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mdm
22-May-2010, 03:06
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
22-May-2010, 03:36
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
22-May-2010, 08:05
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
22-May-2010, 08:49
http://www.kenleegallery.com/images/forum/img201dp.jpg

Heroique
22-May-2010, 09:02
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
22-May-2010, 09:22
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
22-May-2010, 09:36
...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
22-May-2010, 09:40
I like it.

bvstaples
22-May-2010, 10:19
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
22-May-2010, 12:30
According to Merg Ross (http://www.mergross.com/) in this recent thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=57444&page=2),

"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 (http://www.mergross.com/pictures/one_half.html) and depths (http://www.mergross.com/pictures/st_francis_church.htm).

mdm
22-May-2010, 14:09
Here is a sinister tree of my own. It has no emotive value to me.

By the paint by numbers aproach, I mean that we take a scene and make it conform to an established pattern in our head, compositionally, like a Nikon slr does with matrix light metering. That is different to taking the same picture over and over untill it feels just right.

Ken, to me your photograph feels of dignity. Heroique's polaroid makes me feel slightly uneasy, almost hunted, so their examples are better than anything I can offer.

Also I think that what we are talking about here has no relationship with propoganda whatsoever, but rather truth. The truth hurts, it is an emotive thing and I think people with some common ancestral culture have a similar reaction to what could be considered 'universal truth'. Some emotion that we have felt, in common.

Thank you for your replies.

David

mdm
22-May-2010, 15:58
According to Merg Ross (http://www.mergross.com/) in this recent thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=57444&page=2),

"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 (http://www.mergross.com/pictures/one_half.html) and depths (http://www.mergross.com/pictures/st_francis_church.htm).



I dont want to be controvertial here, but I do not see Edward Weston as a feeling photographer, rather as a seeing photographer. For example, take a Weston nude spread eagled in the sand, perhaps that is just me, but she could just as easily have been a lump of wood, or a pepper or a shell, in which case he would have done a better job of it too. Don't get me wrong, I have bought into the whole romance of Weston making contacts with a bare lightbulb in a dingy hotel room, but there is a differnece between a beautiful picture and something felt. On flikr you see people say 'great capture'. Here sometimes it is 'well seen', even 'Bravo Maesto' but what about 'well felt'? That hard to know soft thing is what I hope to find one day.

Avedon wrote that portraiture is performance, by the subject and the photographer. The photographer is performing, even if there is no one in the frame, which is probably why Gandolfi for example claims to struggle with landscapes and not with nudes.

A photograph has something special when it is performed with feeling, like great actor playing McBeth to perfection or an outstanding cellist playing Elgar. That is what I am trying to say. Those are performances made many times, but it is the emotive input of the performer, over technical ability, that makes an unforgettable performance.

Take a look at the most famous portrait of my generation, taken by a documentary photographer, the afghan girl by Steve McCurry. The whole western world feels the the ? in that look between the subject and the photographer.

B.S.Kumar
22-May-2010, 16:12
When I take a photo, I try to express my feelings about the scene in front of me at that time. Once in a while, I manage to do that. But sometimes, when I see the photo on the monitor or the print, I have completely different feelings about it. So, if my own feelings can change, how can I expect someone else to feel the same as me? I'm happy to simply evoke some emotion in the viewer.

Kumar

Ken Lee
22-May-2010, 17:06
On flikr you see people say 'great capture'. Here sometimes it is 'well seen', even 'Bravo Maesto' but what about 'well felt'? That hard to know soft thing is what I hope to find one day.

Bravo Maestro :)

Bill Kumpf
22-May-2010, 18:23
I agree with Brian. I try to capture what I see and feel. Sometime I am sucessful. I am always amazed when someone asks me for a print.

Ken Lee
23-May-2010, 04:51
"One day I hope to make a photograph that feels like it was."

We like to divide the world into discrete objects: me, the subject, the photograph, my feelings, your feelings, etc. When we look closely however, we find that none of them exist independently, and are changing all the time. They can't be pinned down or fully captured. This is especially true of feelings.

Even when we photograph the same subjects over and over, our work evolves. We continue to... see things.

