|
Some More Advanced Photographic
Skills
by Chuck Doswell
Latest update: 20 May 2002: fixed some errors in the discussion
about f-stops ... thanks to Quinn Cheung for pointing
them out!
Notice:
This material is copyrighted by Chuck Doswell. Any commercial
use of it in any medium without his expressed written consent
is a violation of Federal Copyright Law. Please contact
him for permission to use it. All photographs are copyrighted,
as well, so any use of these images, commercial or not,
without permission will be liable to prosecution under Federal
copyright law. Save all of us the hassle of litigation and
get my permission.
If you've already looked over my Basic
Elements of Photography, and are now equipped with an
understanding of the medium of photography ... a camera
plus film ... you are perhaps now prepared to go about using
this information to produce better photographs than ever
before. Hopefully, this follow-up essay will provide you
with some idea of what it takes to achieve your goals. What's
important to realize at the outset is that your photographic
goals are yours, not someone else's!! What
you want to accomplish with your photographs is entirely
up to you!
I deliberately used the word "medium"
... a camera and film is quite analogous with brush, paint,
and canvas ... or hammer, chisel, and stone ... or a word
processor ... or any other tool for self-expression. Photography
is much more than simply recording what's in front of you.
The creative side of photography is associated with making
your images say something, to you and hopefully to others.
You can draw inspiration and ideas from other photographers,
but your notion of what your images should show is where
creativity comes in to the process. In effect, I think of
it as a game I'm playing, and it's up to me to score the
results. Of course, if you want your images to sell,
then you must please someone else besides yourself, and
that's a matter I'm not going to discuss here.
Since I'm primarily an outdoor photographer,
I can only talk in specific terms about what it takes to
accomplish the things that I do with a camera. This is also
not something I'm going to discuss at length here. I have
some brief photo tips
for outdoor photographers, but they are only sketchy,
at best. Some of what I am saying applies primarily to outdoor
photography, of course. What I want to do here is talk about
the general things that any photographer will need to know
to improve his or her results.
a. The quality of light
As I suggested in my discussion of the
Basic Elements, a photograph is the result of combining
the camera and film with incoming light. It is correctly
said that photography can be thought of as "painting with
light" and so a critical aspect of the process is learning
to understand light and how it interacts with subjects.
Using natural light for outdoor photography involves an
awareness of how a subject appears under different types
of lighting conditions: the nearly horizontal illumination
of sunrise and sunset, the nearly vertical light of midday,
and the flat, diffused light of a cloudy day. Direct sunlight
is very directional ... it creates strong shadows
and bright highlights. The light from a cloudy sky, on the
other hand, is very non-directional. It seems to come from
everywhere, casts no shadows, and creates no highlights.
The image on the left was shot in bright
sunlight, showing the strong contrast associated with such
light. The image on the right was shot on a cloudy day ...
the transparency film I use responds well to color on cloudy
days.
 ..
Indoors, the light from tungsten light
bulbs is very different from incoming light from outdoors,
and is also very different from fluorescent light. The human
brain tends to see colors as relatively constant. We've
evolved so that we tend to see colors as the same under
a wide variety of ambient light. Film, however, is not coupled
to a brain that can "compensate" for the different quality
of light. In that sense, the film is "objective" ... given
the same light, it always reacts the same way (or at least,
that's the goal of the film manufacturer). Thus, the film
does not see color as nearly constant. Rather, it's
very sensitive to the quality of the light and can
react very differently when the light falling on the subject
changes.
A photographer must train him/herself
to recognize the character of the light used to illuminate
the subject. Further, the photographer must know how the
equipment (camera&film) will react to that particular
type of light. There are films that can compensate for some
types of light ... for instance, it's possible to buy a
"tungsten-balanced" film that can be used in tungsten light
and still produces an image with colors that look more or
less the same as when shot with outdoor daylight. However,
there are limits to the variety of films one can buy.
Let me digress a moment into the physics
of light. All light is emitted from something. Outdoors,
it is the sun. Indoors, it's some form of illumination like
tungsten or fluourescent bulbs. The temperature of
what is emitting the light determines the character of that
light. If light comes from a laser, it is often monochromatic
... that is, it is light composed of a single wavelength
of color. However, sunlight is far from monochromatic, as
are most light sources. Everyone is familiar with the idea
that sunlight is actually a mixture of many colors.
