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

Flexibility

To my way of thinking, maintaining flexibility in every aspect of photography is the best gift you can give yourself. Avoid limits; avoid boxing yourself in. Try to avoid saying, “I won’t do this” or “I won’t do that”. We all tend to place limits on ourselves unintentionally; let’s not do it intentionally. Of course, whenever you choose the things you’ll do, inevitably you also choose what you won’t do. You can’t photograph everything; you can’t print everything; you can’t experiment with every approach. But you can keep an open mind and you can periodically delve into areas that didn’t attract you previously. Allow that flexibility.

Approaches stressed in earlier chapters—exposing negatives higher on the scale, using the full negative scale available, pushing the histogram to the right, always shooting in RAW for best printing results, using the appropriate printing controls, playing with toners, etc.—expand your flexibility by allowing you to photograph in the widest possible range of lighting conditions, and to make prints with the widest possible approaches. A simple technique like cropping keeps me from being beholden to the shape of the camera format or the lenses available to me at any time. It gives me greater flexibility, thus expanding my artistic possibilities.

When I first walked into Wells Cathedral, I was so overwhelmed by the central arches that I had to walk away, get my bearings, and collect my thoughts before returning to photograph them. I wandered to the far east end of the cathedral, where I was equally overwhelmed by the forest of columns and arches in the retrochoir. They seemed alive and exuberant to me, like fountains or fireworks. It was the first exposure I made in the cathedral before returning to photograph the central arches .

Figure 18-1. Retrochoir, Wells Cathedral

Note

Maintaining flexibility in your approach to any aspect of photography is the best gift you can give yourself .

Don’t be hobbled by thoughts of consistency. Emerson said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” For example, my negatives are wildly inconsistent in average density. Much of that inconsistency is intentional; if I want expanded contrast, I expose the scene in the mid-zones then greatly expand development, yielding a very dense negative, but one with the best possible contrast increase. I can then print those high densities down to the values I desire. So “inconsistent” negatives can produce better prints. That’s the type of flexibility I desire.

What about multiple-negative prints, negative prints, time exposures that may exploit movement, double or multiple exposures, collages, mixed media, or any other type of imagery you can conceive? Try them! Try crazy ideas. Most will fail, but some will work and launch you into new realms of fun and creativity.

Visual Arts

The most obvious place to search for ideas and inspiration is the visual arts. Visit museums and galleries. Look at art books, but don’t just look at the images, read the text as well. Sometimes the thoughts expressed are even more valuable than the imagery. Look beyond photographs to paintings, drawings, lithographs, and sculpture. They all have lessons to teach on composition, lighting, movement, and color. The same philosophical and compositional elements underlie all visual art forms; they are related, and you can learn from any of them.

I suggest emphasizing the study of great photographers of the past—Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Eugène Atget, Bill Brandt, Margaret Bourke-White, Frederick Evans, Josef Koudelka, André Kertesz, Imogen Cunningham, Walker Evans, Josef Sudek, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward and Brett Weston, Minor White, Ernst Haas, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Frederick Sommer—and contemporary photographers. Pay particular attention to those whose field of interest parallels your own, but study the others, too, looking for new ideas and interesting approaches. Don’t become so thoroughly involved in only their subject matter that you can’t learn from their approaches to light, texture, composition, mood, dynamics, and other aspects of seeing and feeling that you can apply to your work.

Be cautious about including illustrated travel books in your studies. There are a number of coffee table books that are exquisite to peruse but that don’t exhibit the highest artistic standards. Enjoy them, as I do, for their exposition of scenic areas, but don’t rely on them for fine photography.

Try to see original prints whenever possible rather than just looking through books. Though the reproduction quality of books has improved greatly, nothing compares to the photographer’s own prints. In the original prints you’ll see not only the composition, but also the tonal richness and the hard to define but easy to see quality of a fine photograph.

Whether you look at books or the originals, please don’t look at photographs or paintings like most people do—flipping through pages or walking slowly past the originals one at a time, looking at everything and seeing nothing. Study them. Even if you have time to study only a few and must miss most of the others, study those few with care. Ask yourself if they are worthy of greatness and look them over carefully before rendering a decision. What does the photograph say to you? Is the composition good? Is it unified? Does it show insight on the part of the photographer? If not, why not? It will prove far more valuable to analyze a few photographs carefully than to peruse dozens of them nonchalantly. It always seems strange to me that so many people go to galleries without knowing how to look at what’s in front of their eyes—and then they come out yawning, bored with their waste of time.

Look for personal appearances by noted photographers, and even by “unknowns” who are yet to be famous. Universities, museums, and galleries often present lecture series in which photographers present their work and discuss their philosophy and approach. These lectures not only give you greater insight into their work, but may also stimulate ideas for your own work. Sometimes a lecturer will state a well-known idea in a slightly different way that “clicks” with your thinking. It could open up new avenues of thought for your work. Alternatively, a lecturer may express ideas with which you thoroughly disagree, but which help you articulate your own ideas more clearly.

Nonvisual Arts

Beyond the obvious benefits of seeing great art (painting, photography, lithography, sculpture, etc.), look to other art forms for insight and inspiration. There’s a long history of music inspired by literature, and there’s no reason photography can’t draw from both literature and music. After all, our life experiences all mold the type of person we are. If we incorporate our understandings and revelations from other art forms, we can expect new insights and new directions. Composers and writers attempt to do much the same thing that photographers do: make personal statements about the world around them. Surely there are lessons to be learned from their efforts.

Music can offer extraordinary insights. I believe that I evolved a greater understanding of subtlety in printing as a result of hearing the intricacies of fine orchestration. I also feel that this understanding has been heightened in recent years through my growing interest in and love of chamber music; when only a few instruments interact, I can hear each of them individually along with their mutual interactions. The interplay of harmonies, counterpoints, rhythms, melodies, and phrases seem to have many counterparts in the interplay of lines, forms, and other photographic qualities.