The “Rule of Thirds” is a commonly known composition guideline that most photographers and artists are familiar with. Of course, the term “rule” shouldn’t be taken literally, I suppose the label just flows better than “guideline of thirds.” However, there is another set of thirds that really defines my own personal philosophy when it comes to making photographs.

“The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.”

~ Ansel Adams

For me, the actual creative process in making a photograph involves three distinct phases or steps. Of course, this is nothing new or innovative on my part. Ansel Adams is famously known for his references to breaking the photographic process down into steps similar to the production of a symphony. His photographic process essentially ended with the production of the print, which he referred to as the performance.

For many today, that is still the case. However, in the age of digital photography, Instagram, PDFs, websites and the like, most photographs produced today will never experience cellulose.

If Adams were alive today, with all our modern photographic tools for developing and experiencing images, I truly believe he might modify his stance on the print being the final form. And while digital files won’t vary like individual darkroom prints as each instance is created, many photographers will tend to tweak the final form as they learn new skills and techniques. “Art is never finished, only abandoned”, a quote by Leonardo da Vinci, should be carved on a stone tablet for the truth it speaks.

If I think back on how this applies to my approach towards any particular photograph, it is much more ingrained in me than I imagined. I am just surprised that I haven’t really written it down until now. Or perhaps I have, and my poor memory is showing — so you should just humor me and play along.

Introspection into my many photographic failures often point to some deficiency in one of these areas. Perhaps it is just common sense, but sometimes it helps to break things down when something just doesn’t feel right about a certain image. Where did I go wrong? What could I pay more attention to next time?

So very simply, I break my photographic creative process down into these three steps of V-E-D. This isn’t much different from what Ansel Adams once taught, just tweaked and simplified a bit for my simple mind and the modern age. It is hard for me to imagine myself composing the score of a symphony anyway!

Those three steps are:

1. V is for VISION
2. E is for EXPOSURE
3. D is for DEVELOP

Vision

Ansel Adams wrote and spoke a lot about “visualization.” That is essentially what I am referring to here as well. The inception of the photograph starts with some idea or subject that has caught your attention. Of course there is a range of variation within this phase from well-thought out master plans to spur-of-the-moment epiphanies to “ok look at the pretty flower.” Somewhere, someone or something inspires you to want to preserve what you are feeling and seeing.

As photographers, we begin to see details, shapes, light, shadows, colors of the world in certain unique ways – and not always to the joy of non-photographers around us. 🙂 This all plays a part in moving from this first step to the second.

Vision is perhaps one of the hardest things to teach or write about because it is more instinct than formula. It comes with time, experience and – it evolves. It grows from being through all of the steps so many times that you start to instinctively ignore many situations. It can also be one of the biggest hurdles to recognize all the possibilities.

If I ever need a reminder how this is a lifelong learning process, I just flip through my archives. I have thousands of reminders where my vision was more than a bit cloudy. At least enough to say “what were you thinking?” to myself repeatedly.

I also find that moving from Vision to the next step can be one of utter excitement. You know what you want, and now you have the opportunity to make it happen.

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Exposure

We could walk around all day with visions of this or that and never create anything from it. Exposure is the step of willful recording. It involves whatever devices we prefer to record with, which can range from a phone to a dedicated camera to a box with a hole in it to a futuristic contact lens and brain implant. It can be more craft oriented as this is where all the gear and tech starts to infiltrate the process.

Whether we prefer to have full control over the light capturing parameters of shutter speeds, aperture, and ISO or have a computer do it for us, it will ultimately require a “click” to mark the decision point. Exposure is also not just about these camera settings – it is also about lens selection, the physics behind optics, needing a tripod or not, light sources, and all the other equipment you might need to realize your initial vision.

Experience can also help here in learning to deal with mistakes and adverse situations. The old “leaving the lens cap on” has so many more convolutions now like “leaving the ISO on 128,000” or your storage cards at home.

Exposure also involves planning, to be in the right place at the desired time. It can involve so many more tools other than the camera itself, like apps for weather, sunrise, moonrise, Milky Way positioning – all are up-front knowledge and research steps that help get you to the final click that could be just as important as knowing what aperture to use.

The product of the Exposure step is some type of image. Something is created that didn’t exist before. Now what?

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Develop

I have written before about how I prefer the term “develop” vs. “processing” (see… my memory isn’t completely horrible). This is essentially the final creative step where you review what you created in Exposure to see how well it does or doesn’t match the first step of Vision. Ansel Adams called this the performance, which is a pretty good term to describe it. After all, this is supposedly where your work goes out into the world.

Perhaps it consists of developing a print in the darkroom as Ansel did, or developing the photograph on a computer – either way, you are taking this recorded thing and doing something with it. There are some that might think Exposure is the last step for them because they prefer to “do everything in camera.” Let me just make a point with that.

The exact light data that is recorded on the camera’s sensor is NOT what you see on the LCD screen on the back of your camera. It is processed through all sorts of algorithms and circuits in attempt to match what an engineer deemed close enough to human vision. Camera advertisements often boast about the hundreds of thousands of scenes that go into this analysis.

This is the basic concept of RAW camera files – that it bypasses a lot of this to let you take ownership of how the image is developed. Similar things happened with film. The film type and chemicals used in developing it had significant impacts on the appearance of the photograph.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with just taking an image from the camera and calling it done. But do not mistake that for skipping the Develop phase, because all you have done is outsourced it to whatever algorithms are built into your camera, associated file technology or the known characteristics of the film you chose.

Whether someone uses Photoshop, a traditional darkroom, or a button in an app on their phone is all personal choice, a creative choice. If a print is to be made, I am throwing that into the Develop step as well. In the age of digital photographs, with the exception of creative medium for the output, most want the output to match what is on their screen. The “print” largely becomes a mechanical process of reproduction from a digital original. With analog photography of course, much less so.

The amount of work in Develop can be quite varied, from a simple click to hours, days, weeks, even years. It is a step where you can quickly realize any shortcomings of the prior two. It may even suggest starting over because it is just too much to handle. In contrast, Develop can provide new directions and inspiration completely different from anything imagined in the prior two steps. There really are no limits.

If the output is destined for Instagram, so be it. Instagram and similar apps have made photo filters popular, and rebels in the #nofilter movement similarly leave some decisions to the algorithms built into camera tech.

Develop is the performance, as well as the final step before abandonment and moving on to the next photograph. I often find myself thinking about what is the final creation step here. What is truly the “master copy?” Is it a final digital file, even though that technically can be modified at any point in the future, essentially erasing its provenance?

Making a print has strong merits. It defines a point in time when something was done or abandoned, and isn’t going to change. Technically speaking though, it is a reproduction. If going from digital to analog is the only way to call something “done” – then most of the work today will never achieve that state.

It is hard to imagine a future art world where the collectable item is some type of locked digital file. For that reason, perhaps the print still has its place for those pursuing that final performance of their hard work.

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As it turns out, Ansel Adams had all of this pretty well figured out a long time ago. The adjustments for the digital age brings up a lot of questions about the provenance of a photograph. I try to picture a situation in the future where someone stumbles upon a storage drive full of pictures like someone once found a box of Vivian Maier‘s photographs. Most of those were also never printed. How she would have developed them, wanted their final performance, with today’s tools will remain a mystery.

Then again, she never showed them to anyone. She presumably did it just for herself. I think therein is one of the ultimate lessons of when to call something finished after this entire creative process. Perhaps it is simply the point of being content with what you created. And because of that, I find myself perhaps wanting to add a fourth and final step that even Ansel wouldn’t object to after the performance. Be happy.