the photoshooter's journey from taking to making

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FROM HERE TO THERE EVENTUALLY

We are all in this alone. We are all in this together.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IN THE HALTING EARLY DAYS OF PHOTOGRAPHY, the only thing balkier than the making of an image was in getting one’s work seen outside the artist’s personal social circle. Several dozen technical revolutions later, we take real-time distribution networks for granted, accustomed to a reality with literally no time lag between the generation of a picture and its dissemination to the world at large. Click, it exists. Click Click, it’s published. That is now the rhythm of a photograph. It’s ours, and everybody’s, in the same instant .

That immediacy has proven to be of incredible value in our most recent Great Hibernation, as a virtual way of compensating for the shrinking of our material worlds. Early 19th-century photographs were initially stunted in their impact on society, since they had to overcome the obstacles of space and time to reach mass audiences. A picture made in one place had to be physically shipped or transported to the few centers from which it could be faithfully reproduced and effectively shared. A lockdown of the entire world in such a time would have corraled art into small local sectors of influence, whereas Covid-19 internees have lost nothing in the options for connecting their visions with the entire globe at a keystroke. Thus our literal isolation has a kind of modern-day antidote, in that our art can travel where we cannot. And so, in terms of images, two opposing statements are nonetheless equally true: we are all going through this alone, and we are all going through this together.

Photographs have indeed proven the great storytellers in this weird, weird banishment. In the years ahead, volumes will be written on the psychic and emotional damage suffered by those who will have survived these times. That damage is real, and will probably be long-lasting for some. But, in what must be one of the most bizarre sources of comfort possible, it’s hard to imagine how much worse the isolation would have been in an earlier time, a time when going it alone also meant not being able to release a little carrier pigeon of wonderment or hope via our poetry, our wonderings, or our pictures. Can a camera save one’s sanity? Not literally, of course. However, the time-honored thrill of being able to simply shout across a canyon and get an answer back has a modern analog, and sometimes that echo comes in the form of an image.

Posted by  |  March 17, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Journalism, Viewpoint | Tags: | Leave a comment

PUT ME IN, COACH

 

Not quite “safe at home, but rounding third.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

SHERLOCK HOLMES BUILT A CAREER ON LEAVINGS. The master sleuth of Baker Street was not famous not so much for actually catching malefactors in the act, but by being the first on the scene to decipher clues they left behind, in ashes from cigars or traces of muddy footprints, determining if the Bad Guys had been there as well as where they might likely appear next. In those early days of forensic analysis, Holmes was a little like a photographer, who frequently happens on scenes that are both the echoes and the harbingers of human activity.

In the past year, shooters have spent a lot of time walking deserted cities, framing up the echoes of events that were called off or interrupted, analyzing the streets for evidence of the people who have fled them for safer quarters. Neon signs that blink and boast to no one; infrastructures built to accommodate multitudes, now reduced to dusty silence. Pictures made of these things are, in some ways, proof that people were here just a minute ago, and may, in fact, sneak back soon, in staggered, smaller waves…..a few brave walkers or bored explorers at a time. Indeed, many of us are making what I call “you just missed them” pictures…..shots that prove that, like us, others ventured out for a look at the emptiness, or might even have tried to re-fill it for a time, then retreated.

The timid re-beginnings of things are under way now, and our brief, out-of-the-cave venturings are slowly building back to nominal speed, with things like baseball, once so omnipresent as to be invisible, now returning like a spring shoot. In small parks and playgrounds, you may still find it hard to arrive at the precise moment when actual humans are on the scene. Some days you overlap with each other, other days we’re like Holmes examining the traces of someone who’s left some kind of mark, like the phantom footprints seen here around home plate. We still have to imagine the bodies, the cries of “play ball”, the whir of activity. Right now, there are just traces of people who, like us, have decided to walk outside and see what’s up. But the traffic is returning, and, with it, the opportunity to, like Holmes, ascertain that “the game’s afoot.”

Once again, the imperatives that determine what kinds of pictures we make are about to redefined. And persistently clicking away, as the changes roll on, is the true role of photography, as we stitch a bunch of isolated, frozen moments into a narrative quilt.

 

Posted by  |  March 14, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Editorial | Tags: , | Leave a comment

NEED DICTATES USE

In most cases, my standard 18mm wide-angle could have captured all of this unusual art installation.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I TEND TO LOOK MOST KINDLY ON THOSE LENSES that will perform the widest variety of tasks. Over time, photography can easily experience what the military call mission creep, with equipment escalating in both cost and complexity as the hobby sinks its roots into the bedrock of our little shooter’s souls. This can contribute to an ever-escalating array of specialized tools, or what I call more and more of things that do less and less. Over the decades, my aching back and wounded wallet have conspired to make me seek out optics that can handle macro, landscape, street and portrait work all by themselves, shrinking the number of instances in which I have to switch to hyper-dedicated gizmos, thus increasing how much I lug about with me. That said (don’t you hate sentences that begin this way?), there are times when you need a scalpel instead of a Swiss army knife.

A fisheye is the textbook example of an over-specialized lens, a hunk of glass that delivers a very distinctive, very controversial view of the world. To some, they are the gateway to innovation, to viewpoints beyond the power of the human eye. To others, they’re a gimmicky abomination. They’re really just ultra wide-angles that take in such a vast view (anywhere from 120 to 180 degrees or even wider) that they literally bend the field of vision, encompassing shots within an actual circle in full-frame cameras or what’s called a  diagonal fisheye in cropped sensors. In both cases, the shot features dark vignettes at the corners in images where proportions are nearly normal at the center, then increasingly bowed-out closer to the edge of the shot. They are still in the minority as far as general lens use is concerned for a variety of reasons, including the rarity of cases in which they can be truly appropriate or effective, the heinous cost of the good ones, and the heinous artifacts in the cheap ones.

I happened to have lucked out with a fisheye that is fairly crisp and free of chroma flaring at f/16 or smaller, although the accompanying need for increased ISO bears watching. I shoot on a crop, so I don’t worry about maintaining the “encircled” look since I can’t get it anyway, allowing me to crop to wherever the frame is strongest. In the “before” shot of a strange but huge art installation at Phoenix’ Desert Botanical Garden (see above), you see what a standard 18mm wide-angle will do. Given that I had very limited space either behind or above me, there was no way to back up in order to include the entire scene, and so, out came the fisheye, shooting at about 12mm and taking in a 160mm field of view (see below).

Same vantage point, but shot with a 12mm fisheye instead. Now I can show the entire story.

