We started ... shortly, the performance stopped ... they simply could NOT play with that flashgun going off, a fact they did not hesitate to communicate to me, and everyone else present.
Fine, load high speed black and white film, shut off the flash, and continue. Ten minutes later - stop again - they could not perform with the noise of the Hasselblad shutter going off!
A friend of mine recounts photographing at a Keith Jarrett concert. Keith came to a rest, the mirror of the Minolta SRT slapped, and the audience got a lecture until he felt like playing the piano again.
I've done a lot of this kind of stuff (with a leica, no flash) and it introduces YET ANOTHER element of "seeing" -- how do you anticipate facial expression changes, where someone's hand is going to be, etc. I have found that if I spend some time and film learning a person or a situation, I can often anticipate quite well, but it isn't a conscious thing. It is a sort of attunement of my own rhythms with that of whatever is going on. Is that "seeing"? It isn't just visual, but certainly depends upon visual cues.
I've done a lot of this kind of stuff (with a leica, no flash) and it introduces YET ANOTHER element of "seeing" -- how do you anticipate facial expression changes, where someone's hand is going to be, etc. I have found that if I spend some time and film learning a person or a situation, I can often anticipate quite well, but it isn't a conscious thing. It is a sort of attunement of my own rhythms with that of whatever is going on. Is that "seeing"? It isn't just visual, but certainly depends upon visual cues.
I've been shooting dance and theater with a Leica for almost 24 years. It is indeed the ideal tool for the job, and I can identify with your "atunement with whatever is going on. It is, to me, a holistic experience: the dark theater, the music, the movement, my concentration and attempt to see what is going to happen just before it does... everything.
Unfortunately, most of my clients are now requiring me to shoot that D stuff. I hate it, but I have to please them.
I've been shooting dance and theater with a Leica for almost 24 years. It is indeed the ideal tool for the job, and I can identify with your "atunement with whatever is going on. It is, to me, a holistic experience: the dark theater, the music, the movement, my concentration and attempt to see what is going to happen just before it does... everything.
Unfortunately, most of my clients are now requiring me to shoot that D stuff. I hate it, but I have to please them.
I guess you are a candidate for an M8, huh? My wife has the Panaleica L1 which has something a similar same gestalt. My older Panaleica LC1 is better yet, but the files are too small.
But NOTHING even comes close to the M series for this sort of work. Where wasn't it Blake who said "I see through my eyes, not with them" I can say "I see through my camera, not with it" with my M. Not so with the reflex. There, you don't see through the camera. After the fact, you see what it got.
Speaking of Learning to See -- With the reflex, it goes dark when you need to see most, because you need to learn from how close you came last time to close in on it next time.
It is interesting how individual performers vary. I've been shooting poets reading the last few years. Some of them are animated, and I can learn their movements fairly easily. Others are deadpan, then punctuate the monotony with moments of brilliant expression. Those are the hard ones.
ok I'm curious about other peoples thoughts on image creation. Are we as photographers born with the inherent ability to see what would and would not make a good image? or is the art of photographic sight, composition and creation something everyone can be taught as they grow?
I believe, you're either born with it, or you're not. Some people just have a natural "eye" for what makes an image work.
There are very few who could be "taught", but I believe that's merely bringing out a natural talent they were aware of, due to their monetary or social environment.
Merely change the word "photographer" to "musician", and that's a whole other can of worms. Does anybody here believe the Beatles could have been "taught" to be a great as they are? None could read/write notation, but their songs are still with us today.
Same as with Mozart, a child prodigy. Able to write notation merely by filling in the notes (no instrument required to "find" the notes.
I'll close with my original thought: you're either born with it or you're not.
Rolleijoe
__________________
If the lens doesn't read "ZEISS", then it just isn't.
Does anybody here believe the Beatles could have been "taught" to be a great as they are? None could read/write notation, but their songs are still with us today.