We can
see those colors separated when sunlight passes through
a prism, producing the familiar "rainbow" of different colors.
Sunlight is seen as "white" because our eyes have evolved
under sunlight. The temperature of whatever is emitting
the light determines the overall color, however. That is,
the temperature determines where in the spectrum the peak
is found. Sunlight is emitted from the surface of the sun
with a temperature of about 5000 deg C, and the corresponding
peak in the spectrum of sunlight is in the yellow-green
part of the "rainbow".
A glowing tungsten filament in an ordinary
lightbulb has a temperature much lower than the surface
of the sun, so it glows with a spectral peak at much longer
wavelengths ... that is, it appears redder than sunlight.
When shooting daylight-balanced film when objects are illuminated
with tungsten light, everything comes out with a reddish-orange
cast, because the light from a tungsten bulb is "warmer"
(redder) than sunlight.1 Our brain compensates
for this reddish illumination, so colors appear more or
less the same to us when viewed in the light of a lightbulb.
The film, however, can only render the image according
to the light it receives. Sometimes, this effect of giving
things a reddish-orange cast is desirable, other times it's
not. It depends, as always, on your goals as a photographer.
1 It is also true that at
sunrise and sunset, light is "redder" than at midday, because
of the filtering properties of the atmosphere, so objects
illuminated by the setting or rising sun are "warmer" than
at midday. This notion of "warmth" being equated to "redness"
is actually the opposite of what physics is telling
us about the light. Red light is actually associated with
colder temperatures than white light ... a piece of iron heated
to "red" heat is actually cooler than when the iron is heated
to "white" heat! "Blue" heat is even hotter than "white" heat,
physically, but it seems "colder" to the eye. This is just
a quirk of the English language.
Note that every film has a "color palette"
... different films render the same scene differently. There
might be some objective way to measure the color of the
light that comes to the camera, but what is "truth" in photography
is a matter of some considerable debate. I don't want to
wander off into philosophy here, so I just want to remind
new photographers that the choice of film is a crucial one.
Since there is no film that renders "truth," the choice
of film becomes a matter of creative control. What's pleasing
to you about how a particular film renders a subject/light
situation may not be pleasing to someone else. There are
many different film choices and some of them have very specialized
uses (for shooting in tungsten light, for capturing infrared
images, etc.).
In the following images, the one on the
left was shot outdoors with tungsten-balanced film late
in the evening (when the light is relatively "warm"). The
result is a "cool" image, with an overall blue cast. Using
PhotoShopTM, the image
on the right has been manipulated to look more or less like
what it would have been had the photo been shot with daylight-balanced
film. It's easy to see that the image is "warmer" than the
other, and is closer to the actual appearance of the scene
to my eyes. at least as I now remember it. The photographer's
choice determines which image is most pleasing to the photographer.
Which do you prefer?
 |
 |
It's also possible to compensate for the
"temperature" of light with filters. If the light
appears too "warm" for the desired effect, a compensating
"cooling" filter can alter the resulting image to what is
desired. Similarly, if the light is too "cold" for the shot
desired, a "warming" filter can be employed. However, there
are limits to what can be accomplished with filters. No
amount of filtering can cause midday sunlight to look like
sunrise or sunset ... a filter might alter the image in
a way that looks unnatural to the eye of the beholder. Unless
it's desired to produce an unnatural look, it might
be better to wait and shoot the image under more favorable
light. Of course, if you bought tungsten-balanced film for
shooting indoors and are forced to finish the roll of film
in bright sunlight for some reason, a filter can bring the
results back to something like normal, but this is an unusual
situation. Filters have the disadvantage of introducing
another optical element between the subject and the film,
which can be detrimental to sharpness of the results. My
sense of using filters is that they should be used sparingly,
if at all.
Most flash units are designed to have
a "color" that mimics daylight. It's "colder" than a lightbulb
and so daylight-balanced film reacts well to flash-produced
light. Fluorescent lighting, on the other hand, looks "green"
to daylight-balanced film, requiring a filter that appears
"purple" to compensate. Experience will help you deal with
the particular forms of lighting that you typically encounter
in your work. In summary, if you aren't getting the response
you want from the equipment (camera plus film) you are are
using, you can alter the outcome by:
- using filters
- changing the color balance of the film
- using a flash
- shooting the subject under different
lighting conditions
b. Depth of field and accounting for
motion
There are many issues tied to the
use of the combination of f-stop (aperture) and shutter
speed. Simply relying on the automatic exposure mode of
modern cameras will often result in unsatisfactory photographs.