Now, standing in exactly the same place, I could see where the “yellow wave” of straw-like fibers originated at the far end of the shot, while the distortion factor in the lens gave the flow of straws a kind of “S” curve as it made its way to the foreground. Other considerations:  super-wides exaggerate the distance between front and back, making the whole installation seem more vast than it was in reality; and also, by keeping most of the crucial action in the center, I kept the image’s most radical distortion (like on the footbridge at upper left) confined to the outer edge of the composition.

Would I, for this shot, have resorted to the fisheye except out of desperation? Unlikely. It is not a “go to” tool in any real way, since like all gimmick glass tends to pull attention away from the subject and toward itself. However, even though I love to head out with “one lens to rule them all”, I find, like any good sawbones, that I will, occasionally, need that scalpel.

Posted by  |  March 10, 2021 | Categories: Fisheye, Lenses, Special Effects | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

TEXTBOOK AND NO BOOK

Mon professeure.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

A FEW YEARS AGO, in trying to express what it felt like not to have a distinctly defined photographic style, I used the title of one of my favorite Van Morrison albums, No Guru, No Method, No Teacher, a phrase which even Van The Man may have lived to regret. The idea was that I couldn’t trace my own approach to making pictures directly to any particular mentor, not that I was so bloody original that I had never fallen under anyone’s influence. The problem in identifying my teachers, gurus and methods was certainly my own; I simply found it hard to draw a straight line from the examples of various photographers to elements of my own work. Now, I find that I can enumerate many profound professors, once I realized that the best of them are often not photographers at all.

That’s where my wife Marian comes in.

I have already spoken at length in these pages of her amazing value to me as a muse and model, but her ability to inspire me as a subject is separate and distinct from her role as a real and fundamental teacher. We’re not talking technical instruction here. This is a woman who has seldom even picked up a camera unless it was in the service of candid shots of friends and loved ones, or as a recording device to freeze the good times of a trip or vacation. Nonetheless she has taught me to see in very specific ways, expanding my idea of what should even be looked at. That ability resides in her love of the natural world, a place where she is a native and I am often a mere visitor. Her passion for birdwatching, for example, has helped me shoot anything, bird or object, with greater patience and deliberation, showing me the value of waiting for your moment. In her case, that might mean standing for fifteen minutes for a glimpse of the bright flicker on the wing of a flitting bluebird, while the equivalent for me might be the discipline to wait for light which, if I wait for an extra five minutes, will be perfect for exactly ten seconds.

Just as most of my other best photographic teachers are not shooters per se, Marian teaches by not trying to; her curiosity incites my own; her humility refines my own. I happily list her among the poets, illustrators, spiritualists and secular saints, from James Thurber to Emerson to Gibran, who have shown me things that no purely technical instruction ever could. Certainly among my heroes are listed many who are, in fact, actual photographers, but, since photography occurs in the eye and the soul long before it animates the hand, there are many people I love for the pictures that reside exclusively in their souls. Marian and I, like many millions of other couples, have spent three lifetimes together over the past year, and she has helped me go from caterpillar to butterfly in the metamorphosis of my camera work. That’s a gift beyond price, and a learning experience beyond the limiting titles of teacher, guru, or method.

And I am grateful.

Posted by  |  March 7, 2021 | Categories: Perspective, Philosophy, Technique, Technology | Tags: , | Leave a comment

CHOREOGRAPHY IN THE PARK

By MICHAEL PERKINS

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IS A UNIQUE MARRIAGE OF SETTING AND SUBJECTS, that delicate balance of locations and denizens that make streets into neighborhoods. The drama created in such studies is always a thrilling, moment-to-moment improvisation in which small things generate big effects. Incremental changes in the scenario, like waiting for the old man with the dog to walk directly under the deli sign, or framing the sullen teen right next to a reflective window, can be the difference between something that’s merely quaint and something that’s universal. And the more crowded with subjects the frame is in a street shot, the more options there are to weigh. Doing choreography for a lone dancer is not the same thing as blocking out space an entire troupe.

Streets shots are about weighing the importance of several things at once, in opposition to each other rather than as isolated elements. Tensions are set, tightened and released; motives are explored and exploited. In 2021’s cautious re-emergence from our respective quarantine caves, we are not only re-learning the flexing of our own muscles; we are also watching the equivalent adjustment in others. With or without a camera in hand, we are all more deliberate people watchers in this nervous re-entry phase. People are not, at least for right now, mere wallpaper, but active orbiting bodies in little constellations. We are a little more keenly aware, as we venture out, what their personal Great To Be Back moments are. Perhaps, in time, we will go back to our old habit of generally walking past each other, but now, in this careful new world, we are paying a little more attention. And those of us who, through photography, are in the habit of seeing with a little extra intensity will be in for a feast.

Dad’s Busy Day, 2021

As stated before, the more people you decide to include in a street shot, the more choreography there is to fuss over. In the “day-out-with-dad” scenario shown here, I had several stories that all wanted telling at the same time. In some frames shot over the space of a minute (about eight), various players were all contending for star status. In some shots, the father seemed to be guiding the kids and the dog. In a few, the dog’s personality as explorer-at-large seemed to place his energy in charge. In yet more, the young girl seemed to be trying to run things by standing atop the rock on which, in the selected frame, she’s seen leaning. Thus, in the final version, she’s a little more passive, Dad is trying to keep things in balance, and the dog is definitely on point as the overall leader of the expedition.

All versions of this scene had their elements of tension, warmth and humor, and so in choosing a single final rendition, I was neither right or wrong. The joy of the enterprise was in the element of spontaneous creation offered by what was happening upon the stage and amongst the players. I could write the ending so the guy gets the girl or where the cowboy just rides into the sunset, but that part is really unimportant. In street photography, the potential is the attraction. We are only able to extract a single instant to suggest a whole reality, and both the thrill and the terror of that choice, while it’s no walk in the park, is, for some, simply irresistible.

Posted by  |  March 3, 2021 | Categories: Animals, Composition, Conception | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

HUE AND HUE ALONE

A monochromatic, and yet full color, image.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

MOST DISCUSSIONS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY begin with a body of commonly held terms, the basic and uniform names given to things. Such common ground is vital if we’re to understand each other. I can’t expect you to hand me a hammer if I ask you for a wrench. And so we base all our conversations about making images on words that mean generally the same to all of us….focus, aperture, exposure, etc. Makes sense, doanit?

And yet, over the years, we can disagree on what some of those words even mean, and that can slow down discourse.

Take the word monochrome. Most simply translated from the original Greek word monochromos, it means “having one color”, just as a monopod is a one-legged tripod. Seems a simple enough concept, and yet, in recent years, photographic journals, camera manufacturers and, Lord save us, blogs have increasingly begun to define the word as something that is color-less…that is, black-and-white. I know, seems like a really nit-picky point to raise in these complicated times of serious issues. And yet, if we allow imprecise speech to creep into our communications, we eventually get discourse which is imprecise as well.

