So I’m looking through the 24 (so far) comments on last Wednesday’s Final Step post and I’m wondering what to make of it all. Perhaps the lesson to be learned (other than that Matt B is the new Andy in ubiquity terms) is opinions are like rain when it comes to photography and we might speculate that this is inherent in an artform that depends on technology. We might be wrong in that but, hell, it’s a vaguely interesting notion.
I also learned that people take blog postings, or at least some of my blog postings, as something more than off the cuff blurtings of a mind trying to wrap itself around new concepts. And also that unless your relatively longer posts are carefully structured people will skim them and miss the qualifications and suchlike, leaping instead for the blunt and more often than not mistaken conclusion.
And such is life.
So let’s try some short paragraphs which aren’t intended to tie together and form an “opinion” or a “truth”.
For me, at the moment, photography is moving from recording the world to something else. I don’t know if it’s something more but I think it might be. While I’m happy to ride this train without overanalyzing it, it is, perhaps, useful to take notes along the way.
I always knew it was wrong but even so, seeing lovely photos on Flickr I had this sense that, beyond the composition and depth of field, the camera itself was responsible for the image. Having now used one of the more commonly used professional-esque cameras I know that to be false. It’ll focus perfectly and the image is pixel sharp at 100% (something the Fuji S7000 never managed) but the colors, while better than most, ain’t good enough for me. Let me repeat that. They’re not good enough for me. At this stage in my journey through camera land. I want more from my images. The camera alone isn’t giving me that.
This is all subjective. This is why it’s all good. If it wasn’t all subjective it’d be dull as fuck and I’d be doing something else. I might also add that subjectivity works through time as well as on people, and I’ll let you figure out what the hell I’m on about there for yourselves.
The Wedding Crashers is actually not a bad movie, when considered amongst others of that ilk. Ilk. There’s a word you don’t see used enough these days. Ilk. What a nice word. Makes one think of beasts roaming the grasslands of a far off country. Ilk.
Ilk.
Yeah, cameras themselves process the image and there are all sorts of settings you can use. I don’t do that. I’d rather mess with the photo myself with a little control. But even so, that processing is still something that happens after the image has been digitally recorded. I confess I have no idea who I’m agreeing or arguing with on this and what the point was to begin with.
I refer a number of people to paragraph 11, the one that starts with “Important note” and continues thus: “This is not to say every photo has to be messed around with. Judging that the photo doesn’t need any more work is the same as working on it.” This is one of my favourite photos taken with the S7000. It came out of the camera like this and needed no post-work whatsoever. On the other hand, this looked like shit before I played with the curves. I am a fan of raw photos when the raw photos look good. I’m also a fan of taking a somewhat dull but interestingly composed photo and making it dazzle. So, um, there.
Are you bored? I might be. Tea break I think.
[time passes]
Ahh… Tea…
Actually, I was thinking this was a processing-good vs processing-bad argument but looking back I don’t think that’s what I was on about. (No, of course I don’t know what I was on about. It’s a blog post. By me. Durrr!) It’s really about something bigger which I think Fran touched upon when she emailed me the quote that Goodwin posted. To save you the scrolling: “Digital Imaging has released photography from its obligation to be truthful… The digital revolution in photography is leading us into a new medium, exceedingly exciting, but one that we shouldn’t call photography at all. It comes with its own distribution system, that of internet and screens…it hasn’t been named yet because it hasn’t been properly defined yet.” It’s more about an awareness that photographs aren’t and never have been truthful which, of course, everyone knows but somehow conveniently forgets. And I include myself in that. Both those photos I linked to before the tea break are false which is why I love them so much. They create something new from the reality which, I guess, is what art is all about. I guess the desire to record reality is strong because, as photographers, we are initially struck by something we see with our eyes and try to copy it with our machines. Personally I’m getting less happy with the results where I set up a shot and more happy with the accidents, with the process of discovery that Photoshop allows me. I have this desire to learn what it was that happened during those “accidents” and to try to replicate that without ruining it. I have no idea where I’m going with this paragraph so I’m going to end it.
Nick Knight, by the way, probably knows his way around a dark room better than most given that he’s been around since the early 80s.
I referenced film a lot in that post. I might be able to summarise that a bit better. When I shoot film I hand over complete control to the chemicals. Other than the odd crop and the very occasional touch of lightening I don’t do anything to the images once they come back from the dev shop. Partly this is because I have no desire whatsoever to go into a dark room and partly it’s because I’m happy to let the chemicals do their unique work so it’s a combination of ignorance and happenstance (if that’s the right word). With digital photography my ignorance of the “digital darkroom” is rapidly decreasing and I don’t trust the processing tools within the camera to produce interesting results. There’s a menu in Photoshop called “Filter”. With a small number of exceptions you don’t want to be bothering with most of the tools therein as they are blunt presets. You want the fine control of Image > Adjustments. And a whole lot of time. Letting the camera pretend to be film rather that just letting it record the raw data is blunt. It may work wonders but it may not. I’m at the stage where I’d rather do it myself.
I probably didn’t make it clear enough that I was really only talking about colour in that dread post, not composition, lenses or anything else. So consider this a clarity moment.
Another thing that springs to mind…
Oh, sod it. This post is long enough.