ALL ELSE IS MERELY GEAR

By MICHAEL PERKINS

Master your light before you master your camera.

Ansel Adams

CONSIDER: A BLANK PHOTOGRAPH IS NOT WHITE, like a fresh sheet of paper.

It is black, like a starless night.

Photographic images all begin the same way, with a medium that is dark because it is absent all light. Supply light in enough areas, in the correct dosage, and color and detail and narrative emerge. Light is the reagent that starts the entire photographic process, the trigger. In that spirit, how can we ever know enough about it? How can we ever become adept in all its applications? And what bit of equipment, what device, what tech tweak can compete with merely making a passionate, all-consuming study of light? Light is the only upper-case word in photography. Everything else is merely gear and word salad.

Light presents. It stages. It defines. It caresses. It symbolizes everything from inspiration to hope to, in its absence, loneliness, despair, isolation. Light wraps around things. Leads the eye. Underscores the importance of whatever it falls upon. Changes the very character of what it comments on. Speaks loudly. Whispers softly.

Seattle, Washington, August 14, 2016, 8:08pm.

Light is Topic One for photographers. Do a Google search on the words “photography quotes about light” and you’ll see a cross-section of shooters from across several centuries, all saying what Uncle Ansel said so cleanly and perfectly. Know light, and a simple camera becomes an oracle. Know light, and you control everything about what an image is saying. Know light, and the rest will come.

There is a poetic brilliance to the Biblical account of creation, as God’s first command is literally “Let There Be Light”, as if the Big Guy were saying, “Good. Now I can see what the hell I’m doing…” The very word “photography” means to write with light. To illuminate and shape that which was undefined before, to confer meaning on what was merely the abyss. That’s an amazing power. Photography is an amazing power. And to the degree that you understand what makes the magic happen, it simply dazzles the soul.