Black-and-white, or grayscale is monochrome, but not all monochrome is black and white. The image seen here consists of varying tones of a single color, and so, strictly speaking, it is monochromatic, but is certainly not grayscale. Since photography was exclusively b&w for almost a century before films could produce a complete range of hues, we tend to think of the medium as being divided into two eras, Before Color and After Color. However, shooters who worked nearly their entire careers in grayscale, or, let’s say, a good 2/3 of an Ansel Adams’ lifespan, black-and-white was not “colorless” but a kind of color all its own, as legitimate as blue or red or whatever have you. Under the present understanding of these things, however, my image of a warm orange railway bench would be summarily tossed out of any image sharing site that defined itself as monochrome-themed. And that would be wrong.

Yes, I know……

Can’t you think of anything else to obsess over on a Sunday morning, old man?, I hear you moaning. Well, yes, yes I can. However, a 400-word treatise on why my poached eggs were runny at breakfast wouldn’t exactly leave readers riveted either, so, for the moment, let’s not call a wrench a hammer, and let’s not pretend that only grayscale is monochrome.

Posted by  |  February 28, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Opinion | Tags: , | Leave a comment

HOW TO NOT DO

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THIS FORUM HAS NEVER REALLY BEEN ABOUT GEAR, being an examination of why we make photographs rather than what specific equipment we use to do so. Of course, pictures aren’t born in a vacuum, so, even with the purest artistic motives, you still need a mechanism of some kind to carry out your wishes…and that means that some of what we discuss here is very much about what happens in them little magic light boxes. Still, this awareness has never led us into actual recommendations for specific products, as there are simply too many such advisories littering up the webby highway without me jumping into the fray.

Such neutrality about suggesting what to buy, however, can be maintained if I am listing reasons not to buy a camera, as such cautions transcend brands and models. That is, no matter why you decide to go gear shopping, there are things that should always be borne in mind, if our point is the motivation behind photography and not the devices we use. Call it a “how to not do” list. So, assume for a moment that you are suddenly in the market for a new gadget and consider the following.

DO NOT buy a camera because your friend, uncle, friend at the factory or buddy at the camera store uses it. Unless they are also going to take your pictures for you, their advice is so subjective as to be worthless.

Even in the age of easy online returns, do yourself a favor and DO NOT buy a camera that you’ve never held in your hand. The ergonomic layout of cameras varies widely from maker to maker, and it really does make a difference where they stick the buttons.

DO NOT buy any more camera than you need for what you do right now. It’s all right to select a few features that you may eventually use, even if you don’t use them at present. But that’s a far cry from buying a device that is drowning in options, seldom-used features, and infinite sub-menus. Pay good money for just the camera you need, with a smidge of extra growth room built-in. If you later find that you’ve outgrown the camera, then and only then is it time to trade up. Gear that is too strong on extra gizmos only gets partly used and can be intimidating enough to wind up in the hall closet a year later, after you’ve gone back to your cell phone.

DO NOT assume that the latest thing is the greatest thing. Manufacturers make their profits on the backs of customers who can be made to feel dissatisfied with what they own, and obsolescence is built into their marketing. There is aIso the problem that some companies’ models decrease in quality or precision as the brand ages (or as they chase greater profits). If your camera helps you take good pictures easily, and without a lot of exotic setup or detours, then keep it until it disintegrates in your hand.

DO NOT purchase equipment that places unnecessary obstacles between your conception and the finished product. If going from framing to shooting involves too many steps, your camera is taking your attention away from seeing, and that means missing shots. Making a picture should be as effortless as 1, 2, 3. If you already are on step 5 before you even click the shutter, get another camera.

DO NOT initially over-invest in a battalion of specialized lenses. You will eventually get to the point where lugging all that load will prove either inconvenient or painful or both, and many a photographer has eventually winnowed down his/her “must-carry” gear to a single lens that delivers 90% of what they want 90% of the time. Think about how much fun it is to lug around a lot of devices that only do a single task, and then run in the opposite direction.

Finally, DO NOT buy a camera that you are not head-over-heels, OMG, stop-the-presses in love with. Anything less will also wind up in the aforementioned hall closet.

Smmary: photography is about the gear….sometimes, but mostly it’s about everything else. Sexy ads and four-star reviews are deliriously distracting, and we all love to dream. But mostly, we’re here to make pictures.

 

 

Posted by  |  February 24, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Opinion | Tags: , | Leave a comment

OPENING DAYS / CLOSING NIGHTS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IT’S NOT HYPERBOLE TO SAY THAT THE GREAT HIBERNATION, our global banishment from our regular lives, feels a bit like living through a war. As in a traditional conflict, there are separations, sudden deaths, deprivations, and a feeling of “where have I been?” that accompanies our every venture outside our safe zones. So many of us have simply backed out of the flow of time that, as in times of war, we are startled by what has been altered or even vanished since the last time we cautiously emerged to explore the sites of our old existence.  And that shock, in turn, informs all of our art, including, of course, photography.

The first thing that we notice is that so many things that were solid and substantial before we ducked under cover have been either greatly altered or completely vaporized. And the sensation is not limited to things that were already crumbling, but also includes things that were just becoming part of our world in the moments immediately before the lockdown. Places that just cut their ribbons of newness a heartbeat ago, but which already find themselves neutralized, obsolete. Of course, society is always closing chapters and tearing down buildings, in a cycle of goodbyes that seem almost normal, pandemic or no. But the toll created by our withdrawal from the daily parade also lists things that were just getting started, the space between their grand opening days and dark closing nights shrunk by circumstance . And our photographs of those things, taken either before or after these brief appearances, are poignant images of what might have been, a measure of the gap between our hopes and the ruthless randomness of this strange new world.

The now-vacant “Vessel” stands opposite Hudson Yards’ Public Square in the long-ago Manhattan of 2019.

As one example, consider this image of Vessel, a bold (and controversial) open-air attraction that acts as a kind of visual rendezvous at the head of the massive new Hudson Yards district in Manhattan. Part sculpture, part observation deck, part tourist trap, the structure sits opposite the main entry to the Yards’ Public Square mall. Built at a cost of 200 million dollars, it rose to sixteen floors, honeycombed 154 flights of stairs, and became an instant hit with visitors, who were admitted via free but timed tickets. Vessel’s very bigness rendered its actual value as art moot; like the Eiffel Tower (to which it was compared) or Niagara Falls, it just was, and, in so being, became part of what you do when you “do” New York. It opened to the public in March of 2019.

