A colorful fall scene with snow in Michigan… that didn’t require much other than being there, seeing this composition and clicking a button.
I am a supporter of Gary Numan’s latest project on PledgeMusic, which is a pledge campaign to support the creation of his 21st album. He is doing it as an experiment to take his fans along during the entire process of creating a new album, and is forthright about not actually needing the money. There are all sorts of levels and benefits from just a first copy CD to private listening parties depending on how much you choose to donate. Anyway, the deal is he posts updates of various kinds (pictures, videos, audio, etc) along the way. In a recent video Q&A session, a fan asked “How do you know when a song is done?”
His answer resonated with me because my last post was fresh on my mind and the whole idea of developing photographs. He speaks of a song starting as bare bones and then adding progressive layers. With each layer, he asks is the new layer making what was underneath better? It eventually comes to a point when the extra stuff just becomes “clutter” and doesn’t really improve the song overall. Of course, the parallels in photography couldn’t be more obvious. From the literal “layering” to the attempt to keep clutter from distracting from the overal final piece.
River cascade near Bond Falls, a scene probably captured by many photographers before me. Photo near straight out of camera.
I might add my own remarks on top of it and ask is there a point when the song (photo) achieves a state of being *mine*? This isn’t really about being unique, but having the sense of personal connection to the development. I have often made images that seemed to be more of a result of me being in the right place, at the right time, with the right eye. Many other competent photographers could walk away with the same photo.
Many musical artists have been accused of copying each other and perhaps both just had similar inspirations. Do you then differentiate yourself in your development of that photo to add more of a personal touch? Or is the result of “personification” just adding unnecessary layers? Presets and plugins can be a path to creativity or complacency. Sometimes straight out of the camera is developed enough. Nature can do a pretty darn good job in creating a beautiful scene that requires nothing else other than observing it.
All of this seems key to determining if your work is done. Or as Leonardo da Vinci once stated, just “abandoned.” I leave you with a little Gary Numan (crank that volume up!!) Thanks Gary for making me think.
[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMAz9jofm_4[/embedyt]
Wow, I remember listening to Numan and Tubeway Army. Seems like another lifetime. Good to see he is still creating new music.
Another good topic Mark, I always enjoy reading about artists’ views and inner workings.
There is no doubt for me that artists put something of themselves in their art which in turn makes it theirs. Even when a subject does “a pretty darn good job in creating a beautiful scene that requires nothing else other than observing it”, the artist still needs to make a decision about composition at the very least and I am sure you’ll agree that composition can make or break a picture no matter how perfect the subject matter.
I imagine that an artist’s life with its trials and tribulations, its ups and downs all contribute to an artwork; they influence the choices an artist makes even if it’s only on a subliminal level. And as life rolls on the artist’s view of the world changes and so her art evolves, transforms, grows and thus remains relevant. For photographers (and musicians I suppose), I can see the possibility – perhaps even the probability – that over time, old artworks may lose some of their relevancy or meaning, and that the artist may see something new that wasn’t seen before (the new vision perhaps brought on by new life experiences). In those instances an artwork may be reworked, redeveloped, remixed, renewed.
Perhaps this is true of all artwork. As you pointed out, Da Vinci saw art as never being completed but merely abandoned. That makes sense to me.
I will say that I am a far bigger fan of contemporary art (in all its guises) than of classical art. This is mostly due to the fact that I find it easier to derive meaning or emotion from the former since it is of my time and therefore more likely to share some relevance with my life experiences. There are exceptions in both camps of course but generally I find it to be so.
Hey Cedric, yeah, he is still producing really good music (at least to me). The part about putting something of themselves applies to those “low hanging fruit” as Brooks Jensen recently podcasted about. There are some obvious compositions (Brooks used Yosemite for example) that a million people have probably made.
As far as state of change, I suppose our work become final upon our death.
I’m not so sure that there is such a thing as an “obvious composition”. When all those photographers take those shots of Yosemite (or any other famous landmark), they are not composing, they are imitating. There’s a difference. It’s not a bad thing; in fact I’ve noticed with my own friends that since the internet, their holiday snaps have become far more enjoyable. This is partly due to cameras becoming so much more foolproof and partly due to my friends having witnessed so many photographs of their destination prior to leaving that enough of it stuck that they could copy what works. Consciously or not.
I once partook in an experiment where people were shown multiple photos each showing different compositions of the same thing and asked to pick their favourite. Each time an overwhelming number picked the same composition. This doesn’t prove much but perhaps it hints that composition is not always in the eye of the beholder.
