the photographer's eye

elven

Oh yes, indeed, here we go again :rolleyes:

There’s a little idea growing in the back of my mind about seeing, photographing, and how much pre-visualisation and having an idea of what you’re looking at will be represented in a picture, has an effect on what you actually decide to shoot. I recently read an excerpt of an interview with Garry Winogrand (I think) where he said that he doesn’t think about the final picture when he’s shooting, he’s just totally involved with the scene – he sees ‘people, not pictures’. Possibly more relevant with street photography than other genres but still… I started to wonder whether we are limited by our preconceptions of what a (good) photograph should look like and this acts as an influence on us when deciding what to raise the camera for.

I think because we see an almost infinite amount of images these days it’s very easy to look at something and decide if you think it will make a good photograph OR know how it would look as a photograph simply because chances are, we’ve seen something fairly similar done already. When you’re wandering around, camera in hand, searching for your next subject with your ‘photography eye’ switched on, what is it that you’re looking for? Are you immediately thinking about how the scene will translate into a 2 dimensional rectangle? Do you think you’re influenced (consciously or not) by pictures that you’ve seen before? Why is it that so many of us have a thing for old rusty locks, chains, peeling paint, forgotten doorways, park benches – have we seen pictures we like of these things that we’re (subconsciously) trying to repeat, or do we have programming that makes us look out for particular kinds of subjects?

I really struggle with the minefield of cliches in mainstream, amateur photography (I would consider myself a mainstream amateur photographer). I see countless derisive comments about the nature of the common flickr-ite and their attraction to gaudy colours, plastic landscapes, macros of flowers and of course, puppies and kittens. Someone even commented that they stay away from flickr in case they might be not simply offended but somehow infected, by being exposed to such bad photography. Without starting a flickr is bad/good debate I am concerned about being tarred with that brush – yes I like clean, strong images. I like to use strong colour and high contrast. I love my extension tubes and enjoy getting down to petal/leaf level – there’s no denying that one! In the process of producing images that have such common subjects and characteristics as these, is it possible to avoid the influence of that mass of pictures that’s already out there, and shoot for yourself? It feels like I do, but when I look through my flickr favourites it’s kind of scary when a lot of them are very similar to pictures of my own…

What’s your ‘eye’ like? What do you look out for? Are we missing good photographs because we have too many preconceived ideas of what good photographs should look like?

magicbastarder

elven wrote:

when I look through my flickr favourites it’s kind of scary when a lot of them are very similar to pictures of my own…

hardly surprising, and nothing to be worried about, surely?

rymus

the wonderful freaky friday thread of philosophical wonderment. Is your job really that boring, oh elvish one?

Redundo

Personally, I think there are two sides to having a good photographic eye.

First is practice. The more you shoot photos the more obvious the good shots seem to become. Maybe this is down to familiarity with your camera and knowing how the scene will translate to a photograph. Maybe its down to the feedback you get when looking through your photos later where the cliched images are dull, while the quirkier ones seem to pop out. Maybe its a matter of confidence that you shoot more adventurously with time.
Either way it seems clear to me that someone who takes photographs regularly has a higher quality standard then another who shoots only occasionally - this seems to hold true even if the occassional photographer has the greater technical knowledge.

The other is composition. Some compositions are as cliched as the standard photos themselves. Like the easy flickr shots they are nearly burned into our memory by this stage. I think i fall into the trap too often of looking for a subject to fit into the cliched composition rather then looking for a way to highlight a subject in a composition of its own.

elven

the wonderful freaky friday thread of philosophical wonderment. Is your job really that boring, oh elvish one?

Oh, it really *really* is...

(I did start writing that at lunchtime)

Would you like to read through server event logs all afternoon?

I also pondered on the possibility of thinking of a name for non photography people - like in Harry Potter, non magical people are called 'Muggles'...

rymus

I'll read your server logs if you read mine

ThOnda

You can make good pictures only by making pictures. The more you shoot, the more experience you get with your tool - the camera. And more you show a discuss your pictures, the more information you get. So you are learning how to make pictures look the way you want to have them. wtf have I written here? I hope somebody will understand it.
Yes, the more experienced you are the more control of the picture you have. You learn how to make the camera capture the snapshot of reality on the film/chip. And even if you are not sure what is the picture going to look like completely, you are getting the confidence that the picture is going to be as close to your imagination as possible.
Not to mention learning and studying from your mistakes and mistakes (and photographs) of other people.
It's friday, see you after the pub!