You can guess a lot of what followed. As NYC locked down, retail took a major hit and retail on the massively ostentatious scale seen at Hudson Yards took an even bigger one. Leases were renegotiated, then abandoned outright. The project (still unfinished) that was designed to reconfigure an entire economic sector of the Apple was down on one knee. And something weirdly symptomatic of the times occurred with Vessel; people started to jump off of it to their deaths. Last month (January 2021), the structure was closed “indefinitely”, its term as a pet chunk of Americana capped at just under two years’ time.

I was lucky enough to photograph Vessel in person, creating day and night images that now seem as bizarre as launch-party pix of the Hindenburg or snapshots from Titanic. Photographers often catch a flavor of a time by accident, and many of our personal archives are populated by things we never thought of as perishable or mortal at the moment we shot them. Vessel is just one very public barometer of Dreams Gone Wrong, visions that deserve to be preserved inside our magic light boxes, either as tributes to our dreams or tombstones to our folly.

Posted by  |  February 21, 2021 | Categories: Americana, Architecture, Design | Tags: , | Leave a comment

WE ARE ALL BURT LANCASTER NOW

By MICHAEL PERKINS

I REMEMBER BEING FASCINATED as a child by the 1963 film The Birdman Of Alcatraz, based loosely on the life of murderer Robert Stroud, whose accumulated crimes drew him a life sentence, much of it spent in solitary confinement. The movie, starring Burt Lancaster, centered on Stroud’s almost accidental introduction to birds, an improvised pastime which blossomed into an extensive and self-taught study of ornithology. The story’s biggest impact on me was the idea that someone could center on the smallest scintilla of hope, something others around you might ignore or simply not see at all, and that such small things might lead beyond mere survival to a kind of separate peace, even wisdom. In retrospect, I probably should have chosen a better model than that of a total psychopath. Still, the idea of being able to successfully navigate isolation was one that occasionally fascinated me over a lifetime. It’s also come to mind a great deal over the past year.

To paraphrase a cliched expression, we are all Burt Lancaster now; we have all learned to place greater focus on smaller worlds, and it is no accident that one of the biggest growth industries during our Global Great Hibernation has been the hobby of birdwatching. It’s cheap, it’s relatively easy to break into, and it’s as close as your window. More importantly, it’s a reassurance that life, or some semblance of it, has gone on, even if all we can do is watch as it wafts by. Like Stroud, we are all improvising to reduce the ache of greatly reduced circumstances. And like prisoners everywhere, confined behind either tangible or figurative bars, we are able, maybe for the first time, to see, in depth, something that was all but invisible to our previous system of seeing.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner, but you can occasionally put Starling in the circle.

For photographers, including this one, birds can be a metaphor for many things we already value about our art. Color, motion, texture, context, even a kind of portraiture…all are addressed in trying to assign traits or personalities to flying creatures. Working from the long, empty days, we slow down and deepen our observational powers. We view things in finer depths and degrees, in inches rather than miles now. I will freely admit that my own photographic coverage of birds had been, during The Before Times, confined to the easiest, most obvious captures; flocks caught accidentally in a vast beach vista; raptors in zoo cages; the occasional comic shot of a gull stealing a hot dog, etc. The quarantine has altered all that, stretching time like taffy, elongating our implementation of any undertaking from hours to days. But this is not an effort to overprescribe a general therapy for everyone; your “birds” may be furniture, the veins of a leaf, still lifes of your accumulated buffalo nickels. This is why we have congregations of varying denominations. While I am worshipping at the first temple of the ruby-throated sparrow, you may bow your head at the Community Church of the Holy Art Deco Ashtray or some such. The idea is that photography always benefits from patience and deliberation. Snap shots are marvelous manifestations of our impulses, but they are not the products of quiet contemplation.

My point is that there is room in your photography for both the spontaneous and the deliberative. In my case, tiny tweeters have become a kind of surrogate for human subjects, as I find myself searching their faces for traces of motive, emotion, even joy. Unlike the Birdman of Alcatraz, most of us will eventually be sprung, released back into the larger work yard, hopefully having learned a little more about playing well with others. And the pictures we made behind walls will be, in lasting ways, capable of taking grander flight.

Posted by  |  February 17, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Hobbies, Nature | Tags: , | Leave a comment

COMP RULE #1 (There is no #2)

 

Lots to see here. Maybe too much.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

IN BEGINNING FORMAL INSTRUCTION IN PHOTOGRAPHY, students are typically steeped in whole systems of procedure on the creation of a composition. In this pursuit, we’ve all trudged through swamps of techno-sludge, from “golden triangle” to “rule of thirds” to “leading lines”, along with dozens of other schemes for organizing visual information within the frame. Many of these credos are, in fact, valuable in training the eye to prioritize the data in their pictures and streamline their effectiveness, and I applaud their use. What irks the semanticist within me, however, is when these tips are referred to as rules. That’s when things wander into the weeds.

This is not mere finicky wordplay on my part; first, the idea of the word “rules” being applied to something as mutative as art makes no sense to me. It is in the defiance of accepted norms that art fully triumphs, and photography cannot breathe if it’s drowning in its own catechism. I understand that we humans love to list things, to map steps out in order of perceived importance. However, when it comes to arranging the photographic frame, I contend that all the approaches we learn about are merely that…approaches, and that, were I to grudgingly use the word rule in regard to composition, that there would only be one: engage the eye.

What else is there? Photographs begin as one person’s vision sent forth with the aspiration of becoming a shared experience. To that end, everything is about grabbing the viewer’s eye and effectively saying, here is where I want you to look; here is the order of importance among the things in this picture. All of the tricks taught about composition are merely a means to acheiving, by many roads, this one objective. Use whatever graphs, spirals, force perspectives or focus tricks you like, or mix them all together; if they don’t result in a conversation between you, the picture and the audience, then you have nothing except mere technical mastery. And just as there are paintings that are more expert in execution than in emotional effect, there are millions of wondrous exposures that communicate nothing.

In the inset above, the original of a street scene image is an attempt to express the size and energy of an urban neighborhood. There’s nothing technically wrong with the picture, but, after looking at it for several weeks, I decided that the energy of the shot lay not in the car traffic or even the height of the buildings, but in the conversation between the two men at left. In the cropped version of the shot, seen directly above, this relationship is pushed to the foreground, without losing the feel of the city’s busy energy or scope. Certainly, basic compositional rules might have pronounced the first shot “balanced”, but it’s the deliberate intervention taken to create the tighter version that is an act of composition. And, of course, this is not meant to hold my own work out as an example to be followed. It’s just an illustration of the point that rule-breaking is where pictures begin, not where they go to die. Even though a picture is mounted on a wall with the help of a hammer and nail, no one would argue that either the hammer or the nail is what makes the picture compelling. Engage the eye, and you will have faithfully executed the only compositional “rule” that matters.

