Seeing the image within the view: how do we do it? What's your method?

Seeing the image within the view

With Nathaniel's permission, I've selected some of his thoughts on the following two images of his, which were originally linked in this thread -
http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=21261#post21261

Nathaniel Alpert said:

.... As a photo-tourist, just passing through it is very hard to get to the "right" place when the light is also "right." ......

I was shooting with a Canon 5D with a 24-105 L Zoom for the two shots I linked to my post. On Alan's beach I did not set up the tripod, but I used it on the shot of the fishing jetty. In fact I kind of fell in live with that scene and took a whole series with slightly different crops and compositions. Now that I examine them more closely, I am wondering what intoxicated me so? While standing there, I did not appreciate the clutter and chaos around the buildings. Now I see it as distracting. It so happens there was also a truck in view and the posted image is the only one that did not include it.

I am getting better at my photography, but it is a vey slow process for me.

....

Click to expand...

In particular, I see the following as 'a plea for help'.

Now that I examine them more closely, I am wondering what intoxicated me so? While standing there, I did not appreciate the clutter and chaos around the buildings. Now I see it as distracting.

Click to expand...

Now, trying to be helpful, I've looked at these, and other images posted by Nathanial, and I think he well be 'overcome by the beauty of his surroundings'. I think he is trying to capture the whole scene, the sight, the sound the smell, the breeze, as he remembers it, and is possibly not concentrating on what the camera _can_ capture, which is just a 2d representation of that 3d moment.

Technically, the images are fine, i.e, colour, contrast, sharpness, etc. but in my opinion there is a need for a more 'correct' composition. Both can be cropped to something that I personally find more pleasing, but of course other opinions are equally valid. For example, I rarely use a wide angle lens for landscapes, but many folk do, to very good effect.

Coincidently, another thread http://www.openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2376

has a simple chart, which I think can be applied to these images.

Now, we want your views/opinions on this. In landscape, where you are more or less have little control over the environment, do you try and apply compositional rules on site, or do you rely on sorting it out in cropping/pp in general? Have you any advice for Nathaniel wrt his visioning problems (we have mentioned before about L shaped pieces of card, etc.), or do we console him with 'you're doing pretty good to get two good images a year - those two will magically appear, maybe next time'? ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray, I am landscape handicapped so what is your reason for this ( For example, I rarely use a wide angle lens for landscapes, but many folk do, to very good effect. )?
I don't mean to side track here.

Ray,

Thanks for this example. I love it! This is a great opportunity for us.

As you have pointed out, the taking of the picture involves more than taking the picture. One's experience has to be separated from what the camera sees, as I have written about here

Asher Kelman said:

What the camera gives you is merely it's vision, devoid of your humanity as if through a 1 foot blook of almost clean glass that shields you from the reality of all your senses!

You can still bring back your own expereince by adding back your precious memories and your vision. Now you have to make the picture! You, Nicolas Claris might add an S curve or sharpen, slectively blur adjust the color but it will always be a chase of a memory of what you saw. It's therefore always fake.

The more so since you add the experience of a great printer, Nicoals Claris, to the process.

You are not printing ANY picture, you are getting on paper what you saw, but you "saw" with all your senses and your own library of all the images and dreams you have ever had and all the pictures you have made and seen.

Click to expand...

So Nathaniel, here's my further thoughts for your consideration:

Our eyes see differently since vision is an interpretive thing not some objective simple representation of what is actually there. It all depends on our motivations and other distractions at that particular time and context. We are not seing what out retina get as information, but a specially modified version!

Our brains always suppress what we don't need to pay attention to. Thus, at a party, a man say see a beautiful lady, but ignore hat she was with creepy people and he should really check her out more before giving out private information. The fascination with the woman's appearance and nature of her as a potential mate, overwhelmes commonsense. If he'd have noticed her in the street in with a bunch of tattoed purple-green-haired heavy metal dudes selling beads and fortune cards he might have just gone by without much further thought.

We always supress information and facts to maintain our own current path and not be distracted from one's goal.

So looking at this scene, it is normal to get lost. Fine, you now have learned something.

I delight in finding that what I composed was indeed what I'd want to keep and work on as a treasure. mostly it is not that easy, or else we'd all be celebrated photographers with handsome incomes!

