LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

In a position about three-quarters of the way between, I'm seeing a lot of projects these days that are visually monochromatic but have a dot or a splash of color somewhere, or perhaps a slight tint of color that clearly make them a color image. For the right subjects, this is a marvelous approach.

Here is a measure of how far we've come with the advancement of technology these days. I used to dream of a lens that would render as much detail as I could see with my eyes. The lenses I'm using today can see far more than I can with my eyes. This has radically changed my photography.

In digital photography, a panorama is made by stitching together a series of exposures that typically use several portrait orientation images or several horizontal orientation images. But what if you mix these? There's some very interesting possibilities for H-frame images.

Numerical technical specifications are one thing, but what you can actually see in a print is where we find the meaningful comparisons.

A wide angle lens has a wide angle of view in both directions - left/right and up/down. So how do you get a wide angle along only one axis? It's a panorama. And one of the fun things about that is you can use a narrow-angle telephoto lens to make a wide-angle picture along just the horizontal axis.

Sure, a telephoto lens pulls in objects from a distance, but it also compounds the issues of atmosphere. It has to see through more air. And that means dust, mist, fog, heat haze, and wind are greater factors than they are with shorter lenses.

I was reading an article on creative photography in which the writer proposed that if you don't feel it you shouldn't photograph it. I couldn't disagree with him more. That strategy completely removes the possibility that you might feel it later, long after the photographic opportunity has passed.

Some images just delight our eyes; some images give us a mood or a certain feeling; and some images fill us with ideas and make us think. Of course the best images do all three at once. Maybe this can be developed into a strategy?

Without light, there is no photography. But why do so many photographers prefer certain kinds of light? Is a photograph successful because of the land it shows, the light it uses, or the mood it creates?

Movies and TV shows tend to show photography as this frenetic activity with photographers seemingly hopped up on massive amounts of caffeine. I'm sure for certain kinds of photography that's appropriate. The more I work in the landscape, with abstracts, and even with portraits, I find a slower approach to be much more successful.

Photographers want to know how you did it, but everyone else only cares what you did. When it comes to presenting your work to the public, it's a good idea to keep the interests of your audience in mind.

Some ideas are rich with potential and lead to lots of images; some ideas play out in half a dozen images and don't need more than that. Knowing the depth of an idea can help us avoid adding fluff that isn't needed or giving up too soon on the ideas with depth.

In general, most photographers find that converting an image to black-and-white requires an increase in contrast. True, but too much is, well, too much. It takes a delicate touch to push far enough without going too far and ending up with crunchy blacks and whites.

I hope that photography is not evolving into merely the search for the visually orgasmic.

Here is a great train of thought from YouTuber Hugh Brownstone over at Three Blind Men and an Elephant about removing barriers to our success.