Posted by  |  February 14, 2021 | Categories: Composition, Conception, editing | Tags: , | Leave a comment

A SHADE-Y BUSINESS

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHY WAS NO SOONER OUT OF THE CRADLE than it was being aggressively tweaked and twiddled with, in a thousand myriad experiments aimed at improving it both technically and aesthetically. Seldom has the birth of an art form been accompanied by a surge of re-inventive energy equal to or greater than its release of creative energy. Photographs were both art and science, a strange hybrid of human expression and mechanical reproduction. One of the earliest and most consistent treasure hunts in the young craft was the quest for color, simulated and daubed on at first, then integrated into the actual making of the picture in-camera.  In this age, which could be labeled Photography Century III, we use color mostly without thinking, even though it is one of the most crucial elements in how we tell stories in pictures.

Although the first practical color films date back to the early 1930’s, mostly by way of Kodachrome and its later imitators, the majority of important photographs for the first half of the twentieth century were taken and published in monochrome. In the minds of the pros like Ansel Adams, early printing processes for color were unsteady or “untrue”, with only mass-circulation magazines using them with any regularity (with a ton of touch-up) until well after World War II. After all the G.I. Joes and Janes came home, the tidal wave of leisure culture that accompanied them also brought a new explosion in amateur color photography, although it was not until the 1970’s that the economy of global film sales truly tipped in favor of the rainbow. Today, for many, monochrome is now a nostalgic effect, a quaint way of recalling the “look” of earlier photographic eras.

“Wind”, an art installation by Natasha Lasitsa and Daniel Schultz

In 2021, our attitude about hue is all over the road. Some still obsessively pursue the most accurate depiction of “natural” colors as is technically possible, while, for many others, color is negotiable, malleable. We acknowledge its power as an expressive tool, but we tinker with it for interpretative purposes more than ever before. We even seek out software designed to re-produce the color errors or biases of bygone brands of film stock, seeking a color that is technically “wrong” in order to get the right “feel”. We shoot with color as we use any other modern means of expression, which is to say, with an overlay of irony.

In making an image like the one seen here, the very nature of the subject is a kind of unreality, since the desert blooms and bushes used in this art installation have been dyed before the work was assembled, in an array of colors that is nothing like the limited palette they would display in their natural state. The resulting work is thus a kind of psychedelic fever dream of a desert scene. Do I record this as I find it? Do I remix the colors even further to interweave my own mood into it? Just trying to render an accurate record of this object with the color films of long ago would have been enough to send the most battle-hardened photo editor into choleric fits, and yet today, we accept that color is, as with any other element in a photograph, precisely what we say it is, and nothing more. In a way, we’ve come full circle to photography’s earliest days, before the development of actual color film, when painters touched up black-and-white images with whatever arbitrary color choices they thought “completed” the picture. Is it art? Is it not? The answer is, it is ours, a response which silences all other questions.

Posted by  |  February 10, 2021 | Categories: Color, History, Interpretation | Tags: , | Leave a comment

COMPETING WITH WHOM?

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE IMAGE YOU SEE HERE IS NOT MINE, although I’d gladly claim it anyday. It was taken by a lady named Judith Shields, an enthusiastic amateur who recently entered it in a photographic contest and apparently earned some distinction with it. Where she finally placed in the winners’ circle is not as significant, however, as the fact that she was docked points by the judge of the competition because the center of the flower, being fairly open, did not conform to his concept of what constituted a “correct” depiction of the subject. Or something. Since the remark makes no sense whatsoever in terms of either art or photography, it understandably sparked an online thread about (1) why such a criterion should even be considered, and, as the conversation blossomed out, (2) what the value of photographic contests even is in the first place.

In the interest of transparency, let me state unequivocally, that the idea of pitting artists against each other and weighing their efforts as you might evaluate tomatoes at the state fair is anathema to me on its face. I realize that a select number of such contests actually result in increased prestige or opportunity for photographers, but that number is extremely small, and usually tied to specific professional organizations that are, in turn, linked to the print industry. Many more of these runoffs, though, are little more than vanity projects, and the value of both the judges and the judging varies wildly. To look at Ms. Shields’ picture and see anything else besides beauty and technical mastery is to pretty much miss the overall point of photography in particular, or art in general. Shooters take the world as they find it, and deciding not to make an image of a flower because it’s not at the right stage of “readiness” is beyond silly. And then there is the nagging question of who these judges are, and who, exactly, entrusted them with the safekeeping of All Photographic Truth.

And this doesn’t even begin to cover the profit angle of photo contests, hundreds of which not only charge admission fees, but which also post arcane terms of agreement that, if carefully examined, preserve the creator’s “copyright” while allowing the hosts of the contest near- complete control of what happens to the artist’s pictures, issues ranging from where they can be published to how they can be cropped or contextualized. Ms. Shields’ flower could, under the terms of such rules, be used to promote fertilizer or cheeseburgers, should the contest gods be so inclined, and she might have no say whatever in the matter. Finally, the idea of competition among artists flies in the face of a photographer’s duty to himself or herself, which is to produce the work and live by the work, without needing to offer either explanation or alibi. The fact that this beautiful picture exists is enough to justify that existence, in that it was the creation of a person of sensitivity and vision. What crown or laurel, conferred on it by any outside jury, can add a scintilla of extra value beyond that?

Volumes could be written about judges and critics who initially disqualified what, in time, became the world’s photographic literature on the basis of this or that arbitrary rule or regulation. Pictures by Alfred Steiglitz, Walker Evans, Robert Frank and others were once routinely dismissed based on arcane concepts of composition, light, focus or other arbitrary standards that have no place in art. Finally, either a work connects with people or it doesn’t, a truth that no panel of curators or judges can alter by sniffing around the edges looking for something to make themselves seem more important. At last, it’s the pictures that either speak or don’t.

This one does.

Posted by  |  February 7, 2021 | Categories: Commentary, Conception, Essay | Tags: , | Leave a comment

WALT-ISM

Fan Dancers, 2020

By MICHAEL PERKINS

TO PERFECT THE PRACTICE OF PHOTOGRAPHY, YOU MUST FIRST ENDEAVOR to perfect yourself. Cameras are merely recording devices, and rather dumb ones at that, without the guidance of the human eye. And keeping that eye, and the spirit that animates it, free of pollution or imperfection, is the work of a lifetime.

Seeing well often entails slowing down the very process of seeing, of letting time refine your way of taking in information. Call it contemplation, call it concentration, but know that making images is chiefly abetted by improving how you perceive the world. How can it be otherwise? At times like this, I head for the pages of Leaves Of Grass, Walt Whitman’s grand map for becoming a human, perhaps the greatest literature ever created in America. He rings inside my head every time I slow myself enough to perceive the world on its terms, rather than on my own. And when his astonishing language and the glory of the world converge, I feel like I have at least a fighting chance to make a picture that I may, in time, cherish.