All the admired photographers suffered in the same way! They took many shots then they must have wondered what interested them at the time. That wastage was with film where one couldn't check one's images at the time.

We can explore you image further, are you game?

Asher




BTW the link for the reference with the table is broken.

Ron Morse said:

Ray, I am landscape handicapped so what is your reason for this ( For example, I rarely use a wide angle lens for landscapes, but many folk do, to very good effect. )?
I don't mean to side track here.

Click to expand...

Ron,

I don't think one should ever lock one's creative spirit to a lens you don't have!

Michael Reichman, for example uses a lot of telephoto lenses for some of his work.

The advantage of less wide lenses is that one can choose what is important in the scene instead of relying on the psychological tricks of the brain to suppress what you have no interest in!

I always look for wider. However, that is not always approriate for the scene you come across and that interests you!

I'd work with one lens and then find subjects to fit it by walking or zooming to get only what you really want.

Asher

Hi Ron,

The wide lens thing, I have thought about it, for a number of months, in particular as I have the 20D, so 'every lens is a tele'.

I think it is probably because I live on top of a hill at the moment ;-). Well, to get a view, you need to get high. If I use a wide angle, then it's all sky, and boring foreground, and much like the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, I find it is more interesting on the other side of the valley. I have the 17-40L, but rarely use it. I have the 70-200 f4L, too. But I tend to use the 24-70L for most of my 'normal shots'. Recently I used that with the Kenko tele converters instead of the 70-200, in a situation where the white lens looked 'too flashy', and they save a bit of weight. I think it is also that I want to get a subject in focus, the tree, not the forest. Of course, I expect it varies as to the type of landscape you are in.

I'm sort of thinking of starting over again, and just use a 50mm lens, and zoom by foot. It may increase my concentration on the task in hand.

The reason I picked up on Nathaniel's images, was because I empathized with his feelings. I often do not take photos, since I know I can not capture what I want to capture, I try and concentrate on capturing the feeling, the emotion of the scene. After all, I am lucky, in that I only have to do this to please myself.

I find that many of the images I see here, on opf, I want to crop them. I find most of mine I need to crop. So, if my sight was better, the viewfinder was bigger, then I would do that on site - i.e. zoom in. I'm quite happy that others would do it differently, and probably better.

Now, if there were really accurate, really wide angle lenses, and very high resolution camera sensors, then it would be simple. One or two massive images, and compose and crop in post. ;-)

Best wishes,

Ray

Ray West said:

Now, if there were really accurate, really wide angle lenses, and very high resolution camera sensors, then it would be simple. One or two massive images, and compose and crop in post. ;-)

Click to expand...

Ray,

You have just made 1000 esteemed photographers turn in their graves. At least another 10,000 living legends have turned red, then purple and green as they spew contempt, scorn and pity at on and for you! That one might even contemplate slapdash grab-it-all photography is totally odious and, of course, without merit!

I, however, couldn't give a whit! To me it is utterly unimportant how you make a picture. After all, if one has poor eyesight and arthritis, what's wrong with getting a super resolution picture coming home and then, sitting comfortably in a Aeron™ chair, Heady Ledbetter singing "Black Girl", a glass of wine and perfectly matched spectacles for your 21" Eizo monitor so you can see what was really there that you sniffed and sensed and were excited about.

After all, making images is a conversation with oneself, so it only has to start somewhere bleak on the Moors with dogs howling and the dark clouds coming in and wind moving the skeleton trees in the wet morning mist. However, you don’t have to hang out there until your back aches!

One might, occasionally make better progress, all comfy at home!

I have no truck with perfection although I am tickled pink when I can get somewhere in sight of it. The way I look at it is “You or either doing a documentary or you are doing art”. That of course is never truly exclusive. But once one is not having to tell the truth as seen by the retina of one eye but rather that perceived by the brain, we must accept, that we are dealing with an interpretation, that’s all. So what we are doing is creating from both what we observed, what we perceived, what the camera recorded and then what we are able to imprint of our esthetic whims and imperatives on that recorded image.

Now that we see nothing pure, just a trade off, we can relax. We just have to proceed with a whole set of trades and efforts between what is and what might be, what one looked at and what one imagines, what one imagines and what one might wish show in a picture. Of course it's great if the composition in the viewfinder as shot is what you end up wanting. I like that feeling that I nailed it. It's very satisfying indeed. However, it’s nothing to get too upset about if you take another path.