Mark Sawyer
23-May-2010, 11:17
Photography can be so many things, and each one so well. A photograph can be strong because of the emotions it elicits, but it might also be strong because it conveys an intellectual thought or spiritual philosophy, or a political/social statement, or as a document of something meaningful. Sometimes a photograph finds its strength in a sense of nostalgia, a recognition of something we once knew but hadn't thought of in a long time. Or it may just be a thing of beauty in its own right, whether because of technique, lighting, composition, an odd lens, a particular alternative process...

I think the best work combines several of these things at once.

But emotional reactions are particularly strong, and I suppose I'm especially drawn to photographs that capture or suggest an emotion successfully. Then again, photographs never fall so flatly and painfully on their face as when they feel like smarmy, overly-sentimental exploitations of emotions.

I sometimes wonder why 90% of poems are love poems, and 90% of pop songs are love songs, but we seldom see the equivalent in photography, or really, any of the visual arts.

Richard M. Coda
23-May-2010, 11:22
Feelings are over-rated. Is it a good photograph? Is it something that would look equally great in another art form (painting/drawing)? The same rules apply. That's all that really matters to me.

kevin4x5
23-May-2010, 14:58
I took this pictue and had mixed feelings about it How we discard thing from days gone by. But also thought how nice it was that Mike (his farm) saved it so I could take a photograph of it to show the world things "from days gone by"
Kevin

mdm
23-May-2010, 15:12
That's nice. I can smell hay and bird shit, and the light is nostalgic. I like that it seems to be a scan of a print, rather than a negative. Thanks for posting.

David

kevin4x5
23-May-2010, 15:27
That's nice. I can smell hay and bird shit, and the light is nostalgic. I like that it seems to be a scan of a print, rather than a negative. Thanks for posting.

David

Thank you and yes it is a scan of the picture not the negative.

Struan Gray
24-May-2010, 02:08
http://struangray.com/miscpics/linnebjoak_600.jpg

Wet meadow oaks
Linnebjär

I know from experience that I see and feel very different things to most people when I look at this image. The differences are partly the the inevitable ones between personal and public, but also the those that differentiate myth from reality. Bridging the gap is the main goal of my present photography.

mdm
25-May-2010, 21:18
Trees dancing to the light.

Nathan Potter
25-May-2010, 21:36
Nice, Struan. "What a tangled web we weave". They look a lot like the swamp white oaks of New England wetlands.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

mdm
25-May-2010, 23:16
According to Wikipedia 'In mathematics and computer science a tuple represents the notion of an ordered list of elements'.

My feelings are definately not a tuple. Can not be defined by a tuple. Are not a tuple. Even when I think I am rational, retrospect always shows them to be completely illogical.

Are you a conversational computer program?

David

Stephen Willard
25-May-2010, 23:27
I practice experiential landscape photography. By my own definition, experiential landscape photography is a tuple consisting of what I saw and what I felt at the moment I found the composition. The tuple experience becomes my vision that governs the production of the final expressive image.

What I saw is represented as a manifestation of the optical reality of the lens. Under no circumstances do I alter this reality because oherwise it would not be a true experience that really did happen. I do not paint in skies, add rainbows, or make changes that would alter any element in the original scene because when you do so, then the only place the image exists is on your computer, and it is no longer experiential in nature, but rather fictional in nature.

What I felt is expressed in how I portray the mood of the land. I will make significant changes to the original state of the land to create an emotional feeling in the final print that depicts the mood that resided within me at the time I discovered the composition. The mood of the land becomes a depiction of my emotional state of being. This is done in three ways. First, I alter the reality of the land by constructing a composition that includes or excludes elements in the original scene by changing perspective, lenses or formats such as a 4x10 or 5x7. Secondly, I will revisit the scene repeatably over many years, if required, to get the appropriate atmospheric conditions and lighting conditions I need to reenforce my initial vision. And finally in the darkroom, I will alter the light contrast and color contrast of the original scene. I do try to restrict these types of darkroom changes to no more than four stops. To do more can lead to the beautification of the image and diminish the expressive and experiential characteristics of the final print.