To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

Give me, odorous at sunrise, a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.

Re-examine all that you have been told; dismiss that which insults your soul. 

Armed with such words, or words that likewise define truth for yourself, you find that the pictures come, first in a trickle, then in a floodtide. The world is filled with images that are virtually waiting to jump into your mind and your camera. Open the door and bid them welcome.

Posted by  |  February 3, 2021 | Categories: Conception, Ecology, Environment | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

SMUDGES OF MEMORY

By MICHAEL PERKINS

AS A METHOD OF INFORMATION STORAGE, the human mind leaves a lot to be desired. We take comfort in the belief that our inner vaults contain flawless, “official” versions of our accumulated experiences, but, in time, we realize that our memories are, at best, unreliable narrators, and, at worst, bald-faced liars. Our master files, our records of “what really happened” are as riddled with drop-outs, jump cuts, and gravy stains as any other account that has been told and retold over time. Small wonder that the devices we use to aid our recollections, such as photographs, can, themselves either reveal or conceal varying editions of “the truth”.

When you pair imperfect beings with even more imperfect machines tasked with documenting the big deals in their lives, you get inaccuracy piled on inaccuracy. When we are feeling generous, we label the inaccuracies “interpretations”. When we more clinical, we call them “flawed”. Thing is, there are many parts of our lives that no longer exist in the physical universe, or are at least placed beyond our reach. Many of these parts have left no trace in the world except the images made of them. Our actual vacations, long gone, are supplanted in memory by our pictures of those vacations, eventually becoming that experience in a much more real sense than whatever fragmented mental archives exist of the true event. The pictures remain static, and thus seem permanent, fixed, but over time they will be judged against the changing context of our faulty inner files.

In the present era, when many of the things that we have captured in cameras are, for the moment, physically unavailable to us, the symbolic power of pictures of events past is amplified greatly. The image seen here, deliberately shot to be a bit dreamy, is open to multiple interpretations beyond the restricted scope of the original location. I know, mentally, that it was taken inside a Broadway theatre, but I can no longer swear to the name of the actual venue or what I saw there. In the absence of the fullness of my own memory, this picture has now become all theatres, in all cities, at all points in time. And while it looks like that’s what I was going for at the time, the point is that even the events that I believe I clearly remember are victims of my own brain decay over time, with the pictures I made of them expanded in their value, since they are now open to wider and wider impact as symbols. The pictures are less about what happened and more about the magic of what I prefer to have happened. The hard, clean line of reality is supplanted by the smudge of memory.

That is the amazing elasticity of a photograph. It is both truth and lie, symbol and substance. Photography is an art because it is so magically malleable, because an image can bear the personal stamp of its creator, no less than a statue or a painting. Designed to immortalize parts of our world, they do precisely that, often having a life of their own beyond the physical limits of the things they were used to depict. If that’s not art, what is?

Posted by  |  January 31, 2021 | Categories: Abstract, Art | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

NEARLY NAKED

By MICHAEL PERKINS

No One Knew What Lay Within, 2021.

 

ONE OF THE BY-PRODUCTS OF PROLONGED ISOLATION is the re-training of the artist’s eye, as more and more information is gleaned from fewer and fewer sources. The lifer convict thus knows more about masonry than the non-prisoner, simply because he is forced to stare at it longer. Or, to put it another way, as a person’s physical world contracts, as it has for many in the present era, things that are repeatedly re-seen can reveal more data than those that are quickly glimpsed. Notice that I am into my fourth sentence before uttering the dread word minimalism. And yet here we are.

I almost never deliberately seek out minimal compositions, at least not as part of some aesthetic religion; that is, I don’t set set out to make pictures that are, as I call them, “nearly naked”, stripped of all decoration or ornament. However, during the various stages of the creation of an image, I often decide that simpler is better, and re-set my course accordingly. And, as the worldwide Forced Hibernation has dragged on, I have found that a certain streamlining of many of my pictures is kicking in organically. Some of it occurs because I am forced to work with the same limited subject matter again and again, since traveling to a wider numbers of locations is presently off the menu. That can mean doing more than one “pass” on some pictures, and discovering. in that process, that I can, indeed, say more with less.

Those who already possessed sage wisdom or a certain Zen zeal might remark here that I should always have been on this journey, this growing sense of how to go about de-cluttering my vision. And to that, I would answer a resounding “maybe”. The image you see here is so simple a composition that I always would have approached it without the need for passing airplanes, utility poles, the surrounding parking lot, etc. However, where, before, I might have favored more detailed tableaux, I am finding, in a newly compelling way, that increasingly simpler pictures are calling to me these days. Likewise the rendering of excess detail or texture, which you’ll see is fairly absent from this picture. Does this mean I am growing as a person? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I am making pictures in a different creative environment for the moment, albeit with no guarantees that my technique will be fundamentally altered once I’m allowed out of the house more often (this site is three miles from my home). Still.

“There are two ways to be rich” children’s author Jackie French Koller wrote in 1948. “One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little”. So, while I’m looking more intently at the masonry within my cell these days anyway, I might as well find out if that richer way of seeing will follow me once I’m sprung. In the words of another sage, Chuck Berry, “C’est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell…”

Posted by  |  January 27, 2021 | Categories: Conception, Interpretation, Technique | Tags: , | Leave a comment

RADICAL RE-ASSIGNMENT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

YEARS AGO, A BROAD STUDY ON HOW OUR BRAINS INTERPRET COLOR included an experiment in which the familiar hue “cues” stored in our brains were upended, much to the dismay of selected test audiences. In one such experiment, an assortment of familiar foods had their native colors radically reassigned, resulting in green beef, pink peas, turquoise potatoes, and so forth. In many cases, the test group found that the meal, which they had been informed had been prepared from highest-quality ingredients, was simple inedible. Merely changing the color of something “known” had rendered it alien.

Almost immediately after mastering the accurate rendering of color, which took decades, photographers began deliberately toying with “wrong” representations of color in various film, and later, digital processes, the object being to challenge how we digest what we see, and to re-imagine the familiar as the strange. One such method which has survived to the present day is infrared photography, in which, through either filters or re-engineered sensors or both, we reconfigure cameras to “see” the light wavelengths that are typically invisible to the naked eye. The results, which can reverse the object-shadow relationship and freakishly re-color skies and landscapes, are the stuff of dreams.