I've already discussed the major components of this topic
in my "Basic Elements" essay, so I'll not dwell on them
here. However, it's worth noting that a substantial amount
of creative control is associated with balancing the aperture
and the shutter speed to achieve a particular result. A
camera with through-the-lens (TTL) viewing (as opposed to
a rangefinder-type camera) that has the capability to stop
down the lens to the pre-set aperture to allow the photographer
to see the depth of field directly is an important
feature. If it's important that particular elements of the
subject be in (or out of) focus to achieve the desired image,
this is indeed critical to the shot. It's possible to use
the approximate depth of field marks on the focusing
ring, but these are no substitute for accurate knowledge
of the depth of field obtained from a depth of field preview
through the lens.
 In the following images,
for the one on the left, I wanted everything from the front
of the image to the back be within the depth of field. Given
the extreme variations in the light levels and the movement
of the water, this was a tricky shot.
 For the image on the
right, the "busy" background would have been a distraction
and I wanted it to be out of focus. Since it was taken in
very bright sunlight, this also was a tricky shot, because
small f-stops (large aperture) needed for minimal
depth of field require short exposure times ... with the
bright light, it was difficult with my equipment to get
the right exposure. I ended up using a neutral density filter
to cut down the light intensity.
Let me discuss the so-called hyperfocal
distance. If you've determined the nearest and the farthest
elements that must be in focus, there may
be an f-stop on your lens that permits both the nearest
and the farthest elements to be within the depth of field
(i.e., where they appear to be more or less in focus). For
that particular f-stop, there is a focal distance
you set on your focusing ring that puts both the nearest
and farthest elements within the chosen depth of field ...
this is the hyperfocal distance. It is not generally
halfway in between the extreme values! You can get some
idea of the hyperfocal distance from the depth-of-field
marks on your lens (as illustrated
in Basic Elements) ... the figure shows that at f/16,
everything between about 2.7 meters (about 9 feet) and "infinity"
(€) is in focus, but the hyperfocal distance is at 5 meters
(about 16.5 feet)! Generally speaking, the hyperfocal distance
is much closer to the camera than the halfway point between
the nearest and farthest objects within the depth of field
for that aperture on that lens. There is some variation
among lenses, and generally speaking, wide angle lenses
have the greatest depth of field, whereas telephotos have
the least.
It is not always possible to achieve the
depth of field you want. As available light decreases (and
the use of most filters reduces the available light by at
least 1/2 an f-stop or more), wider apertures and/or
slower shutter speeds must be used to achieve a proper exposure.
If the available light requires a slower shutter speed,
subject movement (perhaps by the wind) will necessitate
some minimum shutter speed and at that particular shutter
speed, the lens may not be able to give the photographer
enough depth of field to achieve a desired result. In my
experience with outdoor photography, this is common enough
to be a discouraging issue ... if you can't get enough depth
of field, you simply don't take the shot. In a studio, the
lighting can be controlled to some extent, and there usually
is not any problem with wind. Or it may be that the subject
is not moving, so you can simply slow down the shutter speed
to whatever will give you the proper exposure. But wait!
At very long exposures, you may run into the dreaded
reciprocity failure (see Basic
Elements), giving undesirable color shifts to the shot.
Remember, reciprocity failure is a function of the film,
not of the camera.
c. Exposure latitude
A major challenge to photography is the
contrast within some subject/light combinations. As noted
in the Basic Elements discussion, latitude is a property
of the film. Experienced photographers know that contrast
can provide considerable drama to an image, but there are
limits to what the film can capture of that contrast. A
common way to address this issue when the scene being photographed
is more contrasty (has more latitude) than the film can
handle is to use a graduated neutral density filter to "hold
back" the light in the very brightest parts of the image.
