

Well said Mike. I agree wholeheartedly.

 

[Katherine Lihou]

The second image is stunning! I keep on going back to it for another look, well done and I think B&W is perfect here. I have also been playing with B&W lately, in the past I always preferred color but many images simply work better in B&W.
Rudi

Thanks Rudi

I've just finished a book on B&W photography but it didn't give me much of a clue. The author was talking about seeing things in monochrome but that's very difficult. As a starter I've been going back to past images and trying out quick conversions to B&W in Lightroom. I think that gives a better idea of what works.

I've also been fascinated to learn about the subtleties involved in professional B&W conversions. So much to learn (which always makes me a happy girl ).

I agree, sharpness is not everything, sometimes it is great and helps with an images but sometimes it is not important and can even be a negative. I have sometimes fallen in the "Sharp at all costs" trap, it is great to know how to get that special sharpness but also good to now when to avoid it.

Definitely. I want to learn how to get it when I want it and most of all to learn where best to use it.

But returning to B&W, you said you'd been playing with it lately but I don't remember seeing any examples here. Do you have anything you'd like to share?

Cheers,

Kate

 

[Katherine Lihou]

Hmmmm... Well, one can certainly make a technically excellent image of things one is not invested in but, in my experience, one can only make an impassioned image when the subject speaks from and about one's heart

I'd agree completely, and there are parallels in the other arts. There are many technically brilliant musicians out there without an ounce of feel. They may play a piece 'perfectly' but their work leaves me cold, but obviously, without technique, a musicians' emotions can't be conveyed.

In case I was a bit ambiguous in my last post, what I meant was that I'd taken thousands of photos of invertebrates over the past year simply because I love them. Some to ID, some to draw, but mostly to get a closer look at the fascinating lives they lead, but in all that time I learned very little about photography and only a handful of those images were good photos. So fondness for the subject wasn't sufficient to produce good images.

I often consider a thing by 'working' images of it to see what I think and feel about it.

Very interesting. Do you make the equivalent of thumbnail sketches beforehand like painters do, or do you mean spending time considering or manipulating the images once taken?

So, I suspect that fondness is a necessary, if not sufficient, ingredient.

Most certainly.

Cheers,

Kate

 

[Mike Milton]

Very interesting. Do you make the equivalent of thumbnail sketches beforehand like painters do, or do you mean spending time considering or manipulating the images once taken?

Cheers,

Kate

I mean taking multiple images of a thing and then exploring each not so much as, "which is the best picture?" but but from the perspective of "what does that image say about my relationship to that thing"

This might be done by taking a few shots (or many shots) of a thing at a single time or it might be over days, years or decades.

sometimes the things themselves change, and sometimes I change. A rock is just a rock, until it becomes a portrait - and one you correctly assessed. But *all* pictures are, in some sense a self portrait, and that can be heightened in the manner I suggest.

hmmmm.... perhaps this would be an interesting discussion on its own

 

[Katherine Lihou]

I’d certainly be very interested.

I’ve not been doing photography for very long but have been drawing since I could hold a crayon, and have noticed many parallels between the two artforms. I’m not at all introspective so I've not thought about it before but you got me thinking about why we choose the subjects we do and what that says about us. I’d love to hear what others think about it if you’d like to post a new thread on the subject

Cheers,

Kate

 

[Pete Askew]

This thread picks up a conversation started in a thread about macro photography that explores the relationships between the way a photographer views the world, what is in their mind etc and the subjects that they choose to capture and how they interpret them.

 

[Pete Askew]

I find this whole idea about what our images say about us to be very interesting. Of course it depends on what your favoured sort of photography is, but all of us take shots that have some special personal meaning I'm sure. For some photographic artists this becomes an almost obsessional exploration of their own psyche. For others a subject becomes ever more fascinating the more it is investigated. Maybe, as in Mike's example, a familiar object takes on a new significance after something more is seen in it, maybe triggered by something that has happened. Maybe when reviewing the images you see something you missed before (think of Vic's pictures taken in Auschwitz) and go back and explore that aspect in more depth. I once saw a really interesting portfolio of images taken by a lady of her grandparents house: just small details of things familiar to her taken from a lowish angle as she remembered them as a child. In themselves they were all very nice images (rather like some of Paul's interior shots of Wimpole Hall) but of course to her they had much more significance and, once you knew the background behind them, they changed the view of the outside viewer as well.