Fenster

You worry too much. Short of the next frontier of commercial offworld exploration being opened up, just about everything on Earth that can be photographed has been. The trick is to put your own mark of strangeness on your rendering of the subject.

Hugh_C

elven wrote:

What’s your ‘eye’ like? What do you look out for? Are we missing good photographs because we have too many preconceived ideas of what good photographs should look like?

I was having a similar discussion with myself today when I took the camera, one of my kids and a mate up the Sugarloaf after watching a miserably depressing football match involving the Arsenal.

Anyway digress, I was wondering to myself what I'd shoot, other than my kid and mate (who are both beautiful in their own way), but I ended up only being happy with a landscape I snapped. The portraits were too preconceived. The details of mud, stone and whatever else were just too much like an exercise.

Funny thing is, a few months back I took a decision to try to make an image that'd get into Explore on flickr. It was a reasonably boring cloud shot that I'd edited extensively to make look presentable; in my mind's eye, I kinda guessed that it'd be an Explore kinda shot, and lo and behold it made it in.

So there's an awareness, certainly.





Oh and one last thing, images of kittens and HDR should be banned from flickr. Friggin HDR looks awful and kittens are just too cute for their own good...

Oriel

Elven the rhetoric as usual, eh?

ThOnda

elven wrote:

I also pondered on the possibility of thinking of a name for non photography people - like in Harry Potter, non magical people are called 'Muggles'...

Non photography people? Like those who look bad or stupid on photographs? Or those who have not got some photopgraphic trainig to make comparable pictures?

:-) I'm just pulling your leg. I look stupid on all photographs, not to mention self-portraits...

elven

sinecurea wrote:

Elven the rhetoric as usual, eh?

Are you just trying to increase your post count or something?

CraggyIslander

Rarely set out to shoot a particular shot, mostly just shoot whatever catches my eye... it's the subject I'm interested in At the moment the robbins and other little birds are always catching my eye..... but they're camera shy (or I need a big ol L lens :eek: ) and haven't got any great shots..... yet.

I'd actually forgotten how much I'd learned from my film/slide days, some of it techniques (using stops to adjust, etc) and some of it on composition or recognizing if something will come out or not..... the amount of 'hazy' landscape / panoramas from my earliest days is simply ginormous. Now I don't take as many landscapes anymore, but when I do they usually come out as I intended

I'm getting a lot of fuzzy little birdies at the moment, but will persevere until I've mastered them

As for flickr, dont have one and dont want one (not a great fan of the yahoo! corporation) Do have my own dedicated server tho and although its currently used for development and test/demo projects, I will eventually get round to creating my own proper site

Oriel

<snip>

"The silicon chip inside her head,
Gets switched to overload..."
And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.

</snip>

Morlar

sinecurea wrote:

What the ****'s your problem?
It was a light hearted jab at your essays.
"I really struggle with the minefield of cliches in mainstream, amateur photography." Get a life.

Shussh now - adults talking.

odonnell

i love boards.ie

Oriel

I hate it when I go to snip a post, to find that somebody's quoted me, which makes my snip pointless. This is made even more annoying when that person is talking crap.

rymus

dont write posts conducive to quoting then... Or just stop peddling your own brand of sarcasm.

odonnell

OR if youre going to personally insult someone - do it in PM instead of thread? Common sense young pada-wan...common bloody sense.

Seán_B

Very interesting topic elven!

I suppose the otherside of the coin is that being aware of stereotypical scenes and compostions allows you to purposely avoid them.

magicbastarder

odonnell wrote:

OR if youre going to personally insult someone - do it in PM instead of thread? Common sense young pada-wan...common bloody sense.

surely common sense would suggest that sending someone such a PM is somewhat sinister?

Oriel

odonnell wrote:

OR if youre going to personally insult someone - do it in PM instead of thread? Common sense young pada-wan...common bloody sense.

Where is the insult?
And as magicbastarder said, PMing any form of abuse is somewhat sinister.