Such a filter is dark on one side and essentially transparent
on the other, with a transition zone in between. They come
in various levels of darkness, usually measured in f-stops:
for instance, a "two-stop" graduated neutral density filter
will hold back the bright parts of the subject by two full
stops. The "neutral" part of the description says that the
dark part has neutral color ... it adds no color of its
own. Some gray filters have a slight color shift that may
or may not be pleasing.
 The filter used with the left-hand
image has a slight red shift, but the result is not altogether
unpleasant. In order to see some of the grass and to make
out the road, a two-stop graduated gray filter was used
to keep the clouds from being overexposed. Without the filter,
it would have been impossible to expose both the clouds
and the foreground to show some detail in both areas.
A number of challenges is associated
with these graduated filters. If the bright part of the
subject is separated from the dark part by a boundary that
is more complex than a relatively simple line, the result
is an image that has part of the dark section darkened as
well.This may not be pleasing because it looks fake. Another
problem occurs when the graduated part of the transition
is misplaced either too high or too low relative to the
boundary separating light from dark parts of the subject
... this also looks fake.
More subtle issues with these filters
can arise. The shot at right has a great deal of contrast
and it was tempting to use the graduated gray filter to
hold back the light from the clouds. However, if I had used
the filter, the clouds would be as dark or darker than their
reflection. This would look unnatural and so I had to live
with the narrow latitude of the slide film I use. I bracketed
the exposure (see below) and this was the best overall exposure.
Although the use of graduated gray filters
allows the film to capture what you can see with your eye
in situations with strong contrast, the use of them can
be overdone. My recommendation is to be sparing with their
use.
Another way to "darken" the sky is with
a polarizing filter. This filter is one I use quite often,
as it enhances the contrast between the clouds and the sky.
The image on the left (below)
was shot with the polarizer on a short
telephoto lens, to exaggerate the depth of the image. The
image on the right was shot with a wide angle lens and shows
a potential issue with polarizers ... the sky is polarized
to a different extent in different parts of the sky, depending
on the direction with respect to the sun. Minimum polarization
is either facing directly toward or away from the sun; maximum
polarization is at right angles to the minimum. In this
image, the variation of polarization can be seen. Sometimes
this is acceptable, at other times, it's not.
Note that reflections of sun/skylight
from a water surface (or a highway) are often highly polarized,
and so the use of a polarizing filter can reduce those reflections.
Again, this may or may not be what you want to happen.
d. Equipment
Beginning photographers mostly start out
with more or less "standard" cameras and film, usually of
the relatively inexpensive sort. This is not a bad
thing!! Until you know what your equipment won't
allow you to do, there's simply no point in buying an expensive
camera kit. Some photographers can afford to buy high-priced
gear right away, but if they stick with photography, they'll
wind up replacing most of it anyway. The trick is to find
out what the limitations of your equipment are in
terms that have meaning to the goals of your photography.
If you don't like what automatic exposure does for the things
you're trying to accomplish, then you must find equipment
that has at least a manual control option. If you find out
you need flash equipment beyond that which comes
with many inexpensive cameras, then you should buy
it. Don't let a salesperson talk you into expensive gear
until you've had a lot of experience. I recommend
your first camera be something simple. Explore the limits
of its capability in terms of shutter speed, aperture, lens
capability, and so on. Try different kinds of film ... especially
transparency (slide) film vs. print film. You decide what
you want your equipment to do and then see if you can find
equipment that does what you want.
A camera+film has many limitations, but
only some of them can be easily fixed. There are some things
you might want to do that would require huge efforts (and
lots of expense!) to overcome, if they can be overcome at
all. The ingenuity of humans in solving problems allows
photographers with experience to achieve results that seem
dazzling to those with little or no experience. Your
goal in photography is to find out what you can't
do with your present gear that you want to be able
to do, and then seek gear that will enable you to get those
images. This may entail some experimentation, naturally.
No single solution fits every situation, so you may have
several pieces of gear to help you get the images you want
in different circumstances. At the risk of belaboring the
point, the gear you buy depends totally on what you're trying
to do. If you still don't know what you want from photography,
you probably shouldn't be buying much in the way of gear
... cheap gear will serve most of your purposes. Most photographers
find a "niche" that appeals to them ... as outdoor photography,
with an emphasis on what's going on in the sky, appeals
to me. I don't care very much about how my "snapshots" come
out and I really like shooting color. I don't shoot black
and white images anymore. And so on. You probably have some
reason for being interested in photography, and that will
drive your gear selection.
| 3. Practice, Practice, Practice |
Photography is very much an exercise in
learning. It's certainly possible to read photography books
that are useful and interesting, but the most important
part of learning photography is to do it!
