Feeling in Pictures

[mdm]

Many of us are guilty of a 'paint by numbers' approach to photography, we end up making the same photograph over and over again with minor variation. One day I hope to make a photograph that feels like it was. It is so hard. My favourite example is a Sudek of roses in a vase, the light dances like a ballerina, I can feel the humidity and smell wood and musty photographs. Posted below. Another example is the ajsikel girl with blowing blossoms in the May portrait thread, it smells of new love. Can you post a photograph that you feel. Below is one of mine that has a sense of the outsider looking in.

[Bruce Barlow]

At Fine Focus Workshops, and in my book, we stress finding a balance of Head (clear subject), Hands (good technical craft), and Heart (feeling). It's the balance that counts - too far in one or two ways isn't good enough. Heart is the hardest, for me, by far.

Get Dorothy Sayers' out-of-print book "The Mind of the Maker" throiugh inter-library loan. She says the same thing in different words.

[Toyon]

Your post is muddled. How is a "paint by numbers" approach the same as "making the same photograph over and over again?" One suggests an aspect of copying and of cliched subject matter, the other a lack of variety in subject matter. Some of the best artists, Sudek included, did minor variations of the same photograph over and over again, and no one should accuse him of unfelt photographs. If you are not "feeling" your photographs it is because you were not feeling the subject matter when you took the picture. Desiring to take a good picture is not enough. You need to feel the moment... and it has to feel you. By that I refer to Werner Heisenberg who concluded that you cannot observe something without changing it. How did the subject you observed and photographed change you?... and how did you change it? If you can't answer that... your photograph is not going to evoke much feeling.

Forget the platitudes about "finding a balance", that is just new age mattress stuffing, just make sure that you know what you are feeling (or that you are feeling something) when you take the photograph and start to think about how to best translate that into the image that you will ultimately make. At the risk of over interpretation, your weird conflation of dance and light, smell and love, and the "feeling of musty photographs", suggest that you are either synesthetic or more estranged from your actual feelings than you are willing to admit. Taking photographs in a deliberate and mindful way will eventually get you producing deeply felt photographs.

[Ken Lee]

[Heroique]

This has the makings of an excellent, if contentious thread.

What I find most difficult is not creating the “feeling” I want in my photos (I’ve gotten good at that) but inspiring the identical feeling in the viewer, and therefore sharing it. For example, I wonder if my reaction to Ken’s image above (it’s a positive one) shares much in common with Ken’s own feeling about it. I think the more “modern” one’s inclinations are, the less willing one is to believe in this type of subjective correspondence.

But I’m old-fashioned – I do think it’s possible, and to a remarkably accurate degree.

[Toyon]

This has the makings of an excellent, if contentious thread.

What I find most difficult is not creating the “feeling” I want in my photos – I’ve gotten good at that – but inspiring the identical feeling in the viewer, and therefore sharing it. For example, I wonder if my reaction to Ken’s image above (it’s a positive one) shares much in common with Ken’s own feeling about it. I think the more “modern” one’s inclinations are, the less likely one believes in this type of correspondence.

But I’m old-fashioned – I do think it’s possible, and to a remarkably accurate degree.

You have to be really careful in desiring to "inspire identical feeling in the viewer". The 20th century developed that into a science called propaganda. I am not just talking about the sinister aspect of propaganda, but through visual cliches you see in advertisements - such as big man tenderly cradling a newborn, child chasing bubbles in a park, kids jumping off a dock into a lake, or even, expensive dog lying on spotless sofa.

Eventually I think you have to give up on the notion of controlling what feelings you invoke in viewer. You succeed if you invoke any strong feeling - whether that is awe, fear, happiness or even thoughts of sex. It's the same as connecting with someone. They might like you, dislike you or be indifferent - but you only control that to a very limited extent. Their reactions are not only to you, but to their upbringing, other people they have met, whatever is going on in their lives at the moment, and to the color of your clothing or the qualities of your pheromones.

To "share" something with someone doesn't require identical feelings, just a recognition and appreciation of feelings the thing evoked in each other and the effect that has on your feelings about each other.

[Heroique]

...the sinister aspect...

Tachi 4x5
Schneider XL 110mm/5.6
Polaroid Type 55
14 sec. @ f22 (thank you deep shade & T55 reciprocity)
Epson 4990/Epson Scan

[Toyon]

I like it.

[bvstaples]

I work at making pictures that make me happy, that inspire an emotional response from me, not from others. If a picture moves me, then I've succeeded in making the image. If it moves others, then that's a bonus. But I don't make images with the intent of influencing others. I know to some people that's what it's all about. But not for me. As a cynic and a crotchety old man, I have little tolerance for others opinions and feelings. That's just me...and that's my dos centavos.

Brian

[Ken Lee]

According to Merg Ross in this recent thread,

"Edward Weston... would shuffle through a group of prints separating them into two piles. All of this was in silence. At the conclusion, he would point to one pile and utter, 'these I like'."

Feeling comes in all sizes and depths.