One of the best-known infrared images (which is also shot with a fisheye lens, for double freakiness) is the cover of the classic Are You Experienced? album by Jim Hendrix (see insert at left). The average DSLR can be rigged to shoot infrared, and the web is a-slosh with tutorials on how to shortcut and/or cheat if you don’t want to do costly camera conversions or arcane calculations.

Hudson Yards And Vessel, 2019. A fake infrared created with the free phone app Negative Me.

My own cheapo-cheapo alternative to true infrared has been in the use of phone apps like Negative Me, which renders a fake negative of any image shoved through it. This achieves the first part of infrared, in that it reverses the relationship between an object and its shadows or textures. Sending that image back to your phone allows for all the color tweaking and contrast enhancement you’d use for any image, depending on how deranged/extreme you want the result to be, aping another aspect of true infrared. There are people who love the look of monochrome infrared, and, for those folks, I’d recommend skipping the phone adjustment of the negative image completely just sending it back to your main suite of processing software to either re-color or convert to mono, since that seems to preserve sharpness and allow for finer-tuning. As with many app-PC-laptop conversions, the fewer copies of copies of copies you can avoid, the better. For the record, the image seen here was master-shot on a DSLR, sent to my phone, sent to Negative Me, sent back to my phone image file, tweaked, sent to Facebook, then sent back to Photos for Mac. A long way around the horn, admittedly, and yet it’s still passable, in that it doesn’t look any more unreal than you’d expect.

As with the green steaks, you may decide that you don’t have a lot of, um, appetite for the infrared look at all. Even better: doing a quickie mock-up of what a real infrared might look like could save you time, trouble and dough on a pricey experiment. Or, like me, you might decide that you use this kind of effect just enough to justify doing a “not bad” version of it for cheap. In any event, just have fun.

And remember, no dessert until you finish your pink peas.

Posted by  |  January 24, 2021 | Categories: Abstract, In-Camera, iPhone | Tags: , | Leave a comment

A SOFTER TOUCH

At its widest apertures, the Lensbaby Velvet 56 lens adds an overlay of glowing softness to focused images.

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE CREATORS OF THE OPTICAL REVOLUTION known as Lensbaby lenses are more than mere inventors; many are also refugees from the conventional rules of professional photography, or, more precisely, the predictability that adherence to mere technical “perfection” can produce. From their first product over fifteen years ago through their constantly expanding line of lenses and accessories, LB is about embracing the same random artifacts (blur, flares, bokeh, chromatic aberration, etc.) that engineers have forever labored to design out of camera gear and allow them to be put back into the making of pictures, but at the shooter’s whim rather than as mere accidents.

Over the years, The Normal Eye has devoted nearly twenty posts to the unique freedom this concept confers on photography, allowing users to, in the company’s words, “see in a new way.”  In my own work, which was shaped over fifty years ago by the influence of print journalists, the idea of control once consisted of adherence to a rigid rulebook governing acceptable precision and uniform sharpness. As I have grown older, however, I have learned that there is more than one way to define control, and that gear that helps me work more instinctively might have to step outside the bounds of mere technical “rightness”. 

The Lensbaby Velvet 56.

Nowhere is that newfound freedom more manifest than in the Lensbaby “Velvet” prime lenses, available in a variety of mounts for DSLRs and mirrorless bodies in 28, 56 and 85mm focal lengths. Like all LB optics, these lenses are completely manual, and thus will not share complete shooting data with your camera. For those who seldom shoot on “M” and thus have more limited experience making all the decisions that govern the creation of a shot, this will present a bit of breaking-in, but with that forced preparation comes the habit of deliberately, intentionally creating a photograph. The risks are all yours, but so are all the benefits. As in the days of film, shooting with a Lensbaby entails slowing down and making a plan. These lenses are not for snapshots. 

At its wider apertures (f/1.6 to 5.6), the Velvets create an overlay of glow over your images, almost as if they were lit from within or behind, even as the details within them remain focused (see above image). To picture the effect, think of the shortcut Hollywood studios used to produce soft, almost airbrushed portraits of the stars with either gauze or vaseline placed ahead of their lenses. Now, imagine what it can do for your own dreamy portraits. This is not the “low-fi” randomness of cheap, plastic, light-leaking toys, but the “alternate-fi” of real choice. 

For any kind of standard street or landscape work, narrower apertures in the Velvets produce conventional sharpness that matches any general-purpose lenses. The V’s are also extremely effective as macros, with a 1:2 ratio (reproducing objects at half-size). Thus, armed with three strong talents in a single lens, the Velvet can easily be left on your camera for extended stretches as an all-purpose go-to. Better still,  the softer Velvet effect, as well as the effects of any LB optic, is achieved totally in-camera, without the need of additional post-processing.  

In my own work, the harsh detail and sharper edges inherent in architectural or urban scenes can, with my Velvet, take on a warm, even nostalgic feel, selectively smoothing surface textures and lending the whole scene a sort of idealized, fantasy appearance. For sample images from Flickr members around the world, click on the link to their Velvet 56 page. There’s also my own Lensbabyland  gallery tab at the top of this page, as well as a shortcut to the first day of Lensbaby’s Shoot Extraordinary workshop for 2020, a great source of inspiration for newcomers.

Lensbabys are not intended as the solution to every photographic challenge. They are augmentations to your existing technique, not a replacement for it. And, yes, I know the term art lens can sound a bit snotty, but, when you generate effects that once were the province of chance or accident and purposely harness them as tools in the making of your images, that certainly bespeaks an “artistic” attitude, and many agree that the LB line of products help you deliberately and uniquely shape your vision. There is more than one kind of photographer, and thus there must be more than one kind of control.

 

Posted by  |  January 20, 2021 | Categories: Lensbaby, Lenses, Sharpness | Tags: , | Leave a comment

THE CHEETA IN ALL OF US

By MICHAEL PERKINS (author of the new image collection FIAT LUX, available from NormalEye Press)

 

IF YOU ARE IN THE RANKS OF THOSE PHOTOGRAPHERS who still shoot film on occasion, you will, in the return to your old analog ways, find yourself suddenly cured of a habit we all have acquired to varying degrees since the dawn of digital. The instantaneous feedback of the pixelated life has taught us the now-instinctual reflex of what is called chimping, or the practice of checking our screens immediately after every click, ostensibly to determine if we’re getting things right/wrong. The name of this syndrome may have come from the “ooh-ooh-ooh!” sound made by chimpanzees when they are excited…like when they nail an exposure perfectly and can’t wait to get a perfunctory agreement grunt from the next chimp over. All ape references aside, to look is human, or, as Tarzan discovered, there’s a little Cheeta in all of us (sorry).

