The Unconscious Artist / Photographer

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RAMBLINGS



Rose On White

 

Master Photographers Are Conscious As They Work

I’m always in awe of Ansel Adams. I keep coming back to his black and white landscape images. They always stimulate my visual senses; they have strong tonal range, are technically superb and present exquisite composition - done to perfection.

While composing an image, he would wait for a cloud to pass by or appear, just to make sure it had the right shape, texture and weight, to complement his image or primary subject.

Working in “consciousness” is also how master artists of other media create their works – oil painters, sculptures, glass blowers et al. They envision, define, compose their images and shape their subjects to communicate and present their imagination and view of the world.

Now, that is not to say that a work is completely preconceived and then just presented. As we develop our photographic image, opportunities of re-composition come into play. After much pause, we may see other elements that we were not aware of in the field, and different potential stories to be told may suddenly become obvious to us.

Art is, after all, art – the process of documenting and shaping our perceptions, consciously, and with intent.

A masterful writer, just like a photographer, has tools – a large library of words and an understanding of their meaning, knowledge of sentence structure and the skill, learned over time, of composing a story in order to evoke the reader and shape his attention. A small vocabulary, the lack of knowing the meaning and nuance usage of words and inexperience in writing, will make for a dull and ineffective story.

The business or art of photography is no different. Photographers who can create and compose powerful and successful images “from the hip” are extremely rare – almost non-existent. Photographers who “take” images as they “react” will, in most cases present an image on the fly, without understanding its meaning, without successfully expressing his or her emotions which were felt at the time – therefore, the image has little affect on the viewer.

Before we take a picture, we must become aware (here I go again) of what we see; we must define what it is that we see; we must then use our knowledge that we have gained of what makes a good image and employ the skill of composition, in order to have an image with a purpose and one which will involve or interest our viewers.

For those of you who know me, this is beginning to sound like a broken record.  This concept of Perception, Definition and Presentation sounds simple in principle, yet there is only one Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Steichen, Lee Friedlander and others.


Because these three principles are so crucial to the making of a strong image, I will be developing a series of White Papers, which discuss this process with images I produce, in hopes to stimulate your own visions and creativity.


Remain the emotional artist who takes a picture when there is a strike on your senses, but know everything you can about your image, before you present it to the world or audience of one.

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