Visualization, Pre and Post?

[Willie]

http://blog.juliaannagospodarou.com/visualization-versus-vision-why-vision-comes-first/

Ansel Adams and Visualization. He didn't use "Pre" or "Post" when talking about it.

Minor White apparently came up with that. Few things in Photography are so simple that Minor could not make them complicated - much like Eugene Smith printing from his negatives.

So, do you Pre visualize, or do you visualize?

[Vaughn]

I previsualize by having a pot of tea and a good breakfast before venturing out to visualize for the day.

To make it all easier, I think I'll just call it thinking and do it though the whole process -- pre, actual, and post.

Below is my first major 'post-visualization' as a photographer. Originally seen as full-frame, I discovered this image on my proof sheet and it started a love for the proportions..

[BrianShaw]

It’s just a word. Could just as well be pre-compose and post-compose. Whatever word one wants to use, it seems unlikely that one would be successful in visual arts with just random image capture and no thought process.

[Tin Can]

In studio I often setup a shot I dreamed up while sleep thinking

I wake up with a plan

Then modify in studio with test shots as reality intrudes

magic is not magic, simply illusion

pre imagined

[Vaughn]

It’s just a word. Could just as well be pre-compose and post-compose. Whatever word one wants to use, it seems unlikely that one would be successful in visual arts with just random image capture and no thought process.

Since everyone approaches making images differently, it would be surprising if everyone agreed on the same thought process in their approach of making images. As I wrote above, I treat the making of an image as a continous process, so there is no single stage to call 'visualization' (and thus really no pre and post). But thru a few decades of experience, failures and successes, I can connect what I am seeing and experiencing with the possibilities and opportunities of expressing that with a physical print. In simpler words, I do photography.

[BrianShaw]

I agree Vaughn, but in many “continuous processes”, there seem to be either real or imagined “aha moments” that some folks can identify. As you say so clearly... there is no single process. In fact, there may not even be a single “best” process. :)

[Pieter]

I prefer not to pre-visualize. I often find the results of such overthinking to be dry and uninteresting. I much prefer to react to the scene or subject. In other words, the photo will often take me rather than the other ways around.

[Tin Can]

I prefer shooting people, there is always something I must plan, format, lens, setting, light, patter

My problem now, I don't want to meet anybody in person...

i do have mirrors

[Vaughn]

I prefer not to pre-visualize. I often find the results of such overthinking to be dry and uninteresting. I much prefer to react to the scene or subject. In other words, the photo will often take me rather than the other ways around.

This sounds like what I was referring to, also.


Previsualization stands for the act of looking at a scene with the physical eye and seeing in the mind's eye how a medium can render the subject.
That's the definition from the inventor of the phrase. (Zone System Manual, How to Previsualize Your Pictures, by Minor White, fourth edition, pp13)

That's AA's definition of visualization. Basically -- take one's experience with the medium and knowledge of the medium, and go with the flow. or as Minor put it...


The Zone System among its other attributes, helps to make certain that one's ability to previsualize, after practice, achieves spontaneity. pp6 of previous reference

[neil poulsen]

I think that there's a bit more to it. After all, the concept of "visualization" or "pre-visualization" is closely tied to the practice of the Zone System.

Part of the point of, "looking at a scene with the physical eye and seeing in the mind's eye how a medium can render the subject," is to determine the exposure (of course), and to decide on the development at the time of exposure. This has evolved over time to basing the exposure by identifying "Zone III" areas in the scene, and thereafter to decide on the development time by determining what should be a Zone "VII" in the scene. Of course, there are variations; but, it has come down to exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights.

Determining the development time in this fashion is not so easily accomplished after the fact. So, it has made sense for Zone System advocates to emphasize the need for a "visualization" (or a pre-visualization) that includes these details.

[Vaughn]

Exactly...Minor ties the two together very tightly. He uses the Zone System as a key to (pre)visualization...which is simply to be able to look at what is in front of the camera and know how it will appear when you make your print. The Zone System, and the knowledge of and experience with the equipment and process not only allows one to get from the (pre)visualization to the print, but helps one to (pre)visualize in the first place.

Another tool to help the process of visualization is looking at lots of good photographs and art in general...to give one's brain images to feed off of.

[Drew Wiley]

All of the above/none of the above. Unless all of this kind of thing becomes pretty much an instinctive act, it's just a set of Lego blocks. I find it hard to believe that even Minor White thumbed his way through his own manifesto methodology before actually tripping the shutter; there's just too much sheer Gestalt in his work to conclude that. Even one of his prime students remarked that "he wished Minor would just shut up", because so much more was learned just watching him actually take a picture than listening to him repeating all the voices of little green men inside his head. I suspect Minor fiddled around in the darkroom quite a bit to find the best rendering of a negative, just like all of us, which might or might not have turned out the same as he had "previsualized". I really don't care. I get way more from simply looking at one his exceptional prints than bothering to read every overcomplicated diecast dogma he wrote.
All that Zone System talk is just ballpark anyway - getting a versatile neg where the ball is at least in bounds either side. No need for mystical connotations about each segment of eight grays, or examining the entrails of an owl each morning like Minor did.

[Mark Sampson]

Somewhere in my reading, don't know where now, I recall a quote from White's most famous student, Paul Caponigro;
"Head for the cosmos, Minor, they'll never be able to corner you there."
Successful pictures can withstand all manner of verbiage, but all the explanations about visualization, pre-, post-, or whatever, cannot save a bad one.

[Alan Klein]

I think you have to smoke a joint to pre-visualize. Without it, you can only visualize. :) I believe, and I'm not an English major, that there is no such word as previsualize. It's like there no such word as irregardless. The right words are visualized and regardless. When you visualize, you already are doing it "pre" anything. You're imaging now how it will look later. It's redundant to add pre. It would be like saying pre-before.

