Michael Freeman - Process

MF raises the issue of what actually happens with the process of making a photograph. He points out that art in many forms is essentially instinctive (my word not his) - "most photographers would simply rather get on with shooting and not analyze the process".

IMAGE TEMPLATES

note conflicting tendencies between "balancing, ordering, and organizing so as to satisfy the sense of rightness, the other is injecting surpise and imagination in order to stimulate."

When shooting, also have the conflict between "drawing on what one knows works from experience, and exploration and experimentation."

We all have ideas of what works (mine is shooting from behind people watching something). We have visula preferences (in a way this is similar to the argument that there is no objectivity in social science - we are to some degree conditioned in how we look at the world).

These are image templates- the framework for an image.

INTERACTIVE COMPOSITION

Only in pre planned advertising or stree photography do you get a single composition decision; otherwise you get the reaction between the changing situation and your changing ideas about it.


TIME AND MOTION

Latley, motion blur has come to be seen as acceptable (because we understand it) and slow shutter speeds accepted as an option, not something forced on us.

THE LOOK

Here we are talking about surface and presentation, not content, idea or shooting style. Come from the world of digital processing.

Four classes of look:

HYPER-REALISTIC - crisp, equalized, metallic, gritty
ENRICHED - vivid, rich, dense
DRAINED - bleached, muted, pale, grimy, cross colour
LUMINOUS - glowing, hazy, milky, soft, smooth

crisp - enhancement of micro detail - HDR
equalizer - enhancement of shadow - HDR realistic
vivid -  favours colours in brighter tone range
rich - favours darker tone range

The Adobe photoshop CS5 book

This is listing of matters that I have picked up from Scott Kelby's book. It is not a precis of the book as much of the early part I know already, as I tend to use Photoshop Camera Raw Converter for most of my post processing so pointless to map out what is known. It is simply a useful source for matters that I did not know or had not used fully.

One key feature is that Kelby is a big believer in using the Camera Raw converter as it is simple, instantaneous and totally undoable. Big tick, as I am too!

Missing JPEG look  - p26. Apply Camera Profile.
White Balance use WB tool - p30 Click on tool and find something that is mid grey.
Tip - p41 ctrl-alt-z undoes edit one by one.
Curves - add contrast (contrast slider not useful, not my experience)
Tip - p50 hold shift when open in mini bridge and it opens immediately in PS
Tip p51. show overlay include rule of thirds overlay.
IMPORTANT:
Double-processing for skies p54. Difficult procedure but remember to have darker version with nice sky on top of image exposed for foreground. Use smart objects. Add layer Mask to top layer - make sure it is black then brush. Ensure foreground colour is white

The Photograph Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is about Portrait in photography.

Points to the fundamental ambiguity of portrait photography that you don;t know who or what precisely is being photographed - in a way it so the denotative and connotative elements. The portrait "is both the description of an individual and the inscription of social identity." (John Tagg).

Daguerreotype lent itself to portraiture because it produced a single image. The studio was known as an 'operating room', suggesting that using daguerreotype was a process.

Julia Cameron was typical of portrait photographers who emphasised cultural stereotypes - men were given signature and approval, women beauty and passivity.

Hill and Adam took portraiture to social significance. Sander was example of a photographer who could define a personal history within a frame of reference.

Four US photographers made problem of identity central to their work:

Mabblethorpe - gay. Characterized by self portrait encased in wire mesh and silky material;
Cindy Sherman;
Avedon and Arbus, both metamorphosed from fashion photography.

Michael Freeman

STYLE “identifiable, personalized way of doing things” continued

OPPOSITION

Opposition is fundamental to balance (except where static balance or "field" images in which pattern and texture dominate).

Two counterbalanced factors are best because energy works backwards and forwards.

Consider plane separation, first used by Lorrain in 17th century.

LOW GRAPHIC STYLE

Strted in mid 1970s in US, styled as New Topographics and new Colour. Willima Jenkins went for "stylistic anonymity", "....eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion."

