My mother kept all of our family photos in the second drawer of a nightstand next to her bed. I wasn’t normally allowed in my parents bedroom, but if they were in the room to supervise me, I was sometimes granted permission to view them. On those occasions, I immediately made a bee-line for that nightstand. I was fascinated by those pieces of paper that held the frozen moments of my family history. More than that, I found them to be visually beautiful and meaningful in their storytelling capacity. Here’s a small sample of some of the treasures I found in that nightstand:
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| I like this one because it has a soft, painterly quality to it and because half of the image space is filled by beach, greater emphasis is placed on the subject of the photo. |
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The blur of this one gives it such a haunting and mysterious feel. The composition is impeccable, very symmetrical looking. The upward camera angle contributes to the stern feel of this photo. |
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| Another great use of an upward camera angle! |
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A pleasingly symmetrical composition. |
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Oh, how I love this photograph! Purely graphical, black and white. This was a picture of me when I was 6 or 7 years old, with my pet cockatiel. The backlighting cast us into silhouettes. |
When I was a teenager, I bought a book called “The Complete Photographer” by Andreas Feininger. I found this book to be absolutely inspiring because of it’s emphasis on creative mean-making in photography, rather than simple technical competence for commercial purpose. This book is no longer in print, so rather than see it’s message lost, I will shamelessly quote from it:
Photography at its best is a form of art. And like any other form of art, it involves two different levels:
The level of creation
The level of execution
Creation of any work of art begins with a flash of inspiration or a train of thought, with an idea and a plan. The forces that motivate it are inventiveness and imagination. These qualities are inherent in the artist.. They are elusive– hard to define; and one either does or does not possess them. They cannot be taught. In contrast, the execution of any work of art is based upon concrete techniques involving means and devices. Anyone who is willing to make the effort can learn to master them.
I know personally several unusually creative photographers who have only the most rudimentary understanding of photographic techniques and who would not think of developing films or making prints. And I have met quite a few extraordinarily skilled photo-technicians who lacked a creative mind.
What I wish to arrive at is this: if you study the following pages you can, with work, become an expert photo-technician, but not necessarily an artist. Whether or not you can do original work depends entirely upon your inherent qualifications. However, talent is often dormant until stirred by some outside influence. This book might conceivably provide that influence.
Feininger goes on to explain the importance of the ability to see in terms of photography. You have to train yourself to see things that others overlook due to inattention– the quality and distribution of light and shadow, the shapes of objects in terms of composition, color harmonies– basically everything that contributes to the graphic quality of the image:
Seeing in terms of photography means realizing potentialities: not seeing things as they are, but visualizing them as they could be made to appear in picture form. This kind of seeing depends as much on the eye of the mind as the eyes. It is based upon imagination– imagining what could be made out of a subject or event, how it can be isolated from its surroundings, characterized, condensed, and finally presented in the most graphically effective form. Seeing in terms of photography is potentially the most powerful control a photographer has to improve the impression of his pictures.
To see as a camera sees, a photographer must mute all his senses except sight. A photographer should also understand the creative controls available to lend to the feel of the imagery. For example, the focal length of your lens affects the perspective of your photograph. A wide angle lens typically has a flattening effect on the perspective of objects at the edges of the photo. Note in the photo below how the person’s face at the top, left of the picture has been distorted:
The telephoto lens has the effect of compressing the image area and reducing the depth of field, which is a wonderful tool for portraiture because the subject remains sharp, but the background of the image is blurred, as shown below:
A black and white photo has a very different quality than a color image does:
The creative choices available are almost endless. You can send a dozen photographers out to shoot the same assignment and they will each return with entirely different visions. Photography is at its best when it can provide a glimpse into a world that the viewer may never be privy to. Every person alive has a unique vision and approach. A photographer should strive to create a photograph that has impact. To quote a long section from the Feininger book:
Impact can be defined as emotional stopping power. It is an intangible difficult to define. Whereas a photograph that has visual stopping power will be noted by an observer, a picture that has emotional stopping power will command a deeper kind of attention, its meaning or feeling bypassed only by those almost devoid of sensitivity.
Before he can create photographs with impact, a photographer must himself feel the emotions which, via his picture, he wishes to impart upon others. This is the main reason why I consider genuine interest in a subject one of the first conditions for the making of good photographs. If a photographer does not have a response to his subject, he obviously cannot produce work which contains any emotional quality and, just as obviously, an observer in seeing it must remain unmoved.