You can learn the technical side of photography by reading,
but the creative side can't be learned from a book (or a
Web essay). If you need to, take careful field notes about
your shutter speed, f-stop, focusing distance, and
so on, so that you know what you did when you review
the results. It is important to understand that virtually
any photographer can occasionally get an outstanding
photograph, more or less by accident. What you want is the
ability to obtain consistently satisfactory results. It's
not possible to become so good, however, that every
shot you take will be a winner. Far from it. Part of the
fun of photography is the happy accidents that occur, even
for experienced photographers. But to get a large number
of successful images, you'll wind up rejecting an even larger
number of failed experiments. Like many other endeavors,
quality photography springs from mastering the basics, not
some bag of "magic tricks". Therefore, when you get your
photographs back to review, you need to ask yourself the
following questions about every shot:
- What do I like about this image?
- What do I not like about this
image?
- What aspect of the process resulted
in something I like?
- What went wrong to produce something
I don't like?
If you have no idea what you did
.. as when you used the automatic features of your camera
... you have no basis for improving on your shots.
Accordingly, you might need to record information about
each and every shot for a while. At some point, you may
become experienced enough to know what works and what doesn't
work, so when you take a shot, you're trying to test some
very specific idea about how to work the subject to achieve
some desired outcome. Then, the actual outcome provides
you with obvious feedback about your experiment ... the
other, more basic aspects of the shot were taken for granted
because you mastered those basic elements much earlier.
I don't often miss the exposure of my images anymore. The
only times I do is either when my camera malfunctions or
when I'm very uncertain about the situation.
A classic way to get feedback is to try
different strategies. If you're not sure how the exposure
should be set, try bracketing the exposure
... this is a process of shooting at least 3 shots of the
same subject: one that is right at the exposure you think
is likely to be best, one that is 1/2 or one full stop less
exposure than your guess at the best exposure, and one that
is 1/2 or one full stop more exposure than your best
guess. This has at least two benefits. First, you're more
likely to get a shot with the proper exposure than if you
only shoot once. Second, you'll learn more about what is
a proper exposure in the conditions where you typically
shoot. It's a relatively simple way to learn and after some
time, you can shoot just one shot with more confidence that
you're going to get the desired image.
In the same way, if you're not sure how
much depth of field you want, try some different combinations
and review the results. You should be developing a feel
for what works in your mind, and eventually, you'll recognize
right away that a particular subject calls for a particular
depth of field combination.
Good photographers do a lot of
experimentation all the time, and aren't afraid to use film
extravagantly, if necessary. It's not just a process of
random guessing and hoping that something good will
happen, though. The idea is to maintain a constantly growing
basis for being able to anticipate how your (camera+film)
combination is going to react to a particular combination
of subject and lighting. If you can anticipate the
results of your action, you're always more likely to get
what you want than if you're just guessing wildly and randomly.
This brings me naturally to my next topic.
Photographers with experience and the
capacity to anticipate how the camera/film combination is
going to react have the opportunity to visualize how the
shot is going to turn out. This is an exceedingly powerful
capability, available only through experience. Reading books
and going to lectures will not get you there! You need to
know precisely how to achieve your goals in photography,
and no one else has the capacity to see the world through
your eyes (actually, it's the combination of your eyes and
your brain, but we'll get to that later). By being able
to visualize, you can avoid wasting your time and film on
shots that simply aren't going to work. Snapshot amateur
photographers are often disappointed with their images because
what they saw with their eye was not captured by the camera.
In many cases, it might not have been possible for an experienced
professional to capture on film what someone can see with
their eyes. At times, being an experienced photographer
is associated with knowing when not to shoot an apparently
exciting subject, because one's equipment simply can't achieve
the desired result.
On the other hand, an experienced photographer
can capture terrific shots in situations where most snapshot
photographers wouldn't even try. It's a truism that most
snapshot photographers are trying to record what their eyes
(and brain) are seeing without knowing anything about their
equipment, so they achieve mediocre results most of the
time. Anyone can get a great shot if they shoot enough images,
but only an experienced photographer with the ability to
visualize the response of the medium to the situation will
consistently get superior results.