Mirrored by Bechers in Dusseldorf (have read about this before). Subject matter is typically landscapes and built environment. The resultant imagery is "low on rhetoric".

Factors in low graphic style - static balance (no diagonals and symmetry), equal proportions (use square), passive, no surprises, normal focal lenghts, modest colour, monochrome, repetition.

MINIMALISM

"Less is more". Rejects pictorial and representational, preferring abstract geometry (Assignment 2?).

Factors in minimalism: framing - cut out elements from view; consistency of tome and colour; clean lines; emptiness.

HIGH GRAPHIC STYLE

Excitement, surprise and energy.

"It's hard to know where photography fits in the fully liberated world of digital colour..."

Heightening graphic elements by emphasising angularity.

Other techniques: extremes of placement, contrast, high saturation.

ENGINEERED DISORDER

A sort of anarchical movement to cover a host of different approaches. Attempts to "...engage viewers into thinking beyond what they are seeing." (El-Tantawy).

Uses disconnects, notably chiaroscuro lighting. Also disruptive foreground (typically out of focus), breaking the frame, superimposed layers.

The Photograph Chapter 5

The City  in Photography 

Photography established at a time when cities had provoked formidable literature and arts.

Panoramics were important early, eg Daguerre and Muybridge. Panoramic photographs have always been important by making viewer centre of the totality.

City photography has had central icons like  churches and skyscrapers but the opposite is street scenes which "engage with the clutter of the city, its chaos and process..." 

Negre established street figure as significant in late 19th century  eg The Organ Grinder. By comparison Talbot showed less sense of what to do with urban scene.

Stieglitz was most well -known early New York photographer. His photographs commonly omit people (eg Flatiron) typically aiming for skyline or architectural view. (eg From the Shelton).

Others, notably  Jacob Riis in How the other Half Lives, did try to enter the secret City.

Hine also made the human figure central in his photographs of Lower East Side, Ellis Island & Empire State  Building.

Perhaps most photographed city is Paris - Marville, Negre, Bayard and Le Secq are all examples, but the central photographer is Eugenne Atget who shot samll detail. His images were preservation of the past.


Lartigue sought a more modern Paris, Brassai photographed night life. Kertesz, like Brassai, photographed from hotel room but also during day.


The overall message of Clark in this chapter seems to be that the city defies easy classification by photographer -  the city is what the photographer shoots. Architecture orpeople, daytime or night time, run down areas or large structures; these are all part of the dialectic of urban photography.


Clark clearly has his favourites, eulogising about Kertesz for example but relegating Lartigue to a mention. He has an irritating tendency to resort to meaningless tautology such as: "All is a hierophany of meaning".
 

Michael Freeman

STYLE “identifiable, personalized way of doing things”

RANGE OF EXPRESSION

Can be deliberately formed, eg New Topographics, New Colour and Dusseldorf School.

(At this point my reading headed off to investigate the Dusseldorf School.  Started by the Bechers in mid 70s it is typlically B&W images from the, mostly plain images. Looked at work of Thomas Struth and to be frank wondered what the fuss was about. Is he famous because he is famous..?)

Baseline is classical composition pushing outwards to: extreme arrangements; plain, deadpan style, and chaos (cleverly managed).

CLASSICAL COMPOSITION

Classical composition is style that uses widely accepted conventions of balance, division, placement etc – the success lies in the way we see things, our hard-wired visual system.

Harmony and balance are known and can satisfy us but equally can make for uninteresting images. Need to be aware of the competing tendencies – balancing for equilibrium and disruption to jolt the awareness.

Gombrich’s “beholder’s share” viewer gets most from of a work of art when has to complete it/

Need to keep jolting viewers out of complacency.

Because of the ease with which photographers can publish their work on the internet’ this shifts power away from established media and democratizes photography, probably leading o more rapid change of fashion.

