Useful photographs

[Andy Eads]

"utility: fitness for some purpose or worth to some end" says Webster's Ninth Colegiate. For 20 years of my career in photography I worked at a goverment facility taking useful photographs. Some were useful for as little as a few minutes, others provide information that is used to plan, remove, explore or just remember. Few of them were very pretty though they were composed, focused and otherwise very well crafted. If the engineer got excited about the photo, I felt satisfaction in a job well done.

[Lenny Eiger]

I think useful is a good idea. A have a bit of a different take on it, however. I think the purpose of Art is to teach you something - preferably about yourself. Journalism can teach you about what things look like or what happened. However, even within the context of a good journalistic photo, you might find yourself feeling something about what you see. That's about you... Consider Gene Smith...

There are many folks who have gone to the "spiritual" places of the world, whether this be a tree in their backyard or the temples of Angkor Wat. Some have brought back what things look like, but little of the feeling of the place - and that's a shame. The incessant color photos of flowers leave me starving for something...

When I think of useful, I think of photographs that actually move me - inside. There have been some photos that taught me a thing or two, a couple that have changed my whole life. One called "Morning", by Clarence White, done in 1910, really knocked me for a loop. When I first saw Caponigro's work, I was moved, as I was when I saw Julia Margaret Cameron, Frederick Evans, Lewis Hine, etc. History has a lot of examples.

I think artists should strive to get farther than what things look like and to get to the emotional content of images so that they can be useful to the rest of our world... Intellectual pursuits such as the latest round of post-modern exercises are fine, but to move someone, that's really something.

Lenny

[cjbroadbent]

...When I think of useful, I think of photographs that actually move me - inside....

Most of believe we know how to go about making photographs that move people. We use subject matter and mood and sometimes we can manage a bit of structure.
I was looking for clear ideas - in the 'Style and Technique' section, at a safe distance from the 'On Photography' section - about making photographs that describe and inform.
Jim, Stephen and Mark were quite dismissive about the concept, as though, artists all, we need not bother.
I bother because my photography has always been subject to appraisal and criticism - some of it very harsh - from a hierarchy of visual communicators and their clients. I have probably spent 10 years of my life re-shooting pictures that were not sufficiently useful according to editorial and commercial criteria.
Now I know a bit more about visual perception but not enough. So I was asking for ideas.
For instance; how do you go about lighting a large piece of machinery and separating it from it's surroundings in a factory workshop? Should verticals always be adjusted or should some photographical perspective remain? Does space for peripheral vision help comprehension? Are the old Kodak manuals on lighting products so bad after all?
... and so on.

[andress007]

For instance; how do you go about lighting a large piece of machinery and separating it from it's surroundings in a factory workshop? Should verticals always be adjusted or should some photographical perspective remain? Does space for peripheral vision help comprehension? Are the old Kodak manuals on lighting products so bad after all?
... and so on.

Those are not questions in commercial shooting, I think, where customer's art director set guidance in front of the photographer: we need film/digi, special lighting at that angle etc, but in best case AD collaborate with photographer to find optimal solution based on customer needs and photog experience.

For personal art everything is open.

Probably Hiromi Sakanashi could afford to tell the customer's AD to keep verticals unadjusted for particular composition, and this will be accepted, I think.

But for most photog's AD is a God on the earth.

[Andrew O'Neill]

My photos are useful in that they satisfy me and certain urges...mind you, I've taken a lot of useless photos too...but then again, these useless ones still are useful...
This is a good thread.

[aduncanson]

My father-in-law worked for a university research institute for many years designing electronic and optical instruments for a myriad of applications. He talks about a photographer they relied on who would set up his speed or crown graphic camera on a tripod, consult about what parts of the subject needed to be visible for the report and pull out a hand held light with a strategically dented reflector, open the shutter and wave the light around painting the subject. Reportedly there was never a need for a second exposure or a re-shoot.

In one way it was art, in others not.

[Mark Sampson]

Chistopher, don't get me wrong. I have no problem with 'useful' photographs, as making such things has provided me with food, clothing, and shelter (and other things too) for over twenty years. Perhaps the question is 'can useful photographs transcend their utility and become beautiful images in their own right?' I'd say the ones that you post here do. The ones I make my living by- occasionally they have. Perhaps the one I make tomorrow will. There's always hope!

[cjbroadbent]

Mark, thanks. Perhaps images can transcend both ways when they are incisive.I am trying to nail down the things that make photographs incisive.
For instance (one of many):
Should a widow-light be uniform or should the light fall off toward the edges? I have found that fall-off gives a better penumbra - which is contrary to common practice. But read an old translation of Leonardo, the greatest craftsman of all: "Of the window, at which a painter works.
Having a sheet of oiled paper betore it, without any
bars running across the sheet; these bars being
of no use but to shut out part of the light,
and to project shadows, which may give him
some trouble in the execution of his work. It
will be of use, likewise, to tinge the extreme
parts of the sheet, with some obscure colour,
making it fall off gradually, as it advances from
the extremities of the sheet; fo that the bounds
of the light may not be the same with those of
the window."
See the shadow under Mona Lisa's nose to understand what he is getting at.
Leonardo was commissioned to start an art school in Milan which he never did. But he did prepare the course work which can be read here - http://www.archive.org/stream/treati...0leon_djvu.txt

[Ben Syverson]

Christopher,

I had never heard of that text. What a find!