Another aspect to visualization is being
able to imagine the composition of the shot .. the
issue of the placement of subject matter within the image.
When using a TTL camera, you're seeing more or less what
the film is going to record. Most TTL viewfinders show a
bit less than 100% of the actual image, so the resulting
shot will have just a bit more of the scene than what's
shown in the viewfinder. Composition is an important component
of the art of photography, just as it is in painting. There
are no hard and fast rules here but photography books offer
some guidelines ... I'm not going to repeat them here. Instead,
I'll say that if you shoot images where the composition
looks pleasing to you, chances are quite good that
it will look good to someone else, but almost certainly
will not please everyone. Remember ... who's keeping
score?
In my outdoor photography, I often stop
somewhere with a specific shot in mind that I visualized
as I viewed the scene. However, it only takes a few minutes
to shoot the first thing I visualized. In most cases, I
don't just pack up my cameras and gear and move on after
getting that first shot. I try other things that I know
have worked in the past: a vertical format instead of a
horizontal, a different exposure, or depth of field, or
whatever. But I don't stop there. In my experience, if I
keep my attention only on what initially drew my attention
to the scene, I'll miss some great opportunities. I often
turn around 180 degrees and see what's going on in the opposite
direction from my first shot. If I saw something in the
distance that attracted my attention, I'll look around after
my first shot, and see what's going on nearby ... or vice-versa.
I try wide-angles, if my first shot used a telephoto ...
or vice-versa. Often, the first thing I shot turns out so-so,
and it's the subsequent images that become my favorites.
Experience can reduce the technical uncertainty associated
with your images ... getting the focus and exposure correct,
for example ... but the outcome of photography also contains
an inevitable element of uncertainty. If I knew precisely
how every shot was going to turn out, photography would
become boring ... merely a matter of recording my pre-visualizations.
Every photographer loves the experience of going through
their processed images and coming across an image that makes
them go "Wow!" when their expectations were low. I believe
that a photographer's subconscious control is the primary
cause of these unexpected happy results, even though the
conscious mind was not expecting such a good outcome. Having
said this, I maintain that experience is the way a photographer
increases the frequency of happy accidents, and learning
to pre-visualize results is still important.
On the left, below, is an image that I
shot with relatively low expectations and was very surprised
and happy to see how well it turned out. On the right is
one I expected to be pleasing, and it turned out
that way.
I believe that the most important skill
a photographer has is the ability to combine visualization
with something else, called "seeing" the shot. Everyone
looks, but not everyone sees, and I find that
my photography gives me the ability to notice things that
most people ignore. The quality of the light. The subtle
interplay between textures. The way the light brings out
some feature and hides another. A "tension" between different
parts of a scene. A beautiful "vignette" within an otherwise
boring or even ugly scene. Something dramatic amidst a host
of ordinary objects. My photographer's "eye" is not just
what I'm looking at ... rather, it's what the combination
of my eye and my brain have "seen" that others miss.
When I first come to a place, something
provided the initial attraction, but after the first
shot, then I can really begin to "see" a place. Often, hours
can pass and I'm still there, "seeing" more and more interesting
things as time passes. I call it "getting into" a place.
The same can happen in a studio or wherever. The experience
doesn't always happen, though. Either the subject isn't
worthy of continuing attention or the photographer's mood
is wrong. Once in a while, I seem to have a transcendental
experience during my photography ... I and the subjects
seem to come together in some sort of synergy, and I find
it hard to leave. I search out and find shot after shot,
and the sense of union with the situation can be overpowering.
For me, this is an essential component in my continuing
interest in the art and craft of photography. "Seeing" is
a critical part of being a photographer and, for me, it
only reaches its peaks when I'm actively engaged in photography.
Casual snapshot photography doesn't do it. Under the right
situations, though, I seem to be able to outdo my conscious
planning, and something primal and below the conscious level
takes over.
This "photographer's eye" may not be something
that can be learned. It might be that some people just do
it better than others ... a skill with which they were born.
I don't necessarily think that genetics is the whole
issue, however. I believe that if you set out to "see,"
you can improve your "seeing" ability through photography.