Sometimes broader framing is desirable. I was using a 90mm lens on a Leica M8 Rangefinder camera with a 1.6 multiplier, then I believe the percentage of times that I'd be spot on might be far less than I hope for. After all the viewfinder shows just a small areas in the center for composition, hardly comforting and accurate enough.
So perhaps we might rethink the need to exactly compose in the viewfinder? Sacrilege, yes, but surely it's worth considering. Presumed perfect compositions don’t always work anyway. Even "perfect" as shot, you may crop anyway! So let's not get too puristic about framing. Sure we should try our best, but who cares if we shoot wide to crop later?

OK, the guys in the graves and their 10,000 living supporters! ?

Asher

i'm neither dead nor a living legend but i'll jump in here. first, nowhere does it state "landscapes=wide angle." heck, i use my 300 on a 5d for some! and nathaniel had a 24-105 on, so he had a lot of choices. but i digress...
i understand his frustration at looking at his shots later and wondering what his excitment was all about. yet that is what he/we must do. examine, study, ponder, what drew you to the scene? light? color? action? sound? smell? when you think about the scene later, what vision comes to your mind? and what worked/didn't work in the image you did take, why don't you like it? take that knowledge with you the next time. and yes, that chart is useful, especially if one feels in a learning mode. it certainly is a helpful guide if one is needed.
as a working landscape photographer one goes to the scene with a image in mind (usually! theoretically!) and having the advantage of the photography being the purpose of the trip so you can pick your time of day. however, as a photo/tourist this is not often possible, especially if going places one has never been before. so then one must arrive, study the scene, *think*, and then shoot. i'm not much of a photo/tourist ('cause i don't travel too much!!) but even on assignment this approach applies. sunrise/sunset doesn't happen the way i'd hoped, the clouds aren't right, another location would have been better, or something else caught my attention. one of the hardest things to accept is that sometimes the shot you want isn't there or isn't technically possible. (as an aside, this is also true in sports photography because your team doesn't always score/win. i can set up for the perfect goal-score shot on the left because the main scorer usually comes in that way, only to have no goals scored, or to have it scored on the right, or to have the play-of-the-game be on defense at the other end.)
i also subscribe to the theory that the more "right" you get the shot in the camera the better it is in the long run, better for pp work, better for large prints. each lens is different, so cropping a large shot is not going to be the same image as the one taken with the proper lens for that shot. that what optics is all about! i have no problem with the person in the future who has an infinite resolution sensor and can later crop and photoshop it to his/her heart's content...but we so aren't there yet, and i suspect that we never will be there will always be some further challenge to reach for!
i think there's a lot to be said for the "zoom with your feet" approach because it forces one to think and to get to know a lens very well. eventually you can think first and and pick the lens second.

At the risk of sounding "me too-ish", I'd like to join what Marian has just written. Now I have to learn this "zooming by foot". What a great catch-phrase Ray, never have heard it before! Is that yours or did you get it from somewhere else?

Cheers,

it's a well-worn phrase Cem. put a prime lens on, and take no other lens with you. there's only one way to work composition and framing then...it's actually a lot of fun, and sometimes i do it just for the photographic exercise ))

Marian Howell said:

it's a well-worn phrase Cem. put a prime lens on, and take no other lens with you. there's only one way to work composition and framing then...it's actually a lot of fun, and sometimes i do it just for the photographic exercise ))

Click to expand...

Apparently, I had been doing this for many years when I'd just started taking photos and had but a "measly" 50mm on my good old Nikon. I agree, it was lots of fun. Should try it soon, if I can resist the urge of hiding some zooms somewhere in my bag (the alter-ego kicks in and takes over I'm afraid, LOL).

Cheers,

Hi Cem,
Like Marian said, I guess you've heard of the 'plimsoll network' - not the same, but related.

I knew I should have started this thread in the 'layback cafe'. Lets get back to the topic.

Best wishes,

Ray

Asher Kelman said:

Ray,

Thanks for this example. I love it! This is a great opportunity for us.