I think democratization could go two ways: it could lead to more trends and quicker movement, but could also stultify trending because of the plethora of material makes it less certain that any Zeitgeist will emerge – a sort of anarchic state.

HARMONICS

Golden Section - ratio of smaller part to large part is same as ratiod of the larger to the whole

Derves from music to a degree - 4:6:9 or 9:12:16 are well-known harmonies.

Because of the lack of time, skilful composition in photography is more difficult than art.

LEADING THE EYE

Little is actually known of how people view photos - people look at what interests them individually. But can lead the eye by pointing or leading with a vector form large to small for example. Adds interest and even a sense of time in so far as it suggests a sequencing within the image.

Michael Freeman

Read some more Freeman while away. Some notes below:

LOOKING GOOD:

Some consensus over what people like:
the familiar
rich colour
brightness
contrast
harmony
definition and clarity
beauty

three components of beauty:

well-proportioned - components fit together in a SIZE relationship that audience finds satisfying;
harmonious - coexistence between everything;
unified - sense of completeness
natural correctness (no pollution)
pleasurable memory
good lighting

DEAD MONSTERS
Flip side of beauty is SUBLIME where we experience delight at scenes that are overwhelming, vast or even terrifying.
2 kinds of sublime: size (large scale, low horizon, small figures for scale) and force (low key for brooding effect, low chromatic range, complex clouds, swirling lines).

CLICHE AND IRONY
cliche can refer to ideas done before so come up with new ideas like very large prints. Sometimes subjects are innovative, then fashionable, then cliche - subjects beome victim of their own success.

THE REVEAL
"Beholder's share as Gombrich would put it. Being obvious does not give the viewer much to do. In photography need usually to make the reveal small so the eye needs to explore.

The Photograph Chapters 3 & 4 & Michael Freeman

Bought a copy of Practical Photographer and keep some useful ideas of how to take seascapes ad also some cheap ideas for effects, mainly indoors. I take few images indoors so this may provide some inspiration.

Perhaps I am being unfair on Clarke in my previous blog - his chapters on 19th century photography and Landscape photography are much less pompous and sound summaries. He waxes lyrical sometimes but generally sticks to a reasonably objective and concise.

The 19th century saw photographers such as Talbot, who was really the father of photography insofar as one exists. I like The Open Door; as Clarke says, it could have been a painting.

Clearly many of the photogrpahers were people of their times: Fenton reinforces the upper class mores with his images, seeking to ignore the reality of life in the countryside and even selective imagery of the Crimean War, a sort of stiff upper lip photography.

Interesting that Jabez Hughes distinguished between Mechanical  photography (simple representation); Art photography (more conscious involvement of the photographer in arranging and modifying the subject matter); and High Art photography ("whose purpose is not merely to amuse but to instruct, enoble and purify"). This has resonance today in the distinction between the happy snapper taking images of family friends, and holidays; the more serious photographer who can see that a more satisfying and challenging image can be obtained by being more involved; and the photographer who is consciously trying to send a message. Like all classification, it is imperfect but it makes sense.

Clarke draws some basic distinctions between Landscape photography in England and in the US. English landscape photography was traditionally (and arguably still is to a large degree) about the picturesque, loosely defined as the depiction of rural life as idyllic and Arcadian. In 18th century Art the term was used in a derogatory way to signify pretty rather then beautiful. Fenton;s landscapes were of this ilk.

In the US, several early photographers were also explorers of the  new country, much taken with its vastness and emptiness - the images of O'Sullivan and William Henry Jackson were typical of the genre. Magnificent images for the time, they especially seem to emphasise the space. Clarke claims too that there was a transcendentalist tradition in US landscapes - a spiritual depiction of the great scenery presented to us by God.

I am less convinced by Clarke's appraisal of 2oth century landscape photography, perhaps he does not have sufficient space to set out enough comparative material. He makes the point that UK landscape photography has moved on to use man made intrusion onto the landscape as the main subject for photographers such as Moore and Parr.