To measure the type of emotional reactions and the magnitude of the those reactions my viewers experience is very difficult to do. What people say and what they really feel can be two different things. For the time being, I have resorted to commercial sales of my prints as a reasonable tool for measuring the reactions viewers have about my work. If the emotional reaction is strong enough, then a sale will occur, otherwise, it will not.

Kirk Gittings
25-May-2010, 23:34
Very nice, Struan.

Stephen Willard
25-May-2010, 23:37
According to Wikipedia 'In mathematics and computer science a tuple represents the notion of an ordered list of elements'.

My feelings are definately not a tuple. Can not be defined by a tuple. Are not a tuple. Even when I think I am rational, retrospect always shows them to be completely illogical.

Are you a conversational computer program?

David

I was under the impression that tuple defaults to 2-tuple, and I had no idea that it be ordered, but I am not a computer scientist. Sorry for the confusion.

Struan Gray
26-May-2010, 00:52
mdm, Nathan, Kirk - thanks.

This wasn't a test :-)

But I am currently struggling with how to convey specialist knowledge to a generalist audience. In my scientific work I am used to beating people around the head (rhetorically) until they wake up to the novelty and significance of what I'm showing them, but with my photography I don't want to get too preachy.

This photo is a favourite, from a favourite place, so it's already made the cut. The trouble is that most people see only a gothick wildewood, which is partly my fault for conforming to accepted picture styles, but also the fault of the overwhelming dominance of romantic presentations of and reactions to landscape.

Wildwood oaks don't grow like this (at least, not here), and in any place damp enough to promote this much moss oak is out-competed by alder or ash - unless man intervenes. These are young trees (150-200 years 'young') growing in an open meadow. 'Meadow' in the true technical sense of an area protected from grazing and cut for winter fodder, in this particular case for at least a thousand years. These trees' inheritance from the much older surrounding landscape is written in their shape and colour, but you have to be willing to look, and with an informed seeing.

I don't want to force people to look at my photos in over-determined ways, but I do want to communicate some of the thrill that I get from the interplay of intellect and emotion. Feeling alone fades fast.

Brian Ellis
26-May-2010, 07:22
. . . What I saw is represented as a manifestation of the optical reality of the lens. Under no circumstances do I alter this reality because oherwise it would not be a true experience that really did happen. I do not paint in skies, add rainbows, or make changes that would alter any element in the original scene because when you do so, then the only place the image exists is on your computer, and it is no longer experiential in nature, but rather fictional in nature. . .


Could you explain how one goes about making a photograph that doesn't alter reality?

Scott Edwards
26-May-2010, 08:19
I will make significant changes to the original state of the land to create an emotional feeling in the final print that depicts the mood that resided within me at the time I discovered the composition.

There, now that is how to previsualize. Capturing and conveying how we are moved by a particular scene. Taking chaos and making it ordered.

Light is so important in conveying mood. I also believe there to be a formula to shapes that resonates in each of us. It becomes like turning the tumblers in a lock in the way we set up compositions to arrive at what moves us deeply.

Heroique
26-May-2010, 08:38
...One day I hope to make a photograph that feels like it was. It is so hard...

...Heart is the hardest, for me, by far...

...you are...more estranged from your actual feelings than you are willing to admit...

...As a cynic and a crotchety old man, I have little tolerance for others opinions and feelings...

...A photograph has something special [ed. note: is unusual] when it is performed with feeling...

...I try to express my feelings...Once in a while, I manage to do that...

...I try to capture what I see and feel. Sometimes I am successful...

...They can't be pinned down or fully captured. This is especially true of feelings...

...Feelings are over-rated...

...Feeling alone fades fast...

No doubt, I risk distorting some of these comments by removing them from their context, but I thought the quick list above might indicate a common view emerging in this thread about “feelings” and photography.

What I mean is, well, a “distrust” of feelings – sometimes implied, sometimes plain – when one views or composes a photograph. “Distrust” may be too strong a word. Perhaps “skepticism” or “uncertainty” would be a better choice.

(I’ll be quick to acknowledge the counter-arguments – if they appear to be less common, I think they contain just as many convincing insights.)