[Vaughn]

Pre-visualization is all the work, experience, and knowledge-gathering one does before one can visualize.:cool:

[Tin Can]

so we want to be nonredundant (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonredundant) which is a word...

[Drew Wiley]

Postvisualization is necessary if you're into calibrating previsualization. Post-nonredundant; prepostvisualization? Let's see, there's the inner planets, the asteroid belt, the outer planets, the Kuiper belt .... where are the other four zones? Only NASA, Timothy Leary, and Minor White know for sure.

[Alan Klein]

so we want to be nonredundant (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonredundant) which is a word...

Irregardless, previsualization isn't a word. :)

[Alan Klein]

Postvisualization is necessary if you're into calibrating previsualization. Post-nonredundant; prepostvisualization? Let's see, there's the inner planets, the asteroid belt, the outer planets, the Kuiper belt .... where are the other four zones? Only NASA, Timothy Leary, and Minor White know for sure.I think you're prepostvisualizing about LSD not weed.

[Dugan]

Previsualization is what you hope to achieve...

Postvisualization is the gyrations undertaken to make what you actually achieved look like what you originally hoped to achieve.

[Vaughn]

so we want to be nonredundant (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonredundant) which is a word...

Can I just be dundant? Or is that just the same as BTDT?

[Tin Can]

Vaughn, nobody here tells you what to do


My goal is to get Back to the Future

ASAP

but my vehicle is in deep storage

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50375880386_6c99880704_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2jKxyaQ)web Wormhole Coffee Shop (https://flic.kr/p/2jKxyaQ) by TIN CAN COLLEGE (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tincancollege/), on Flickr



Can I just be dundant? Or is that just the same as BTDT?

[Peter Lewin]

If we back up from having fun with grammar and Deloreans, I think that most of us "visualize" simply from experience. The majority of us spot meter scenes, place high or low values, and know that if we over-expose and under-develop we reduce contrast, and if we under-expose and over-develop we increase contrast. Similarly, those of us with experience know that if we encounter a scene of red, green, and grey, on B&W film everything will photograph as grey, so we either use filters, or simply by-pass the scene. Much of this required explanation in the days of Adams, Weston and White, but by now it is what I call "accumulated knowledge." And finally, the majority of us recognize an image that, to use phrases from earlier posts, "catches us," or "resonates with us," or shouts, "take me." This is not to say that all of the above does not need to be learned, either through workshops, books, or experience, but it does suggest that it does not need labels such as "visualization" when "Photography 101" would do the trick.

[Vaughn]

I'll have to disagree with most of that, Peter. Visualization is just a small portion of Photo 101, and we use language as a tool for learning...so words are important in teaching. "Most" of us here are still working on the reconition part, even tho we do tend towards older photographers here.

[Peter Lewin]

I'll have to disagree with most of that, Peter. Visualization is just a small portion of Photo 101, and we use language as a tool for learning...so words are important in teaching. "Most" of us here are still working on the reconition part, even tho we do tend towards older photographers here.
Vaughn, I thought that what I wrote was very similar to what you posted in #5, only in my words. Where are we differing?

[Vaughn]

Vaughn, I thought that what I wrote was very similar to what you posted in #5, only in my words. Where are we differing?

Just in nuance, probably. Visualization and the Zone System do not operate on the concepts of over/under exposure or development...rather, to determine the desired amount of both to create a negative that will yield a print that echoes one's experience or desire of tonality for the image. Most photographers (or users of cameras) have rudimentary visualization skills, and many do gain greater skills with experience, most do not. Practice only makes perfect if the practice is perfect and learning takes place.


Visualization can be an important tool in one's photography -- used as part of the whole process from seeing to print. But after being around students of photography for most my life, visualization does not come naturally to all -- perhaps the equipment we on this forum use and our experience level seems to indicate otherwise. White was teaching -- once one learns the lesson, one can move on...but the lesson still needs to be taught to others and we can't toss out the word, 'visualization'.

[Drew Wiley]

Yes, Tin Can.... Back to the Future. Hasn't anyone besides me noticed how the wacko scientist in that movie strongly resembled Minor White? And that's the answer! If we have a DeLorean time machine, we can change pre to post, or post to pre, provided we don't crash it somewhere in between.

[neil poulsen]

All of the above/none of the above. Unless all of this kind of thing becomes pretty much an instinctive act, it's just a set of Lego blocks. I find it hard to believe that even Minor White thumbed his way through his own manifesto methodology before actually tripping the shutter; there's just too much sheer Gestalt in his work to conclude that. Even one of his prime students remarked that "he wished Minor would just shut up", because so much more was learned just watching him actually take a picture than listening to him repeating all the voices of little green men inside his head. I suspect Minor fiddled around in the darkroom quite a bit to find the best rendering of a negative, just like all of us, which might or might not have turned out the same as he had "previsualized". I really don't care. I get way more from simply looking at one his exceptional prints than bothering to read every overcomplicated diecast dogma he wrote.
All that Zone System talk is just ballpark anyway - getting a versatile neg where the ball is at least in bounds either side. No need for mystical connotations about each segment of eight grays, or examining the entrails of an owl each morning like Minor did.

What did James Russell Lowell say about Poe . . . something like, three-fifths genius, and two-fifths shear fudge? :) I learned the Zone System by studying Minor White's (et al) book, which is reasonably practical. But, I sure didn't get too wrapped up in his more philosophical writings.

[Bill Burk]

Did you see Alan Ross' announcement for a visualization workshop... not too expensive as far as workshops go.

[Drew Wiley]

Is that a pre- announcement, or a post- announcement?