Same as with Mozart, a child prodigy. Able to write notation merely by filling in the notes (no instrument required to "find" the notes.
I, for one, believe the Beatles did not came completely formed, athena-like from the forehead of Liverpool. How many years did they spend covering up other Rock & Roll songs in divy places across Europe, notably Germany? How many hours must have they spent besides the Electrophone spinning 45 RPM records to hear what was up and current? And how many times did Mozart's father kicked him in the butt for not doing his scales?
Nothwithstanding the excellence those two people have achieved, and the fact that they are indeed one big notch above the other perhaps because of biological/cognitive reasons, it remains that the question at hand here is not "can I become a genius?" but rather "can I learn to see?"
Being a genius is a tough job, and few are called. But there are a lot among us here who have learned to see, even though we are not the Mozarts of photography. And it remains that a genius without practice, encouragement, and support, is nothing. Elevating existing geniuses on a pedestal does nothing to foster the arts at large in a population and only pursues an elitist vision of entitlement for the gifted few.
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
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You'll see nothing if you aren't looking. The question is, "What are you looking for?"
Another brilliant small quote in this wonderful thread that is worth repeating...
As I have also practised art forms other than photography, including drawing, painting, and sculpting, I feel that each form of art teaches a different way of seeing.
- Photography taught me the rules of composition...
- Drawing taught me to *really* look... You can look at a subject for hours, yet still not grasp it's true essence of form or nature of being. Drawing teaches you that...
- Painting taught me the nature and function of colours and light in our world...
- Sculpting taught me three dimensionality, and the effect of light on three dimensionality... In fact, where there is no directional light there is no form... Even though I had had many lessons of drawing before I started sculpting, sculpting based on life human models immediately and instinctively forced me to walk around subjects... a new way of approaching a subject.
And there is cross-over... since I have sculpted, I have become more mobile with photography too, viewing a photographic subject from all angles before deciding on the final shot.
I do think, unless you practice multiple art-forms, you are unlikely to "see" the whole picture, even though you learned one "trick"...
There was an interesting study I saw about a year back comparing how artists looked at a picture, as opposed to laymen. The study tracked the eye movements to determine where people were looking. Laymen looked at people's faces, and that was pretty much it. Artists scanned the whole picture, paying particular attention to patterns and textures. They hardly paid any attention to faces.
This matches my own experience. Most people seem incapable of taking a picture that doesn't have a face in it. I'm always asked how I can take pictures that "look like postcards".
There was an interesting study I saw about a year back comparing how artists looked at a picture, as opposed to laymen. The study tracked the eye movements to determine where people were looking. Laymen looked at people's faces, and that was pretty much it. Artists scanned the whole picture, paying particular attention to patterns and textures. They hardly paid any attention to faces.
This matches my own experience. Most people seem incapable of taking a picture that doesn't have a face in it. I'm always asked how I can take pictures that "look like postcards".
This matches my experience, too. I used to get the "postcard" comment quite often and wasn't always sure if it was a compliment or not.
And yesterday I was at a nearby state park at a waterfall with my 4x5 (for the second time) and was waiting patiently for people to move so I could take a shot. The guy who was asking me about the camera seemed surprised that I wanted the shot without people.
Laymen looked at people's faces, and that was pretty much it. Artists scanned the whole picture, paying particular attention to patterns and textures. They hardly paid any attention to faces.
This matches my own experience. Most people seem incapable of taking a picture that doesn't have a face in it. I'm always asked how I can take pictures that "look like postcards".
I've been quoting that Eggleston bit too much, but I think it still encapsulates a lot that is true about making photography an art, and builds up on what you just said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by William Eggleston
I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify.
They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre.
Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it. They respect their work because they are told by respectable institutions that they are important artists, but what they really want to see is a picture with a figure or an object in the middle of it. They want something obvious.
The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.
Afterward from The Democratic Forest
William Eggleston in Conversation with Mark Holborn
__________________ Using film since before it was hip.
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