It makes one curious whether or not “feelings” should be the primary response to enjoying great photography – or the primary motivation in creating and sharing it.

Or, should we be careful to make “feelings” secondary, if we wish not to be led too far astray?

Scott Edwards
26-May-2010, 09:09
What I mean is, well, a “distrust” of feelings – sometimes implied, sometimes plain – when one views or composes a photograph. “Distrust” may be too strong a word. Perhaps “skepticism” or “uncertainty” would be a better choice.


In Ken Lee's case, his images are saturated with feeling. Perhaps what he was trying to convey, is their elusive quality. This does not make the exercise of pinning them down without fruit. On the contrary, sometimes wonderful surprises are elicited.

Ken Lee
26-May-2010, 09:10
Aesthetic Relativism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetic_relativism) is a variety of Relativism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism).

It's nothing new.

"Things are things because of Mind.
Mind is Mind because of Things."

Scott Edwards
26-May-2010, 09:20
Yup, and today I may be in love with an image that tomorrow may find mundane. This is why I keep looking for the next fix. Always fun to open up old boxes of prints though.

Ken Lee
26-May-2010, 09:26
In Ken Lee's case, his images are saturated with feeling. Perhaps what he was trying to convey, is their elusive quality. This does not make the exercise of pinning them down without fruit. On the contrary, sometimes wonderful surprises are elicited.

This conversation might be a lot easier if we were discussing Music, because we accept the notion that our perception of it, and our appreciation of it, change all the time. I doubt that we would get caught up trying to establish anything objective or solid.

With photography, there is an image, and an original subject. Because of their apparent solidity, we imagine there must also be solid feelings and solid meanings we can identify and grasp. But that's just our imagination at work.

With Music , we don't get confused by the presence of apparently solid objects. We accept that while the composer may have had one thing in mind, our experience is something the composer may never feel or anticipate.

cjbroadbent
26-May-2010, 09:56
As an illustrator and not an artist I only feel what I hope the viewer feels for that brief moment before he turns the page. Once the thing is done I feel like chicken who's laid an egg.

lenicolas
26-May-2010, 10:05
Ken, it's interesting that you mention "mood" that changes over time.
There is feeling in my photography, but not the moment's feeling (or mood).
More of a general distant feeling that's always been mine.
Let's call that personality.
More than my feelings, my photography expresses my personality.

Exemple :
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CTp2jYnkThg/S-rxkRFh1yI/AAAAAAAAAEY/XhUW4_1qljI/s1600/thomascor02.jpg
This portrait was made a few weeks ago in school.
It was the first (real) day of spring here in Paris, and my assistant, the model and myself were hanging outside the studio, smoking cigarettes, telling jokes, enjoying the nice weather less than 2 minutes before we took that picture.
Of course this picture is a setup, but still, it's strange to see how far it is from the feeling/mood of that day, but quite closer to my actual personality...

Heroique
26-May-2010, 10:44
...With Music...we accept that the composer may have had one thing in mind, and that depending on our mood, we experience a wide variety of reactions that the composer may never feel or anticipate.

Photography and music?

Here comes Rick Denney & his incomparable and informative analogies! :)

I like your analogy too, Ken. But may I add some counterpoint? The old-fashioned sort. In the centuries between Monteverdi and the edge of our “modern” era, every single great composer, performer or critic (that I’ve read) views as self-evident the rational connection between their words and the musical experience he or she discusses. Objectivity, it seems, is simply taken for granted. I’ve often thought, in my more sympathetic moments, that these well-intentioned people must have suffered greatly from the lack of our more-fashionable relativistic views, ancient and modern. “They are so misled,” it’s easy to think. “All of them.” But more often, I believe their arguments and assumptions are even more iron-clad than “ours” – and that no matter one’s personal mood or background, it is possible to communicate discrete musical experiences (feelings) across time and space. Even finely shaded ones…

But like I said way back, I’m old-fashioned.

;)

Ken Lee
26-May-2010, 10:54
"I believe... no matter one’s personal mood or background, it is possible to communicate discrete musical experiences (feelings) across time and space. Even finely shaded ones.