The emotional reaction of a photographer toward his subject may be compassion for children who have nowhere to play beyond the garbage-littered backlots of big cities, the awe-inspiring, almost mystical serenity felt in the redwood forests of California, or a sensitive appreciation of the exquisite structure of a seashell. The response may stem from admiration for the talents of an actress or her sex appeal, disgust with a demagogic politician, or hate of war. What matters, and what usually makes the difference between pictures with and without impact, is whether the photographer reacts emotionally to his subject or whether he is indifferent and simply shoots the picture as part of the job. In the first case he may succeed in transferring to his work something of which he felt in the presence of his subject. In the second he will merely produce a picture which, for all it’s worth, might just as well not have been made. As it is impossible to establish rules for the creation of art, so it is impossible to instruct photographers on how to create photographs with impact.
A photograph that has impact gives the observer some kind of an emotional shock. It may be slight, producing a mild response or calling forth comment in appreciation of the thing achieved. Or it may create a moving impression which turns the mind to deepening thought. Seeking the cause of such reactions, I analyzed a number of photographs which, as far as I am concerned, have impact. And I found that these photographs had one quality in common: they were genuine. By this I mean that there was about them nothing phony, nothing posed or faked. To me, this genuineness is a prime requirement for the creation of impact.
Some of the most moving photographs I have seen were technically imperfect– grainy, unsharp, or blurred. But far from distracting, these imperfections actually heightened the impression of genuineness and realism in the picture and thus become, in fact, means of creative expression. They gave a visual sense of immediacy. They incorporated the rush and excitement of events or emphasized the difficult or dangerous situation. In a sense, these technically imperfect photographs reminded me of handmade objects which have interesting irregularities– which precisely because of their flaws are more appreciated and sought after than their technically perfect but impersonal counterparts.
Again, since this book is out of print and I don’t want its message to be lost, I went ahead and scanned in the photos from the book that Feininger cites as examples and posted them below. I have also quoted what he had to say about the visual appeal of these images:
Graphic impact. An outstanding example of good composition, “Provocative Girl” by Al Francekevich derives its effect from the bold use of black and white and from the arrangement of the figure which, contrary to academic tradition, faces away from the center of the photograph. As a result, the girl appears to walk right out of the picture, daring the observer to follow her.
Color in portraiture. Two photographs by Robert Freson show how color can lend added significance to a portrait. In the picture above, the lacquer red forms, suggesting Chinese characters by there shape and color, accentuate the Chinese ancestry of the girl. And in the photo above that one, related greens and blues, culminating in the brilliant blue of the eyes, add up to a vivid portrait of an English miner.
Motion symbolization. Children on a swing, photographed by Hugo Lundberg. Blur– the result of panning in conjunction with a relatively slow shutter speed– expresses action and vibrant life.
Creative use of grain. Better than a slick rendition, the coarseness of the negative grain expresses the grime and exhaustion in the face of this football player photographed by Al Francekevich.
Unsharpness suggests mystery. This photograph by Nina Leen portrays two people in love. Deliberately unsharp rendition creates a mood which induces the observer to share a moment of bliss.
Light and shadow. Breaking with tradition, Richard Avedon, boldly modeling with shadow and light, creates a portrait whose power of expression makes it unforgettable.
Note: Please excuse the photo below, showing the centerfold of the book, I didn’t want to spend the time photoshopping that out. You can still get the point of the photo anyway..
The radiance of direct light. “Burst Of Speed to Catch A Ride” is the title of this exciting photograph by George Silk which shows a surf boarder paddling furiously to get on a wave at the beginning of his ride. By shooting smack into the sun, Silk, through star shapes, flares, and halation, photographically expresses the fierceness of radiant light and the glitter of flying foam and spray.
A detail can express the whole. To avoid the banality of an overall shot when summing up an automobile show, I made instead a close-up of a front of a Bentley, indicating the rest by blur.
Sophisticated greys. Sparseness of shades combined with excellent composition make this blizzard scene by Al Francekevich a good example of what a gifted photographer can achieve with limited means.
Ah, beauty and meaning– that’s the goal. That book truly inspired me to get a 35mm camera and start shooting. Another huge influence was the reporting of the Vietnam war. Journalism was such a noble profession at that time. It was actually performing the duty that it was intended to– it was the journalists who brought the war into America’s living-room– it was the journalist’s who photographed the returning caskets, it was the journalist’s who accompanied the soldier’s into battle, armed not with guns, but with camera’s. It was the journalist’s who alerted the American public to the Watergate incident which brought down the Nixon administration.
Even now as I write about it, it stirs my soul. I am so in love with the idea of bearing witness. If there was no one to bear witness, all evils would freely continue and all good would be unknown, unseen. For me, there is no greater purpose to this life and THAT is why I photograph. Of course, I am also in love with the idea of revealing the unseen and unnoticed aspects that are captured in a moment. I find joy when I can create or capture beautiful lighting that enhances that moment. I try to present my own ideas in visual form. Photography is about the artistic expression of ideas because a photographer’s world view cannot be separated from his vision.
