Bruce Barnbaum - The Art of Photography - An Approach to Personal Expression

Years later, Feynman did a similar thing in co-creating the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED). Working alone, he created a series of drawings, known as the Feynman Diagrams, to describe what others were attempting to understand mathematically. His diagrams are still used today (and have been expanded to other fields) to gain insight and explain phenomena that are almost inconceivably difficult to convey any other way. Feynman effectively used art to explain science.

It may come as a real shock that the greatest advances in physics (the hardest of hard sciences) started from intuitive insights, not from purely mathematical or scientific concepts. But it’s true! Scientists often pursue an idea because it feels right to them, so they follow their instincts and uncover extraordinary new truths. Sometimes they’re wrong, as in the case of two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling who hypothesized a single helix form of DNA before James Watson and Francis Crick showed it to be a double helix.

Avoiding Intuition

Photographers in particular (if my own experiences and observations are correct) seem decidedly averse to following their intuition and trying out new ideas, new methods, or new approaches. This is an obstacle that photographers must force themselves to overcome. Avoiding your own instincts in any aspect of photography—seeing, developing, optimizing, printing, etc.—is deadly. It boxes you in. It prevents you from spreading your wings and flying. Even a bird has to start flying. And there’s a time in the life of every bird when it jumps off the edge of its nest or the edge of a cliff and opens its wings for the first time. It’s intuitive. It’s instinctual. But it’s the first time...and it better work! There’s no second chance.

Now, think of the other arts such as painting, sculpting, writing, or composing. How much testing is done? How long do painters spend testing things before they proceed with their work? How could Michelangelo test his slab of marble before producing “David”? How could Shakespeare or Ibsen or Twain or Tolstoy “test” what they were writing—or planning to write—without just sitting down and putting the pen to the paper? Beethoven or Brahms or Rachmaninoff may have played a few bars on the piano while composing, but that doesn’t give a huge amount of insight into an orchestral piece scored for dozens of woodwind, string, brass, and percussion instruments. These artists simply had to proceed with what they were doing. They didn’t—perhaps couldn’t—get sidetracked by testing.

But photographers get hung up on testing. They spend weeks and even months testing materials rather than going out and taking pictures. Does it make them better photographers? Emphatically not! In fact, it’s like hanging a boulder around your neck. It drags you down. It sidetracks you from what’s really important: personal expression, insight, involvement, and excitement with what you see and what you want to say.

Sure, you need some solid information in order to begin. You can’t just pick up a camera and start firing away. After all, you don’t want to load the film backwards (especially if it has an impenetrable paper backing). Nor can you go into a traditional darkroom or sit in front of the computer screen without some basic knowledge of what to do there. But don’t carry it to the extreme of putting aside creativity for the sake of scientific perfection and absolute understanding of every possible variable before you proceed. You’re definitely hurting yourself if you adopt that approach.

Understanding and Misunderstanding Intuition

Perhaps the real problem that prevents people from relying on their intuition is a misunderstanding of what intuition really means. When Einstein started to think about what ultimately became the theory of relativity, he had some real insights into the issue. The same applies to Feynman when he created his diagrams as a way of explaining deeply vexing problems. Both scientists were fully immersed in the field, understood what was being considered, and were fully aware of scientific understandings to that point. In other words, because they were deeply involved in the issues they were probing, they were able to proceed by applying intelligent “gut feelings” to their own research, allowing them to go where nobody had ever gone before.

Note

Even a bird has to start flying. There’s a time when it jumps off the edge of its nest and opens its wings for the first time. It’s intuitive. It’s instinctual. But it’s the first time...and it better work! There’s no second chance .

Unfortunately, some people think that intuition is something that’s hanging in the air, like magic. That’s not what intuition is. Just as a fine chef instinctively knows that certain ingredients will work together to create a superlative dish while others may fight one another, intuition comes from deep personal interest and involvement, as well as a high degree of knowledge and experience.

My dictionary defines intuition as “the immediate knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reason; instantaneous apprehension”. Intuition is not only an immediate thing, but it comes from a great understanding of closely related or analogous issues. Intuition surfaces when you’re familiar with and deeply involved with the situation at hand. It occurs when you have already given a lot of thought to the subject, so much so that it’s really a part of you. You can’t have intuitive notions about something you don’t know, something that’s foreign to you, or something with which you’ve had little prior interaction.

In photography, this translates into a true bond between you and the subject matter you photograph. It’s the same in all other fields. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, if you asked a noted orator like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Winston Churchill to make a speech on quilting, he would fail because he had no interest or insight into that issue. But in their areas of expertise, King or Churchill would knock your socks off with rhetoric and insight. The moral of the story is, you’ve got to be deeply involved and interested in the things you’re photographing, and you’ve got to have some basic feel for how you want to depict them.

Beyond that, you need a deep respect for what you’re photographing. Without that respect, something is lacking; and believe it or not, your audience can see right through it. I photograph landscapes because I feel a very close kinship with nature. Furthermore, I’m frustrated by the way humanity is destroying nature on the only planet we’ll ever have to support us. That explains why I’ve photographed things like clearcuts (Figure 1-1); not because I respect the clearcut, but because I respect nature so much that I need to show how destructive we can be in an effort to change our ways.

The greatest portraitists deeply respect the people they choose to photograph. By putting their respect together with their lighting and compositional skills, they produce insightful portraits of their subjects. Intuitively, you know what turns you on—the things that you’re drawn to, that you respect, and that you work with best.

In the darkroom or at the computer screen, you need a basic idea of the image you want to create and some knowledge of the methods you’re using to get to that goal. You can’t make a final image if you don’t know the processes involved, but you can’t waste your time testing everything before you apply your knowledge and make the final image.

Examples of the Intuitive Approach

As a simple example, two people go into a landscape. One creates photographs with soft, light pastel tones or colors, while the other creates images with deep, rich tonalities and glowing highlights. It all depends on how you viscerally respond to the scene. That’s both vision and intuition.