Chimping has changed the rhythm of photography from shoot/shoot/shoot/shoot/wait….(and eventually)view to shoot/look/share/shoot/look/share(and occasionally) delete. There is no equivalent to chimping in the film world, since there is no way to instantly review one’s results. In anaog shooting, correction from frame-to-frame is a matter of calculation and informed guesswork, and the results….well, they kind of define the phrase “delayed gratification”, don’t they? Chimping is a product of the very opposite…..which is the utter obliteration of the space between desire and payoff. So is this a good thing?

Every time you sneak a peek at your screen, you are, however briefly, taking your mind out of “shooting mode”. You are also taking your eye off of whatever subject you just shot, which may still be developing or changing. It’s conceivable, then, that while you are reviewing a shot that may/may not be any good, a shot that may/may not be better is invisible to you, simply because you are not looking at it. In some instances, this may be no big deal. For instance, if you are doing a leisurely shoot of a landscape or a sleeping child, breaking the thought flow to review images in between frames may not be a problem at all. On the other hand, if you’re following a sports event or a flitting bird, you could easily miss out on what’s happening by cooing over what’s already happened.

Of course, it’s easy to make broad generalizations on the value/risk of any shooting rhythm, and, like the commercial says, ask your doctor is chimping is right for you. It’s principally interesting to consider its value, however, simply because it is such a recent part of photography, and one which has become part of everyone’s work flow largely without our being aware of its encroachment. Maybe it’s caught on for purely social reasons, like our desperate need, via social media, to post and be liked. That’s the part of chimping I most disdain; its use as an instant booster shot of validation, our bid for more immediate applause. I can’t say I’m without guilt in making use of it myself, but I love to occasionally work in an older medium in which you build confidence by making a plan, setting an intention, and focusing solely on making the picture, not drooling over how fast you might garner applause for the result. I will always fail at totally suppressing my own inner Cheeta, but I can dream, can’t I?

 

 

Posted by  |  January 17, 2021 | Categories: Film, Technique, Technology | Tags: , | Leave a comment

SAY NO MORE

Huck Took The Shortcut, 2021

By MICHAEL PERKINS

THE ABILITY OF A PHOTOGRAPH TO PRETTY MUCH ILLUSTRATE EVERYTHING IN LIFE can tempt shooters to try to do exactly that; to pack a universe of stuff into every frame. In the minds of some of us, the camera is an information-gathering machine, and so, the more information, the better. But if we call to mind the photographs that have affected us most profoundly, we may see that there’s a hierarchy in the way information is presented in many of those uber-keeper photos. Everything in the world is not a number one priority; events and experiences are always ranked higher in importance than some and lower than others. And the photograph that shows too much may actually not communicate anything particularly well. Things need to be chosen and unchosen in order for a picture to breathe.

As a consequence, rather than showing four hundred trees of equal size and detail in a frame, we deputize one or several trees to stand for the entire forest. In any routine edit, we decide to crop out things which are part of the scene but which either don’t, narratively speaking, carry their weight, or, worse, act as distractions. It’s not only all right not to show everything, it’s a really important part of the covenant between artist and audience.

When you leave out some kinds of information, you’re respecting your viewer’s intelligence, since you’re recognizing that you both share a vast store of common experience, some of it so obvious that it can merely be implied and yet understood. As a very simple example, in the image seen here of a young boy running through the woods, his body language conveys all that’s needed for a complete understanding of the scene. Every part of his physical energy advertises the freedom and excitement he is experiencing, even though the picture provides little more than his silhouette and nothing whatever of his features. Would he be any more clearly delineated as a happy young boy if you were to show his smiling face? And as to the surrounding trees; they are, in life, rich in texture, but the prevailing shadow doesn’t keep them from being identified as trees, and so, really, how much better could that work, even if they were all in complete sunlight?

I’m only occasionally an advocate of minimalism for its own sake, mainly because in many cases it’s not the right approach. But over-delivering on information, while creating a thorough “document” of a scene, also has the potential for short-circuiting an image’s impact. As is often the cases, the best rules are the ones that come equipped with tons of exceptions.

 

Posted by  |  January 13, 2021 | Categories: Conception, Framing | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

MERCY BOKEH

By MICHAEL PERKINS

PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NEGOTIATIONS between primary, secondary, and even tertiary levels of information, and how they will be arranged in a frame. You either feature or mute that information in order to direct attention to the primary story you’re trying to tell. The simplest example of this process is the selective focus engineered into many shots, with important details being rendered in sharpness while the rest of the competing data goes soft to help isolate the main message of the picture. In its simplest application this means a clearly focused foreground and a blurred background.

The blur used to be the eye’s clue that the information in that part of the picture was not a priority. Thinking in terms of portraits, for example, your subject is clearly defined, with the space  behind it dulled or diminished. You make that choice by selecting your depth of field and shoot accordingly. However, recent trends in the making of a photograph have elevated the status of the blurs themselves to something that needs to be chosen, or shaped for artistic purposes. In other words, the part of an image that is inherently unimportant, by virtue of being out of focus, is now a source of attention as to what kind of blur is being created. This formerly fussy concept of bokeh is popping up in more and more advertising copy for the sale of lenses. A given piece of glass is now touted as having great bokeh, which somehow makes it more desirable than some other piece of glass.

I love the way this zoom focuses on foreground objects; its background textures, not so much.

Bokeh is really nothing more than the quality of the shapes that occur when a particular lens breaks up light in its non-focused areas. Some people use the terms “buttery” or “geometric” or “dreamy” to describe the work of a given optic, and some lenses are actually marketed based on how this texture is rendered. I can only speak to this fascination from my own viewpoint, and so you have to plug in your own approach to photography, and whether the non-essential part of a picture is now, strangely, important to you.…important enough to influence your purchase of one hunk of gear over another. I admit that some bokeh acts as a beautiful backdrop to a foreground subject, but I also contend that, as seen in the above image, some lenses can actually render it in a way that is distracting, even irritating. However, whether I admire the swirls and ellipses of some forms of bokeh, I don’t see it as anywhere near as important as what I’m trying to feature in front of it. If all things in a frame are of equal importance, why not just shoot everything at f/11 and make sure it’s all recorded at the same sharpness?

I think that, in photography, as in many other art forms, we can become fascinated with effects rather than substance, and that, if you don’t know what you’re trying to get a picture to say, you can become more interested in how cool something looks instead of what a picture’s narrative is supposed to be. Bokeh can be lovely, but giving it too much prominence is a little like sitting in a theatre and intensely watching what the third Roman to the left is doing with his toga while Marc Antony is at center stage delivering his big speech. Things in a good picture must be arranged in a hierarchy, some priority of intentions, in order to communicate effectively. And if I have my choice between a bird and a blur, I will unapologetically choose the bird every time.

Posted by  |  January 10, 2021 | Categories: Focus, Sharpness | Tags: , | Leave a comment