The artists are the ones who find the new compositions which others will emulate later. And as far as the so-called rules of composition go, they weren’t invented by artists who themselves care little about rules, but by people who wanted to copy them. And when an artist successfully creates a composition that does not abide to any of the rules, another rule is preached: Know when to break the rules; the favourite rule of many bad photographers I’ve come across who use it as an excuse to justify their less than stellar work 🙂
What I find amusing is that composition is often defined as the arrangement of various elements done in a conscious, thoughtful manner and yet when I’ve watched artists at work they appear in a zone where conscious thought does not appear to play much of a part. It seems more instinctive than conscious. After the fact they may rationalise their choices of composition but when pushed many will admit that at the time of creating they were merely letting the process flow. This goes for musicians too. Perhaps even more so for them.
My apologies for this long-winded comment. Let me finish off by using your own image of the snow covered trees as an example of what I am on about. I imagine that the scene before you was not this precise rectangular piece of forest; it would have been far more expansive than that and you had to select a composition among that entire expanse that would work. And you succeeded. My eyes start at the red foliage and meander up the photo following the trail of green and gold among the white snow which almost looks like clouds providing a pleasant sense of flight and then my eyes find their way back to the bottom where they settle for a while before wanting to wander back up. You might prove me wrong Mark, but did you consciously think of all these elements while making this shot? The foliage at the bottom is crucial to the composition. Had you zoomed in more on the top section the image would have failed, the eyes would have had no starting point, no place to rest on. Did you consciously think of these things? I suspect you saw a beautiful scene and let your instincts take over and just went with the creative flow. I really don’t think there is such a thing as “an obvious composition” until an artist points it out. Just a thought.
There was some conscious thought in that snow scene, to a point. It was part of a much bigger scene, and all of it was beautiful. I have photographs of the larger scene, and then some more intimate sections like this. It was conscious to a point where I was scanning across the landscape with a long lens until a section caught my eye. I then analyzed that section for “eye flow” – pretty much just how you described, cutting out what I thought might be distracting to this smaller scene. 🙂
I put that image in this post just because I didn’t do much to it in development after capture. I didn’t need to work it like in the context of my previous post. It was largely the result of a bit of luck, and going through the effort to get on top of this mountain after this snowfall. In other words, to the subject of the post, it was pretty much done, in camera, at that moment.
Would another photographer see a simiar section? Many that I know would probably take zoomed in shots like this. Would they include this specific red tree? Maybe, maybe not. Red is a universally attention getting color, and I think it would stand out to anyone scanning the landscape carefully. Is this particular one obvious? No.
The compositions that Brooks was referring to in his podcast are the ones where there is a scenic turnout and BAM, right there is this incredible vista, visited by millions of people. To your point though, I am with you in that so much goes on subconsciously as a result of just how our individual brains work, our life experiences, our photographic experience, etc. I wonder if we scanned our archives, could we separate images that were composed consciously vs. subconsciously, and mixture of each?
I don’t actually have “archives” to scan but where my own work is concerned it would be safe to say that my favourites (the ones that hold most meaning or evoke the most feelings) are the ones that came about without me getting in my own way. Of course another way (or perhaps a more accurate way) of looking at this would be to say that my best work came down to luck 🙂
Anyway, it seems to me that you give yourself far too little credit. If the photographers you know would have made a similar image to yours then I would suggest you are in the company of excellent photographers. I have a few friends like that but most of the self-proclaimed photographers I know simply would not take shots like this. I’ve endured enough “slide shows” of poorly executed (let alone processed) photographs to know this for a fact.
I guess what I am saying is that a lot goes into a beautiful “straight-out-of-camera” shot; at the very least, many years of standing behind a camera. The choice of camera, choice of lens, aperture, shutter speed, white balance setting, ISO, composition, time of day, use of light (artificial or otherwise), choice of vantage point, all of these things need to come together to make a shot and I am not so sure that any of one of them can be thought of as “obvious”. If it was then I would not spend so much of my time curating what I look at on the Internet 🙂
This is something I have always struggled with….when is it done. And then of course if I come back to a ‘done’ photo a year or two later sometimes I say ‘what was I thinking’ despite remembering that I thought it was pretty done at that original time. I sometimes force myself to be done when I start to realize that it simply isn’t becoming any better in a meaningful way. The analogies here are really perfect.
It is interesting to think about it from the context of a song. A song gets somewhat “cemented” as part of a released album or single. I wonder how many musicians come back to those songs years later and wish they had done it differently?
I have seen it with some musicians I follow. They release mixed versions, maybe acoustic versions, radio versions, etc. I have read some that get so sick of some original releases that they refuse to play them anymore.
I have lots of songs that I have downloaded in multiple versions from the same artist. Like you say fast vs slow, acoustic vs electric, standard or 15 minute jam….and they are all good. I bet they like trying to do it different ways.