As I've discussed before, I have a special interest in decay in the urban environment. And, while the images have a certain aesthetic merit in the patterns and textures, the objects draw me for another reason that I still do not quite understand. Much in the way I was drawn to the fiction of JG Ballard with books like The Drowned World and Vermillion Sands. I have also noticed that I tend to take photographs of faded flowers and of seed heads rather than flowers in bloom. I prefer melancholic portraits (I am not an especially moody or miserable person, honest!) and muted tones. Many of my portraits have the subject looking out of the frame, often looking slightly thoughtful (or is that just bored!). Now the question is, why? I know there are certain things that interest me: certain textures, certain objects and scenarios. I'm not entirely sure, however, what it is. I am certainly interested in the hidden and subjects in which layers are beginning to separate to reveal what lies below always draws me. Maybe the thought behind the look informs my portraits as well.

I have some subjects I have been working on for a while now and intend to move them further forward over the summer which certainly fit the themes above. I will share them soon.

Well, that is my pretentious contribution made for the moment. Of course I don't only take images because of some inner driving force (although all of us are probably coloured by such things in one way or another) and take many images because either I had a camera and the event / subject looked interesting. But the ones I get the most out of fall into a certain type. The examples that spring to mind are the Windswept Land series. These were taken in fairly bright (but windy) conditions but I chose to present them in the way I did because this reflected my feelings towards that landscape much more closely than the literal translation could.

I'm sure my views will shift over time and it would be interesting to hear what other members at least think what drives them to shoot what they do and how their images have changed their views and feelings toward the subjects.

 

[Katherine Lihou]

Like Pete I find this topic very interesting, particularly because I hadn’t thought about it at all until Mike talked about it in relation to the ice-trapped rock. Here are some random thoughts. I’ve talked mostly about drawing as a parallel to photography as I’m so new to the latter.

The subjects I’m interested in are almost identical to those that Pete talked about, and I also have no idea what that says about me or why I shy away from all that’s new and conventionally pretty.

I haven’t done enough photography yet to know what my choice of subject says about me but I think it’s what I *don’t* choose to photograph that reflects what I am at this time. I avoid photographing people or any modern man-made things, which signals a love of old things, nature and solitude.

When I was younger things were quite the opposite. I did a lot of dip pen and ink drawings of imaginary people and creatures done purely for pleasure. I have never once thought of ‘expressing myself’ or making my drawings have any purpose. They were never my babies (a concept I can never understand) and I lost interest in them the moment they were finished. The process was everything. I’ve given them all away but have one etching and a photo of the last one I did but never finished. The photo of it blurs a lot of the detail and there was too much wrong with it to continue but it will illustrate what kind of thing I was doing.

So the drawings had no meaning for me but people used to say they saw all kinds of symbolic things in them. That was fine by me but others had trouble accepting that there was no deeper meaning in them and it seemed important to them that I expressed what was in my mind when I drew them. I could never oblige. I have no hidden depths. They were simply drawings which gave me pleasure.

I first saw Mike’s rock as a lovely image. Then I saw the face and could not unsee it. When I read the story behind the photo, my vision of it was changed again and it became an image of Mike trapped at some past time. When Paul said it reminded him of a satellite photo, the scale of the face was transformed. The same thing happens for me when looking at a painting. The more I know about the creation of it and the artist’s life the more it changes.

Photography has more meaning for me than drawing. Although I now draw simple found objects like feathers and stones I find myself more emotionally attached to my photos, and photography has obsessed me in a way that drawing never did. Not quite sure why that is either

Looking forward to hearing other people’s experiences…

(Blimey, that was long. Do forgive me, I can’t find my editing button at all today )

Cheers,

Kate

 

[Mike Milton]

I used to interact with a bunch of researchers in the area of cognitive science... attention is an interesting mechanism. It is as much, if not more, about excluding / filtering sensory input as it is anything else. Most people likely find this a bit unexpected.

Maps of Meaning is a good book on this topic by Jordan Petersen and he has an interesting series of videos online as well.

So, to me, a photographer's image serves the same purpose as attention... it is about giving a person access to something their own attention process filters but that was meaningful to the photographer.

This is one reason that I do not rail against editing a picture (say, to remove a power line from a landscape)... In fact, the attention process of most viewers will do the same thing. All the photographer is doing is depicting what they see and wish to share.

Consider that beginning photo advice usually contains things like: Don't take pictures of people with tress growing from their heads. This might just as well be said: Don't let your attention system make things you are imaging invisible; see *everything* in the frame.

Why see everything? ... So you can exclude the unwanted. *You* are the attention mechanism of your viewer.

Since attention is driven by meaning / relevance / importance, the result says what you find meaningful / relevant / important.

Importantly, most viewers take the image at face value without knowing it is filtered and can only filter it further... they rarely wonder, wat was left out? They have a long time to look at the image so, typically, they see all of it eventually. They end up in a shared perceptual context with the photographer.