The need to visualize how your medium will react naturally
increases your sensitivity to things that most people don't
care anything about. I believe my "seeing" ability has changed
over the years, as I've done more photography. I think the
work I'm doing now is substantially better than that which
I did 20 years ago ... and remember, it's mostly up to me
to "keep the score"!!
What's satisfying to me is the positive
reactions people have to my images. I believe myself to
be something of a romantic with my photography. I don't
simply record what's in front of me. I "see" things that
seem to "resonate" with something inside me, and I try to
record what I "see" in my photographs. I enjoy it when my
images create emotional reactions in the viewers, and that's
a goal of any artist, I think ... to have one's work elicit
some emotional response in the viewer. In some cases, I
think my viewers see in my images what I saw and so when
they react positively, it is to the vision I had when I
visualized the image. I'm trying to get a reluctant medium
to record what I'm "seeing" when I engage in my photography.
And I find that I can't turn off my "seeing" ...
it goes on whether I have a camera or not. Out of all the
images I've "seen," I've only recorded a tiny fraction of
them on film. But each day of "seeing" is a sort of practice
for my photography, even if I leave my camera at home and
never take a shot.
The pictures below are things that I looked
at with other people, but only I "saw" them as things worthy
of photographing. You can decide for yourself about my opinion,
but I like these!
I've been asked several times about what
type of film gives the most "truthful" color rendition.
Here's my response:
"Truth" in color photography is not a
topic for objectivity, in general. Yes, there is
a color spectrum associated with any combination of subject
and the light that is illuminating it. That spectrum might
have some objective manifestation in terms of its expression
... if you could somehow create an image that had
exactly that same spectrum as the light falling on your
eyes and on the film, through the lens. Note that the color
we see when viewing a transparency or a print depends on
the light illuminating the image! A spectral representation
could be approximated very crudely by photographing
objects on B&W film through color filters and then combining
them in the proper amounts (and knowing what amounts of
each to use in the combination is tricky) ... but (a) it's
only a crude reproduction of the spectrum, and (b) it's
a lot of work to get a dubious result. This method
is roughly analogous to what's called a "color separation"
in the printing process.
There is no film that renders
color "truthfully" ... all color film imposes
its unique color palette on the objects captured with that
film. Moreover, the human brain processes incoming light
... our color vision is not so simple as a camera. Therefore,
what we see is actually a processed image!!
My internal processing may be different from yours,
so it's not obvious we could ever agree on the representation
of what we each see with our own, independent processors
(i.e., brains). I think I understand the goal associated
with seeking "truth" in photography, but it's an impossible
goal with any film. Human perception of color is
plagued with subjectivity. Actually, the subject of human
color vision is an interesting one in its own right. But
I digress ...
I think if you like the way a certain
film behaves, that's about the only justification that matters.
Since each type of film renders color uniquely, you just
need to settle on something that serves your needs.
I recommend avoiding any suggestion of a sense of "truth"
associated with the color of any images captured on a particular
film ... as I've noted, such a goal is beyond our grasp.
As desirable as "truth" in imagery might be, as both an
artist and a scientist, it's pretty clear to me that
film is not a medium to capture it.
In the final analysis, what I recommend
is that you try a bunch of different films. Photograph the
same subject under conditions as nearly as identical as
possible with different films, look at the result, and decide
which you prefer. You might want to use different films
for different situations, or you might find one film that
handles most everything you do equally well. Experimentation
is at least consistent with the scientific method, but your
decision is bound to be a subjective, personal one. As both
an artist and a scientist, I see no need to apologize for
that.
With transparency (slide) film, what you
see is what you get, sort of (subject to the limitations
already noted). With print film, another process ... the
printing ... is interposed between the subject and the image.
Print film (i.e., the negative film you use in the camera)
has more latitude than transparency film (see Photo
Basics), but printing is a whole new world all to itself.
Many new variables come into play when making a print from
the negative that comes out of the camera. It's actually
quite comparable to PhotoShopTM
processing! So what is reality?
Now that you've
completed this presentation, you may want to move on to
another that discusses some more advanced skills you will
need as a photographer.
Feedback? Suggestions?
Corrections? Useful information? Send me an e-mail!
Further
Reading:
Outdoor
Photography Advice
Some Basic Elements of
Photography
Some More Advanced Photgraphic
Skills
Lightning Photography
|