Could you please give us a demonstration ?

mdm
26-May-2010, 11:00
Yes, and they are all having eggs for breakfast that day.

David


As an illustrator and not an artist I only feel what I hope the viewer feels for that brief moment before he turns the page. Once the thing is done I feel like chicken who's laid an egg.

cjbroadbent
26-May-2010, 11:08
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_OR3U2BmIDuk/S1hvmuK5XII/AAAAAAAADQA/Px_BGJe9SI8/s800/myBreakfast.jpg

mdm
26-May-2010, 11:19
"I believe... no matter one’s personal mood or background, it is possible to communicate discrete musical experiences (feelings) across time and space. Even finely shaded ones.

Could you please give us a demonstration ?

Its all around you, no demonstration required. That one thing is what makes us human, when you stop comunicating '(feelings) across time and space' you are dead. If you are an artist in the purest sense, you continue to comunicate feelings through your art long after you are gone.

David

Stephen Willard
26-May-2010, 11:28
Could you explain how one goes about making a photograph that doesn't alter reality?

Brian, I am not sure if I understand your question and the answer you are looking for.

My definition of what I saw is straight forward. I simply use the lens and its angle of view to only include the elements of original scene that triggered MY personal experience. Once that has been recorded on film I do not make any changes to the physical elements in the composition. I do not remove signs or unwanted branches. I leave everything as it was in the original scene when I tripped the shutter.

95% of all edits I make to the final print actually occur in the field. This allows me to replicate MY experience as accurately as possible. To me experiences of the land do not take place on a computer in photoshop, but rather occurs in isolation with the natural world.

My definition of experiential landscape photography is intentionally designed to move me as far away from the virtual world of computers and as close as I can come to having communal existence with the natural world. I depart in late June with my llamas when the snows clear from the mountains and return in late October. During that time I live close to the land in complete isolation. The shear physical and emotional strain I endure to create can be overwhelming. The loneliness is always present and haunting. Infections, strained muscles, hyperthermia, blisters, sun burns, heavy packs, frost byte, injuries, long days with little sleep, and horrific storms all way heavy on me. The human toll I bear to create my photographs is not cheap in anyway.

My intent is not to impose this definition on anyone else, but rather to share it as a possibility. You can agree with it, disagree with it, or borrow from it and make it your own. Its up to you.

Struan Gray
26-May-2010, 11:35
"Cuddling the new telephone directory
After I found your name in it
Was going too far."

Wendy Cope

Heroique: I'm not distrustful of feelings. It's more that I know from experience that the purely emotional moments are like mayflies or poppies: trying to preserve them is counterproductive. All my most lasting experiences have involved an element of thought and reflection.

Geographers, geologists and ecologists all have a form of 'seeing' which is very similar to that claimed by many photographers, which involves no small element of feeling, but which is subject to analysis, open debate and revision. In photography mere sincerity seems to be enough. I'd like to aim higher.

(My definition of 'high', I know)

I've known several people who have tried in one way or another to revive lost performance practice, including music for baroque violins and Swedish bagpipes. They at least are acutely aware of the non-objectivity of music. And then there's things like Mozarabian plainchant, where we have the notation, and can make a stab at figuring out the notes, but have no idea how the music was actually sung or what it meant as music to those who sang it. Johann David Heinichen wrote a pastoral movement (http://www2.deutschegrammophon.com/mp3?ID=280467&URL=/prelistening/00028947763307/00028947763307_02_005.mp3) to one of his concertos which sounds like bagpipes. Even if modern listeners recognise which instrument is being imitated, it is highly unlikely they will make the same associations as a C17th Dresden courtier would have done.

I know of a British WWI memorial with swastikas on it, because of an Indian connection. Imagine the controversy when they came to add the names of those killed in WWII. I personally come out in a rash if I glimpse the words 'hermaneutic' or 'discourse' written down anywhere, but metaphor and symbols are important, and their meanings do change with time and place.