As you have pointed out, the taking of the picture involves more than taking the picture. One's experience has to be separated from what the camera sees, as I have written about here



So Nathaniel, here's my further thoughts for your consideration:

Our eyes see differently since vision is an interpretive thing not some objective simple representation of what is actually there. It all depends on our motivations and other distractions at that particular time and context. We are not seing what out retina get as information, but a specially modified version!

Our brains always suppress what we don't need to pay attention to. Thus, at a party, a man say see a beautiful lady, but ignore hat she was with creepy people and he should really check her out more before giving out private information. The fascination with the woman's appearance and nature of her as a potential mate, overwhelmes commonsense. If he'd have noticed her in the street in with a bunch of tattoed purple-green-haired heavy metal dudes selling beads and fortune cards he might have just gone by without much further thought.

We always supress information and facts to maintain our own current path and not be distracted from one's goal.

So looking at this scene, it is normal to get lost. Fine, you now have learned something.

I delight in finding that what I composed was indeed what I'd want to keep and work on as a treasure. mostly it is not that easy, or else we'd all be celebrated photographers with handsome incomes!

All the admired photographers suffered in the same way! They took many shots then they must have wondered what interested them at the time. That wastage was with film where one couldn't check one's images at the time.

We can explore you image further, are you game?

Asher




BTW the link for the reference with the table is broken.

Click to expand...

Asher,
Let's move forward. So far, this thread leaves me wanting. Enough philosophy! All the posts and suggestions are too general to be of use, other than as a rules of thumb. Put yourself on the road, at the edge of Otago Harbor. It's 11:30 AM. The light is as it is. You can move a few feet up and down the road, but you are otehrwise constained by the real world. You have a 16-35, a 24-105 and a 70-300, a tripod and a polarizer. What do you do, on the spot, to better what I came up with? What is your thought process?

The game is on!

Best,

-Nat

is the object to capture the scene or to get a good photograph? the light is no good for capturing the full scene for me. what attracts me are:
1) the light at the top of the hill
2) the boat
3) the color of the buildings
4) the reflections in the water.
#4 is tough unless you can get a better angle, so my first instinct is to use the 70-300 to work on the hillside and the boat (separate shots).
and i don't know what the 16mm view would show to determine if it would be worthwhile to use it. do you have any we could see?
and i reiterate one of my earlier "philosphical" statements, namely, sometimes in the real world the great shot you want isn't there...

Hi Nathanial,

Basically, you are saying you are in a snapshot situation, it seems you have a time constraint on what you did - e.g. you couldn't come back at a later time, with better conditions, or had no time to climb down from the jetty, or whatever.

Well, if you have five minutes, devoid of ideas, fire off as many shots you can spare using all your lenses, pointing every which way (spray and pray). Or spend four minutes, walking around surveying the scene, choose what you think are the best features and focus on them with maybe a dozen shots, or so with the most suitable lens. That will be the best, or something in between, that you can hope to do. The rest, you have to have a philosophical outlook.

My thoughts are that you need to look at things, everything, photos, locations, paintings, see what works for you, what you like, then try and aim towards that. Bear in mind, you will always be disappointed. If not at the time when you first seen the results, when you look back on it, after a few years. Such is progress.

If you are looking for a quick answer, then buy postcards in a local shop.

Be prepared to work on what you have got in pp. Select a subject and focus on that, either cropping, blurring, cloning, or otherwise remove the distractions. It depends if you want to record the facts, warts and all, or something that is possibly more generally appealing. What is your aim? What is the purpose of your photographs?

Best wishes,

Ray

Hi Nathaniel,

I'm friendly and open. I do start with philosophy otherwise we have no direction. The haphazard shot is difficult to rescue. I only pointed out that one can be successful with wide pictures, even if decisions on framing are not made at the time of the shoot.

That is a major point!

Here's the short reply then the longer if you wiish to indulge me. Then everyone come in with their own take.




Pick one subject or simple unifyng concept! Find interest lines that seduce one towards that, find something that anchors the image especially at the bottom and completes it at the top. Exclude as much as possible and move around until only what you like is framed and takes your breath away. The other great stuff needs it's own picture! Is the lighting right? Take new pictures as light or opportunities change. Is the composition compelling. If these are not move or return! Think how it will print, B&W toned or color, what paper and what size and who has to like it.





