Thoughts on composition, learning from Ansel Adams

[Daniel Casper Lohenstein]

Daniel, I think Adams' are more balanced while Lange's are edgy due to the imbalance, also more extemporaneous. I notice about my pictures that I am overly balanced oriented. It's like I cannot allow the photo to tilt. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. What do you think?

Alan,

(im)balancing things on a picture plane doesn't have to be "good" or "bad". It is the way you see your world. Perhaps this is simply the way you want to arrange the things in your pictures. Why should this be "bad" or "good"? Are we talking about composition, or about moral?

Is "good" what arouses interest? - Actually I read Yuval Noah Harari: "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow". He says that "technological developments have threatened the continued ability of humans to give meaning to their lives; Harari suggests the possilibity of the replacement of humankind with a super-man, or "homo deus" (human god)" and "that humans are algorithms, and as such Homo sapiens may not be dominant in a universe where big data becomes a paradigm." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_D...ry_of_Tomorrow

Perhaps algoritms will be able to produce "better" artworks than human beings. Here's the link: https://qz.com/488701/humans-are-con...-for-j-s-bach/ And: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm...-cope-and-emi/

But what should we do then? I think the knwoledge why I balance a picture is more important than the question why a number of human beings think that a picture is "good" or skilled. Then I realize how I can change a balanced orentation to develop the formal or compositional expression of my prints. And the journey is the reward. So, the "good" is, that you are reflecting your production, process-related. It is not the simple correspondence to a "higher aim" like the "best or definitive composition"

Sometimes it takes a lot of time to make pictures extemporaneous, because producing imbalance requires some knowledge about balancing. In other words: allowing the photo to tilt implies that you know what "tilting" means.

I already noted the case of Robert Adams - the other Adams - whose works are formally and in a dispositional sense balanced, e.g. http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/ada...ng_image_3.jpg : they have got these improvisational traces of manking in the well balanced fine art prints landscapes. http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/adams/

Viele Grüsse

[Alan Klein]

Alan,

(im)balancing things on a picture plane doesn't have to be "good" or "bad". It is the way you see your world. Perhaps this is simply the way you want to arrange the things in your pictures. Why should this be "bad" or "good"? Are we talking about composition, or about moral?

Is "good" what arouses interest? - Actually I read Yuval Noah Harari: "Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow". He says that "technological developments have threatened the continued ability of humans to give meaning to their lives; Harari suggests the possilibity of the replacement of humankind with a super-man, or "homo deus" (human god)" and "that humans are algorithms, and as such Homo sapiens may not be dominant in a universe where big data becomes a paradigm." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_D...ry_of_Tomorrow

Perhaps algoritms will be able to produce "better" artworks than human beings. Here's the link: https://qz.com/488701/humans-are-con...-for-j-s-bach/ And: http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm...-cope-and-emi/

But what should we do then? I think the knwoledge why I balance a picture is more important than the question why a number of human beings think that a picture is "good" or skilled. Then I realize how I can change a balanced orentation to develop the formal or compositional expression of my prints. And the journey is the reward. So, the "good" is, that you are reflecting your production, process-related. It is not the simple correspondence to a "higher aim" like the "best or definitive composition"

Sometimes it takes a lot of time to make pictures extemporaneous, because producing imbalance requires some knowledge about balancing. In other words: allowing the photo to tilt implies that you know what "tilting" means.

I already noted the case of Robert Adams - the other Adams - whose works are formally and in a dispositional sense balanced, e.g. http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/ada...ng_image_3.jpg : they have got these improvisational traces of manking in the well balanced fine art prints landscapes. http://media.artgallery.yale.edu/adams/

Viele Grüsse

Interesting reply. I believe most good landscape shots are balanced. Sometimes though, I think I'm stuck on balance, afraid to step out of the box. On the other hand, I do see things that aren't balanced and shoot them . This shot most would say is way too much sky. Violates some rule or another. But when I was standing there, the sky became the subject in my mind. It was a very special sky so I shot it as the subject. The farm just was there for perspective and to "ground" it.
New Jersey Farm by Alan Klein, on Flickr

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Very nice image. I agree on balance. I tend to avoid the rules, like rule of thirds, golden rule, etc. I find too many are dogmatically stuck in rules and cannot produce a photograph without conforming to the rules. I like to let the scene tell me what it wants to be and not force the scene to conform to a set of rules. When I look at many images taken, they can look contrived, esoteric and forced because they have been made to adhere to some rule. Imagine if every single artist followed the "rules", how boring, mundane and repetitive every work would be! There would be no originality.

So it is with me as an example when I shoot the Grand Canyon. How many millions of images are there of the GC? Of those, how many are unique? And of those, how many are truly a work of art that displays the GC in its real Glory? I try to photograph the GC to show it in its grand beauty, to be more than unique, I don't think I am there, but an example of a work in progress is the image below. I don't know if this would qualify as unique and one of the few showing the GC in its glory, but I tried. I didn't follow any rules with this scene, I let it tell me what it wanted to be. I could see it as I was exploring and just knew to set up where I did and take the shot.

Had I followed the rules, the river would have been placed differently, etc. Also, I may not have taken the shot as the sun was still too high in the sky (you know, the poor light characteristics), but I let the scene tell me what it wanted and took that image. From there, I have been working to bring out the details it wants shown and at the same time avoiding forcing myself upon the image. Hopefully some of that makes sense.

[IMG]201800901_0115_20181015_Working by Steven Ruttenberg, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Alan Klein]

Steve: You probably violated the rule of having two subjects. But, like you said, screw the rules. Nice shot.
Three of the attached shots are from the GC. I'm sure I violated some rules there too.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alankl...57694819890421

[Drew Wiley]

Gosh. Now Wicked-Pedia is the source for defining "art"? What next, the Guinness Book of World Records for centipede races?
And alogarithms ?????? Give me a break.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

LOl, Breaking the law!

[Steven Ruttenberg]

Gosh. Now Wicked-Pedia is the source for defining "art"? What next, the Guinness Book of World Records for centipede races?

Well, didn't you know, if wikipedia says its true it must be true? That is what all my nieces and my daughter tells me.

[Mark Sawyer]

Gosh. Now Wicked-Pedia is the source for defining "art"?

Art is anything anyone calls art. The judgement call is whether it's the kind of art you don't want to step in because you wouldn't want to get it on your shoes...

[Drew Wiley]

Just don't walk around barefoot. Simple enough. That's why, just like passwords, it's best to use more letters and characters to be specific. It's why I often employ the term "artistes". When everyone is an artiste, and everything is art, then nothing is art. But that's nothing new. Just one more BS term that gets endlessly reincarnated, generation after generation.

[Steven Ruttenberg]

So, could a robot be programmed to play a guitar like Kirk Hammond from Metallica? Maybe, but what about the human component? The soul if you will. The total random mistakes, the way the string are played, the emotion that is involved in playing. The same is true of photography, it is the human content that makes the difference, makes a photo unique, art, over a computer algorithm composing a scene, taking picture and then working it to completion. Programs are constrained by explicit rules that have to be followed. The d a y you truly have a machine with a soul, will never happen, or should I say, until we evolve into gods.