Ken Lee
26-May-2010, 12:46
I'm am politely and respectfully finished viewing this thread. I have removed my subscription to it. Peace be Upon You. Pax Vobiscum. As-Salam Alaikum. Om Shantih. Shalom Aleichem.

mdm
26-May-2010, 13:10
I'm am politely and respectfully finished viewing this thread. I have removed my subscription to it. Peace be Upon You. Pax Vobiscum. As-Salam Alaikum. Om Shantih. Shalom Aleichem.

Thanks for your contribution. I have had enough myself for the time being. It is all pointless over analysys anyway. Better to get the camera out.

You are a great asset to the forum and you make special photographs that no one else seems to manage.

David

Heroique
26-May-2010, 13:28
Well, if it were up to me to accept your resignation, I wouldn’t.
Or if I tried to understand why you’re resigning, I couldn’t.
We need your intelligent sanity and images around here – please, you shouldn’t!



:(

mdm
26-May-2010, 13:48
Well, if it were up to me to accept your resignation, I wouldn’t.
Or if I tried to understand why you’re resigning, I couldn’t.
We need your intelligent sanity and images around here – please, you shouldn’t!



:(

Settle down. All he has done is unsubscribed, publicly, from this thread. Ken has feelings.

Heroique
26-May-2010, 13:57
David, a misunderstanding.

That’s a playful departure by Ken.

I think we can agree that Ken’s presence here blesses us more than his departure.

mdm
26-May-2010, 14:01
Agreed 100%

rdenney
26-May-2010, 21:35
Hmmm. Music.

When I listen to the opening bars of Vaughan Williams's Second Symphony ("Symphony by a Londoner"), I hear the streets of London. That bit of that music conveys a clear picture, and the feeling of excitement one gets on being swept away by a bustling street scene. So, by the standards of many in this thread, Vaughan Williams must be a genius.

When I listen to Ride of the Valkyries, I see Elmer Fudd taking a shot at Bugs Bunny ("Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit...").

Does that mean Ralph Vaughan Williams was a more effective composer than Richard Wagner? Somehow, I don't think so. What it does mean is that my first exposure to the Ride was on a Saturday morning long ago, while sitting on the floor in my pajamas. I was maybe age 6, sitting in front of our mammoth television with the tiny screen showing a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

And my first exposure to Vaughan Williams's 2nd Symphony was as an adult, after I had already developed considerable experience listening (actively) and performing (poorly) music.

With that in my experience, I don't think I could claim that an artist has much hope of pushing past the viewer's experience to enforce his own feelings.

Now, does Elmer Fudd prevent me from being moved by the power of Wagner? Absolutely not. I would hate to think I'm that one-dimensional. Is the motion I feel a purely intellectual exercise? No. But it is fully informed by my intellect. I think this is part of what Struan is getting at. Without the intellectual underpinnings, the response at the emotional level would be at best ephemeral, and at worst just noise.

Now, that's one way I might use music to help think about photography. Here's another.

When I perform, sometimes the music I'm performing moves me as I perform it. I have been moved to tears while listening to music on many occasions. I'm moved to tears right now just remembering them. One example was when the Philharmonia started their performance of Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia with a chorus of voices, off-stage, singing the English Hymnal version of the original Tallis tune. So, we first heard a distant call of the real Tallis, followed by the modern interpretation of it on stage. Given that I have loved this work my whole adult life, and given that I had traveled to London for the sole purpose of hearing that work (it was my wife's present to me for my 50th), the emotion of the moment fairly overwhelmed me. It was actually rather embarrassing.

Now, if I left it there, you'd think I was a sentimental slob. Well, I am. But I have a point.

When I perform music, despite the constraints of lack of skill, the emotion of my response to the composer's ideas sometimes wells up. The point is: This is usually a bad thing. Why? Because too much emotion forces me to focus on impression rather than on expression. For me to convey power, I have to feel it, yes, but I also have to remain in absolute, complete intellectual control. Musicians are not allowed to buy into the modern artistic BS that technique doesn't matter.

The trick for me when making photographs is not to be led by feelings, but to lead my feelings, just as I do with music. The feeling is part of an intellectual expression, where the intellect is in command of the emotional response. If I let the emotion rule me, then technique goes to hell and nothing gets expressed at all. And God knows that happens often enough. Too often, I'm simply overwhelmed by the power of a scene, and utterly squash my intellect from finding some way to express it with any clarity. What results is a postcard image. We often think of postcard images as lacking feeling. In my case, the photos suffer from too much feeling and not enough thinking. Without the thinking, no feeling finds expression.