Have read two chapters of Michael Freeman's book - The Photographer's Mind.  It is a more practical book than Clarke's; I like Freeman's idea of democratic photography - he acknowledges the ease with which anyone can pick up a camera as opposed to a paintbrush or musical instrument say and the consequently high participation level in photography. His style is less pompous and academic; amen to that I say because the notion that photography is high art is undemocratic - it tries to set the academic apart from the rest of us. He elicits six charactersitics of a good photograph:

1. Understands what generally satisfies;
2. Stimulates and provokes;
3. Is mulit-layered (works on more than one level);
4. Fits the cultural context;
5. Contains an idea;
6. Is true to the medium

Freeman divides his book into three: intent,style and process and this seems a very simple and memorable triumvirate. It should be a good and challenging read.

The Photograph Chapters 1 & 2

Read Chapter 1 of The Photograph by Graham Clarke.

Points noted:

• "Photography" means light writing literally;
• Interesting quote from La Gazette de France about the daguerreotype: that it (the daguerreotype) "will revolutionise the are of drawing". It is a common refrain on something new resulting from a misunderstanding on the importance of an innovation (the opposite in a way to the view that the some innovations, e.g. the computer, will not catch on, for example). It does not allow that the innovation may "increase the market" and there is room for both art and photography;
• Talbot produced the calotype - the first genuine photographic negative process;
• Distinction between photography as art (witness the fact that we talk about 'portrait' and 'landscape') and as a mass produced object - holiday snaps;
• Clarke believes there are six elements to the structure of a photograph, its efficacy and effect:

1. Size;
2. Shape;
3. That a photograoh is a minituarisation of reality;
4. It is 2 flat- 2 dimensional;
5. As a an art form, photographs traditionally eschew colour  (one wonders wether this is no more than artistic snobbery, a deliberate attempt to escape the horrible thought that a photogrpah is indeed nothing but a pictorial representation of reality);
6. Time - the fact that we know exactly when a photograph is taken

I have enjoyed reading The Photograph. It helps to set what we do in the wider context of art in general.

Photography IS art  - as Clarke points out, the mere use of words such as "portrait" and "landscape" betray the ambition of the pursuit as being more than the mere mass production of holiday snaps.

Therein lies the distinct dilemma for photographyy: it is almost TOO accessible; anyone can take an image and plausibly present it as Art. Even poor pictures can be presented as "Well, I can see something in it, I defy you to as well."

But Art generally does not work well as a mass pursuit; we need heroes, those we look up to, the leaders. And Clarke plays to this audience by his presentation of work by Arbus and Friedlander. At a most basic level, perhaps the denotative of Barthes, one could argue the Arbus "got lucky" with Identical Twins; they rather conveniently had different expressions. But we (Clarke) read much into this (Barthes' connotative):

"The more we continue to look, the more the merest detail resonates as part of a larger enigmatic presence and tension as to what, exactly, we are being asked to look at." Thus Clarke enunciates a common artistic refrain, which in simple terms says that I should be able to see something in this image because it was taken by a really well-renowned photographer. He continues: "Far from identical twins these are individuals in their own right. They are, as it were, very different twins".

It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the profundity of this statement. A possible retort is to say of course they are different; that's biology for you. But let us not be unfair; what Clarke implies is that Arbus has encapsulated that thought in her photograph. The thought is presented to us.

I am much less taken with the images of Friedlander. This takes the artistic extreme of presenting images that are lacking in some of the photographic basics of composition and balance as being objects of artistic expression and demanding of us, the captive audience, that we see meaning that I doubt is actually there.

For me, Albuquerque is a poor picture. It says nothing. Clarke eulogises: "Friedlander makes the familiar unfamiliar, and the obvious strange". So Friedlander deliberately moved so that the dog is cut in half by the post? I am not so sure. If this is an image to show contemporary (1972) tendency to increase street furniture then at a denotative level, it works. Beyond that, I think not.