The following is for anyone interested in Landscape who might find one or more pointers. If you are already proficient, then skip this. However, if you read this, for sure something might be improved or you have different ideas to add. So fel free to comment!


1. One cannot expect results without guiding philosophies. I have three: Self, Subject and Purpose.

• Self, I am a lion and I seek my prey. I hunt. I scout so I know my territory. I lie in wait, I follow, I return, I lay traps, I decieve, seduce, ignore, attract or distract then when what I see is what I desire, want and desire, I shoot*. (
  
• Except for my wild times, when I must admit I spray and pray, deliberate hunting like a lion is the only way I know how to take photographs I have a good chance of loving).
  
  
• Subject I shoot, I also have a goal, I see the subject as a captured living thing for me to enjoy or sell. I see the finished printed picture that demands attention. If I cannot frame the subject such that it will come alive and exist separately then I have to change time, place or my technic to make it right.
  
  
• Purpose: must guide my expenditure of time effort and resources. Is this for a wedding, product, postcard or fine art that I'd want to sell and for what size to whom and what price? Some would put this as # 1, but without the attitude to hunt and the discipline to choose and exclude, one cannot think of doing purpose directed photography.

2. Pace Deliberate with a better success rate at meeting one's goals or grab what you can!

• Scout: Deliberation allows the inner mind to operate and make choices. So I walk around and scout holding up my fingers in two crossed L's to make a rectange and just frame. I change angle, crouch, move to the left or right or climb the hill to place what interests me to get the most impressive part of the scene place in the rectange in my fingers. (You can use a cut out instead. Then I lift my camer from my side and take pictures.
  
• Spray and pray: Something fast and transient especially while with people and driving. We're passing a stream, woods or a beautiful valley with sheep grazing. So I grab that shot while passing. So I break every rule of mine and do what I can with all my instinct and experience as fast as I can socially allow. I might pull over, rush around, take 20 shots and in a minute we're on our way. My "minute" is often 10 times that. My wife is understanding; my kids never!
  
• Sometimes, with friends or family, I'll just shoot while walking! That's what I sometimes do! Yes even landscapes. I still try to get a vision in my eye and frame accordingly and have purpose but far less expectation for success.

Hunting for pictures deliberately is laways better, stalking, scouting or lying in wait like a lion by the water hole. You know what will happen and when and one is so ready! The same with landscapes. They are alive and change all day and every day with the weather, wind and light and every passing cloud. What one captures needs enough strength in what one has chosen and they way it is lit and presented to make it live on a flat piece of paper and call people to it again and again.

Which to do, deliberate or fast, depends on what time one has available and opportunity. When I travel I often go to a landscape location without my tripod or camera early in the day and just scout. I might make a sketch. I then go back to the hotel, have some tea, do some sightseeing and then return 40 minurtes before sunset and simply set up and get the exposure I planned.

3. Work: Expect that what you get out of the shoot will usually be proportional to what thought and preparation you put in. You are, after all hunting:

• Choose: something in the landscape of captivating interest
  
• Frame: that object and nothing else distracting in the recatangle in your fingers, viewfinder, LCD and mind.
  
• Optimize: the position by moving, crouching, climbing higher, so that the angle and size and placement is the most impressive you can make.
  
• Exclude: What is not needed or weakens the image. Alter positon or wait or return.
  
• Changing features: that might enhance or spoil your shot: clouds that you want to include, traffic that you don't, telegraph poles that could do either. Will the clouds move closer or the car or the girl pass in front of the weeping willow tree?
  
• Light: Is the range of light capturable as is. Do I need to wait until the shadopws are less harsh? Will the light get more golden, will the sun go behind the clouds and get less harsh. Should I use a neutral density filter to dim the light so I can use a slower shutter speed so passing cars will disappear, water will move. could I dim just the bright sky with a split filter shading only the top part of the field. Would a flash soften that shadows on a face or define an insect in the shadow of leaves.

4. Return: Should I also return to retake the picture when I have the time, right lighting from the sky or flash, or a reflector and I understand my subject better.


This is a brief start and all relates to your one picture. I hope this is helpful to you Nathaniel.

Here we only discuss taking the picture in the field. You can try editing the file here .