Rick "glad Ken Lee won't be reading this crap" Denney

D. Bryant
27-May-2010, 08:50
Could you explain how one goes about making a photograph that doesn't alter reality?

I thought regardless of how we make a photograph, reality remained the same sans us observing it. Of course that may not have a applied to Fred Picker who actually did alter reality:) before making a photograph.

Don

Brian Ellis
27-May-2010, 09:04
I thought regardless of how we make a photograph, reality remained the same sans us observing it. Of course that may not have a applied to Fred Picker who actually did alter reality:) before making a photograph.

Don

You got me. A poorly worded question. But hopefully no one thought I was suggesting that the photograph itself altered reality.

Heroique
27-May-2010, 09:25
Rick "glad Ken Lee won't be reading this crap" Denney

We all know, of course, that you mean (and I think) just the opposite about your reply – and my hope is that Ken does return, because your super-fine, super-fun remarks deepen and fine-tune, brightly, much that has gone before.

Maybe Ken won’t return. After all, many will notice that when related threads reach this point, they quickly trail-off or sputter-out. I’ve noticed the typical “fatal” moment before: when discussion compares photography to the other arts – such as music – to better address that more general (and tantalizing) question: “What is it about excellent work that moves me so?”

Perhaps this is so because there are no definitive answers to give, only better questions to ask.

Every cell of my being, however, says “feelings” play the principal role – and I mean, of course, the developed feelings of adulthood w/ a very firm acknowledgement of the necessary organizing powers of the formal intellect. But maybe it’s more than just the principal role. Maybe it’s the leading role, too. Yes: Feeling leading intellect. Not very congenial – indeed, very strange – to contemporary ears, I recognize. And impossible for me to tell for sure. And, of course, the influences of, say, Jungian archetypes, Freudian and other childhood experiences, social conditioning by science, or by this or that myth – these and much more besides are essential to the question. (Not to mention, except in passing, the ever-present assumption that “feelings” and “intellect” can actually be distilled-out of our experiences…)

What is clear to me is that coincident with every victory of artistic or intellectual expression is a deep satisfaction, a “feeling of power,” a “sense of joy.” All at once. There just doesn’t seem to be a chronology about it. But never-mind the artistic process. The artistic experience – being able to capture it, share it, inspire it, discuss it, no matter the mystery – that’s what really counts.

I think the forum at its best encourages these things.

mdm
27-May-2010, 14:11
I read a book once, that was built up from a single gesture, like a great symphony might be concieved from a single note. The premise was that gesture is imortal, that it exists independently of people. That all the smiles flutter around the world searching for a face on which to alight. And perhaps that we can use gesture to compose a wonderful symphony, life.

A photograph is not music, it is not life, but can be a smile, a frown, a laugh, a wince. And once a photograph is made, it exists independently of its maker. In the same way as a well timed smile (or frown) takes on a life of its own as it is interpereted and acted on and passed on by others.

Most photographs are just pictures, pretty representations. Life would be boring without them. Who would buy a National Geographic without pictures? Some photographs are pure, like the sound of a tuning fork or an orchestra preparing for a performance, a real, spontaneous smile or a twittering bird. That is Sudek and Avedon, even Cartier-Bresson and it took them a life time to write a symphony.

Thank you for helping me to get here.

David

Struan Gray
28-May-2010, 00:45
When I take photographs, particularly on a good day when I'm 'in the zone' and potential photographs jump out at me from all angles, I don't think much: I just take photographs. But I know that the sorts of things I point the camera at are conditioned by the musings and reflections I indulge in at other times. The urge to take photographs that look like other photographs I have taken or seen is incredibly strong, and on several occasions I have found it productive to consciously coach myself towards a less predictable view of the world - or, at the least, to look beyond my usual subjects and themes.

Instinct is a powerful narrative tool, but sea slugs and amoeba follow their instincts no less intensely than we do.