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

We must be able to distill from the scene those elements that can translate to a visual image capable of conveying the desired mood. This involves the elements of composition discussed in the previous chapter, along with the elements of understanding of your own viewpoint discussed in Chapter 1. By combining your perceptions of the scene with your reactions to it, then using the tools of photography to present your interpretation to the viewer, you may be able to convey the mood you actually felt. You may even be able to heighten that mood.

The mirror reflection transformed the 500-year-old quarry—perhaps the source of some of Michelangelo’s greatest statues—into a kaleidoscope. Without the reflection, the photograph would have lacked the explosive force. To produce the effect, the reflection is printed at significantly higher contrast and much lighter than it would have been without darkroom manipulation. This is not the scene I saw, but one I created through exposure, development, and printing.

Figure 4-2. Arni Marble Quarry

As it turns out, most people are stuck at the level of “reproducing” or “being true to” the scene. True photographers go well beyond the scene, using it as a springboard for their own creative/interpretive goals. If your goal is to capture nothing more than what you’ve seen, your opportunities for creativity are limited. Those who take pictures without looking at the compositional elements or thinking about the final print (or those who shoot because the husband or wife said that we really should have a shot of this!) are just taking snapshots. Rarely do passing tourists think about lighting, or how the light will change in another hour or tomorrow morning. Rarely do they consider the underlying elements of composition. Usually, the motivation is to shoot now because they won’t be there later, so “better get it now!” Too often that attitude leads to exceptionally boring snapshots.

Note

While you’re behind the camera—standing at the scene—you’re thinking about how to print that photograph.

I suggest that it’s better to have a good memory of a wonderful scene than a bad photograph of it, which will eventually become your memory of it. If you’re willing, able, and desirous of going beyond the scene, your creative potential is unlimited. Not only can you show the viewer what is important to you, you also can create whole new worlds. Minor White said, “We photograph something for two reasons: for what it is, and for what else it is.” Those are words to live by.

Creative photographers realize that conditions may not be ripe for an effective photograph even while they enjoy the most magnificent scenes. Ansel Adams did not photograph Yosemite Valley every time he was there, though I am sure he marveled at it each time. He photographed when extraordinary conditions made it photographically meaningful.

Step 4: Planning a Strategy for a Final Print

The final step of visualization is planning a strategy for achieving your final print. This involves determining your optimal exposure and development of the transparency, negative or digital capture, along with the method of printing it to achieve your goals. This means, in essence, that while you’re behind the camera—standing at the scene—you’re thinking about how to print that photograph in the traditional or digital darkroom. (The technical aspects of these considerations are found in Chapter 8–Chapter 11.)

At first, the notion of thinking about the printing process while standing behind the camera may strike you as distinctly odd, or maybe even distinctly impossible. In fact, it’s essential. You’ve done much of the work already: you decided to set up your camera at a specific point in space and aimed it in a specific direction with a carefully chosen focal length lens. You may have put a filter on that lens to help achieve your desired image. You chose an exposure (i.e., a combination of aperture and shutter speed) to properly record the image and determined how to develop that negative (for black-and-white film). Digitally, you may have made more than one exposure for full capture, so you must think of how to combine them into the final image. So the only remaining decision is how you’ll print it. Once you learn to do that, you’ll be mapping out a complete strategy from beginning to end for achieving the image you want. You’ll be integrating the whole process rather than doing it piecemeal.

This is how art is done. It’s impossible to imagine Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, or Shostakovich writing random notes for a major composition without a rather complete feel for the entire work. It would be equally impossible to imagine Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, or Twain starting any major book or play without a complete idea of where the writing is going and how it will get there. Did Michelangelo start hacking away at a hunk of marble without envisioning a final product? Do you think Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, or O’Keeffe started dabbing paint on a canvas in the upper right corner, then continuing toward the lower left corner arbitrarily, or do you think each of them had a very complete idea of the finished painting right from the start? The answer is obvious. So, in the same way, it’s up to you to work through the entire process in your mind to avoid making bad decisions that could derail the whole process.

Let me give a simple example and briefly outline both a traditional film approach and a digital approach. Suppose you’re looking at a landscape with brilliant cumulous clouds towering above. The ground (i.e., the landscape below the huge clouds) may be an area of low contrast, but the clouds are extremely bright. If you’re shooting film and recognize while you’re behind the camera that you can darken the clouds by “burning” them when printing (i.e., giving them more exposure under the enlarger), then you don’t have to worry about the contrast when you expose and develop the negative. But if you simply look at the full contrast range without giving thought to the printing stage, you might decide to lower the overall contrast to encompass the brightness of the clouds—which would have the unfortunate effect of making the low contrast on the ground even lower. This would give you a rather “muddy” print. That’s not what you want.

When you think about printing while standing behind the camera, it creates a feedback loop that helps you determine your best exposure and development at the scene. If you’re shooting digital, you may need multiple exposures: one for the darker ground and perhaps several for the brilliant clouds. Later, you can layer these exposures and work on the local contrast of each portion on the computer (Chapter 11).

If you study the scene for compositional elements while simultaneously projecting forward to the final print, even while swooning over the scene, you can avoid the trap of making “record shots” (snapshots that simply tell everyone, “I was here”). When you think in terms of the final print right from the beginning, your percentage of successful exposures will rise dramatically. Without such foresight, you are simply exposing for the scene and hoping for a photograph. You’ll be lucky to get one!

Always keep in mind that you control the final print. As you begin to comprehend the extent of that control, you will see not only good scenes that can translate into fine photographs, but also ordinary scenes that can serve as a basis of equally fine photographs. Photography is a creative endeavor. The final print is your creation. Do not limit yourself to capturing the scene as you see it; start to think in terms of interpreting the scene and creating a work of art, a personal statement.