Asher

I always try to get everything right in camera, whether it be exposure, WB or zoom. (I zoom by foot as well) PP can help somewhat but if the image doesn't work at the moment of capture then it ain't gonna work in Photoshop IMHO.

For me, Landscape photography is about simplifying and deciding what elements are important. One thing I am trying to do now is shoot at midday when I know the light will be poor and see if I can come up with anything. It is incredibly challenging (haven't come up with anything good yet)

I was going to post more but I just read Asher's post and it said what I would say but far better....

Steve, I have only started the discussion. Please feel free as we will not approach understanding otherwise. Of course photography is mainly about excluding since that what the brain does, allocate importance to different componants. Lovers do that, ignoring faults, their lovers and their own!

The diffiuclty is that the camera does not know what we think as it is dumb. That is why we have to work before and after taking the picture to refine what the camera collected to match what we would like to harvest from the picture. This is like a farmer who wants the grain but not the chaffe.

Framing before hand is always best. In my street pics and portraits, where I'm on my own, they are as shot often with no further cropping or processing except conversion to B&W. I hopefully have done that with my posiiton, compositon and lens and shooting and lighting choices.

Sometimes one has to hold a camera above a crowd or aim over a wall. Then wide and crop is all one can do. In an upcomig prrject I've scouted many times day and night and taken one or two pictures. Ultimately I'll arrive with a 16 foor ladder, take the picture in 4 minutes and my wife will be back and the ladder and I will be whisked away before the police arrive.

Asher

What Asher said about scouting is of prime importance. I have an example to show this. Two days ago I was out shooting the sunset at low tide, trying to capture the subtlties of the colors on the ripples of sand at low tide. I had found the perfect location and positioned myself so that some rocks would cast dynamic shadows through the foreground over the rippling sand.

I then started to second guess myself and thought..."what if I move over there?" so I moved.



This image is nice but it is not what I was hunting for. I second guessed my instincts and ended up with something that was not nearly as satisfying from a creative sense. My conclusion, try not to doubt your vision and purpose when working in the field. You still have to be flexible enough to respond to changing conditions but you have to keep your artistic vision central.

Steve,


My Dogma: At the final moment it's not what the camera might capture that has to be imprinted on paper, but but magic from your mind. Asher


One can over-cerebrate. Without letting go to inner imperitives, innocent girls would never procreate!

All the creativity goes on in what I term a "Cathedral of the Mind" above the subconcious and just below the concscious, the part that is accessed when you are daydreaming 20 minutes before you awake on a peaceful summer day.

That's where a lot of your esthic sense and experimenting with possibilities comes from, not the rules of thirds and not a rules for leading you into a pciture or color palettes. Actually, the good thing about knowing the rules is when you work against them, you wake people up a little and that can sometimes supercharge your photograph!

So the big thing to do is to combine planning and choice using ones higher functions and then using one's seemingly reflex skills and then allow your inner "Cathedral access. Keep capturing until there are no more possible variations or you are out of film or space!

After all, when you have scouted, travelled, hunted the light and are there with the camera set up and the object in sight, switich off thinking mode and letting the inner esthetics take over the hunt will always give you more. This is because it doesn't require active thinking rather the iterative matching of inner artistic vision and what you are moving constantly to reframe.

So in summary, my moto, "Don't think! Just do it!" or in the words of the now famous Jedi Knights™, "Let the force be with you!" is great guidance to me.

This is how I work, it may, perhaps be of use to a few others.

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

So in summary, my moto, "Don't thnk! Just do it!" or in the words of the now famous Jedi Knights™, "Let the force be with you!" is great guidance to me.

This is how I work, it may, perhaps be of use to a few others.

Click to expand...

OK, here is my personal experience, YMMV. I recently realised that whenever I go to a location to take a picture, the first one I take is almost always instinctive and taken in haste as if the scene is going to go away in a second or so. Then my gray matter kicks in and I take some more pictures of the subject, thinking, planning, composing, elimitaing, paying attention to many other things, etc. The realisation I am talking about is the one that I almost always end up keeping the first picture and ditching the others. For example, the "my little dinghy" picture in another thread is the first one I took at that particular location. Afterwards, I have taken some 15 more but all are of lesser quality. Ergo, I agree with the statement made by Asher completely.

Cheers,

Steve, could you add back the magic?

