Photography is often dismissed as an art form with the observation that it is merely a recording or "Xerox copy” of a scene or subject. Or put another way, "it's just point and shoot". What's creative about that? How can that be artistic? Even seasoned photographers whose work I deem creative and artistic say that photography is not art for this reason.
Contrast that with painting on canvas. Painters start with a blank canvas and build a composition from their imaginations by adding paint to the canvas. Often, the painting is based on something seen or experienced by the artist but is rarely a recording of what was seen. The resulting painting is usually an interpretation of what was seen to create a new, perhaps very different, image that evokes thoughts and feelings. This process is usually thought of as being creative and the resulting painting deemed "art".
The artistry is in the interpretation and the painting, unlike a photograph, is not expected to represent "what the painter saw". In contrast, most people think that a photograph should only (or can only) record what the photographer saw and shouldn't be (or can't be) a creative interpretation. In reality, all photographs are interpretations of what was seen due to the difference between how cameras "see" and how we "see". Both traditional (film and darkroom) and modern (digital sensor and darkroom) photographic have a rich set of creative tools for creating art. So, why shouldn't we use them! It is ironic that many painters work from photographs, and that many photographers try to make their photographs look like paintings.
Creativity comes from painters' minds and hearts in the decisions they make about applying paint on the canvas to render what's in their imagination. Painters start with an intention and make decisions to realize that intention on the canvas. These intentions and decisions may be intuitive or cognitive or a combination of the two. Decisions could include what's added to the painting (or not), the colors used, where and how brushstrokes are applied, when to repaint part of the work, etc. This process usually proceeds with plenty of trial and error, backing up, veering off in new directions, etc. until the work is "done". There is, of course, a level of craftsmanship or technique needed to successfully translate artists’ intentions into what we see on the canvas, but that is not the source of the painter's creativity.
The artistic photographer's goal is the same - to make an image that shows us something new and different AND evokes thoughts and feelings. But the process of making a photograph is very different from making a painting. A photograph is, in fact, a recording of what is in front of the camera. Thus, photographers start, in a sense, with a full canvas with an initial composition. To make an artistic image, the elements of the composition in front of the camera must be added, removed and/or rearranged. But how; what does that process look like?
As with painters, creating an artful photograph starts with an intention which drives creative decision making. Intention can be unspoken and intuitive, or explicit and cognitive, or both. It can be determined in the moment or planned. With painters, their decisions guide what they do on the canvas. With photographers, their decisions guide what is recorded and how it's rendered by the camera and in the darkroom (chemical or digital). Such decisions could include camera settings, lens focal length choices, and work done in the darkroom. As an example, a waterfall becomes a raging torrent with a very fast shutter speed, or a silky soft flow with a very slow shutter speed. The resulting photos will have a very different "feel", the former being energetic and the latter peaceful.
Such camera setting and darkroom decisions are an important part of photographers' creative toolkits, and often require a lot of skill to execute. But the most important creative act in photography is simply moving the camera to change what is filling the frame of the camera's viewfinder or screen. Moving the camera’s position to one side or the other, up or down and toward or back is the best way (and often the only way) to eliminate, include and/or rearrange the elements of the composition filling the camera's frame. You can also change lens focal length which effectively moves the camera closer to or further from the subject or scene.
Moving the camera’s position can add new elements and remove unwanted elements from the frame. More subtly, and perhaps more importantly, it changes the relationships between those elements. Moving closer will emphasize those elements closest to the camera, making them relatively larger and more important in the composition, and perhaps feel more ominous. The relative sizes and spatial relationships of the elements in the composition critical to the final look and feel of the image. For example, a photo of a person far from the camera with lots of other “elements” in the image like trees, furniture, other people, etc. will look and feel very differently than one made after moving the camera very close to the person, thereby eliminating all the “elements” that don’t matter or diminish the impact of the photo.
Things like depth of field (resulting from aperture choice) and dodging and burning in the darkroom will affect the look and feel of the final photograph. Viewers will pay more attention to what is sharpest and brightest in an image, and less to what is blurred and darker. A future post will cover such creative tools, which are important, but the most important creative act in photography is determining what's in the frame by moving around! The creativity is in those movement decisions that affect what’s in the camera’s frame, not in the pointing and shooting that follows.
In practice, for both painters and photographers, this process meanders toward a final image. Painters apply paint to canvas, change their minds and repaint as they add elements to their painting. Photographers first look at the scene or subject. Then, based on their response to what they see, decide where to point the camera, then see what’s in the frame or screen, and then decide to shoot (capture) or not. Moving to the left or right, forward, or backward, and/or raising or lowering the camera changes the composition of what will be recorded and how the elements in the composition relate to one another. This can happen relatively quickly; so, this is often repeated as the photographer moves around to change what’s in the frame and zeroes in on more creative photographs.
Lots of photos are made without following this process. Most are not creative or artistic, although anyone can occasionally get lucky by pointing and shooting without much thought. The process of making a creative photograph does include pointing and shooting, but the process becomes creative when those steps are preceded by looking and then moving the camera to creatively determine what is being recorded to make the photograph. Photographers can get even more creative with camera settings and post processing in the darkroom (digital or chemical). But these creative tools won’t do much good if applied to a poor composition resulting from the wrong camera position.
Recently I sent an image to another photographer asking for a critique. His first comment was that I should have moved the camera to the right to change the relationship between a bright foreground element, a dark mid-ground, and the bright mountain peaks at the top of the image. The image composition would have been far stronger had I done that. I've been photographing for a long time, and have had lots of images critiqued, and have listened to lots of critiques of other photographers’ images. Very often, the comments include "you should have moved closer" or "you should have raised the camera" to eliminate some distracting element or better emphasize another element in the composition. Assessing how the camera position affected the photograph and how a different position might have made it “better”, should always be a key part of an image critique and is often more helpful than discussing some fancy photoshop technique.
To illustrate further, below I've included four images made in the nearby Anacortes Community Forest Lands, where I photograph a lot. The first image was made very early in the time I spent photographing this scene. It is literally a point and shoot photo. It does show something about the forest but it's not very visually interesting or creative, and I knew there were more possibilities to explore. So, I looked around and moved just a few feet to the right of where I made the first image, zoomed out a bit, and made the second one, which I find much more interesting. Then I looked around some more, moved about ten feet to the right of that camera position and made the third image, which is quite different from the first two. I liked this composition but the tree on the right is crowding the edge of the frame and is merging with a tree that is partially behind it. So, I took a step or two to the right, and made the fourth image which I like a lot better. Creativity by wandering around!
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