Asher

Cem,

A pat on the back is so appreciated! Better than $$$. Not better than a bautiful tree lion or model!

Asher

Asher Kelman said:

Steve,


My Dogma: At the final moment it's not what the camera might capture that has to be imprinted on paper, but but magic from your mind. Asher


One can over-cerebrate. Without letting go to inner imperitives, innocent girls would never procreate!

All the creativity goes on in what I term a "Cathedral of the Mind" above the subconcious and just below the concscious, the part that is accessed when you are daydreaming 20 minutes before you awake on a peaceful summer day.

That's where a lot of your esthic sense and experimenting with possibilities comes from, not the rules of thirds and not a rules for leading you into a pciture or color palettes. Actually, the good thing about knowing the rules is when you work against them, you wake people up a little and that can sometimes supercharge your photograph!

So the big thing to do is to combine planning and choice using ones higher functions and then using one's seemingly reflex skills and then allow your inner "Cathedral access. Keep capturing until there are no more possible variations or you are out of film or space!

After all, when you have scouted, travelled, hunted the light and are there with the camera set up and the object in sight, switich off thinking mode and letting the inner esthetics take over the hunt will always give you more. This is because it doesn't require active thinking rather the iterative matching of inner artistic vision and what you are moving constantly to reframe.

So in summary, my moto, "Don't think! Just do it!" or in the words of the now famous Jedi Knights™, "Let the force be with you!" is great guidance to me.

This is how I work, it may, perhaps be of use to a few others.

Asher

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I think that is what I was trying to illustrate with my example. If I had gone with my gut I would have stayed where I was and let things happen. It is in thinking and second guessing that this image was prevented from being what it could have been.

I am also a painter and my best images just seem to happen. They fall off the brush as it were. I am trying with my photography to get to the same place, where the equipment and intellect step back and let the spirit take control.

A famous Canadian landscape painter, Tom Thomson used to go painting with other artists. The other artists would hike for miles, trying to find the perfect view. He on the other hand would set up his easel without going far and work with what was at hand. His results were almost invariably superior to the other artists because he let the images happen. He didn't try to fight with his medium or the subject. He let the creative process take him wherever it would strike.

I am enjoying this thread quite a bit as it is helping me clarify my approach and philosophy.

You have a definite way with words Asher.

Asher Kelman said:

Steve, could you add back the magic?

Asher


Asher

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If you are thinking of adding magic in photoshop then no. I believe if an image doesn't work un processed than no amount of photoshop can save it. "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" as they say.

But referring to a subject, the best thing for me is to try to clear the mind of expectations. Don't expect to create a masterpiece every time. You can control some things such as the time of day and location, but you can't control the weather or lighting, so you have to let your instinct and creativity take control.

I don't know if that is what you are referring to though.

Hi Steve,

One is, for non-documentary work, shooti the image one sees in the mind!

My Dogma II: The film sensor is totally dumb and unskilled and cannot keep up with wonder and passion! I believe we are not after capturing what the angle and tilt of the lens brings to the recording medium, film or whatever.

At the time of capture you already had the vision matched from access to your inner self and the wonderful scene. That constantly changes. It always does, to some extent! You own that brief inner memory when everything was right for you. Now you need perhaps to search those memories out and interview them! You are still the master of you memories.

You have photoshop which allows you to enbed in the picture what the camera missed by seconds perhaps. It is not a "manipulation" since you are in facy expressing your own vision which is sacrosant and for which everything else must defer.

Now do you have a good memory and do you have the skill and ideas to implement what you had hope to record. If you don't let's know, and Tom Armes can set up a retuching challenge to help you quench your disappointment. The gap, after all, between joy and sorrow is often just a trivialty.
Asher

I have a very good memory for scenes, years of painting outdoors has given me that at least....but I would love to see what others can do with my image. It always intrigues me how other people see and how their creative processes work. The image has already been altered somewhat, but I would be happy to provide one with all parameters at default for you all to play with.

I love playing in Photoshop but find that I don't have the time or inclination any more. I spend all my time om forums now.

Send the image for me to look at using http://yousendit.com and any other images taken at the same tome and a description in an email of what was in your imagination.

Let me try it first and then we'll post it as a challenge.

editor.opfATmac.com

Good luck,

Asher