Rationality versus Creativity

<p>I would like to share some wisdom regarding the evolution and goal stuff.</p>

<p>The thing is, we actually do not know enough to make final conclusion in this matter.</p>

<p>There are two concepts on the slab. One is religious, it perceives evolution as the process originated by God and [he] controls it towards the goal(s) which cannot be known by human, all by equally unknown means. The human can only accept it thorough the personal cultivation in faith or reject/ignore. Numerous studies in this field show the human inheretantly unable to fully-unite with God thorough the faith while still alive. So, the common mortals cannot know it but can choose to believe in it. Another one is materialistic, it perceives evolution as physical process which goes because matter changes its energetic states thorough natural causes. The original cause and final end of this process cannot be known again because the physical times, masses and energy involved are beyond human capacity of experiment. Neither of these two concepts do contradict the other nor are they conclusive.</p>

<p>As for rationality v. creativity, I find this counterposition as an inappropriate stretch because everything humans do is essentially creative and rationality is a relevant term. Say, every human action is creative and in one way or another rational.</p>

<p>I don't see rationality and creativity being mutually exclusive at all. M.C. Escher was both - he created extremely complex, creative compositions that rationally, all worked. When he drew stairs warping and leading into doorways you know the laws of physics wouldn't have allowed that to work. But if those laws did allow it, it would have all worked correctly.</p>

<p>I think rationality should always be present, but perhaps not as a driving force. Let me give you an example: in the movie <em>Underworld</em>, a bullet with a built-in UV generator is used to kill vampires. This is a complete absense of rationality. Even if we can believe vampires exist, and we can believe UV light kills them, a UV bullet still can't work - we know bullets expand when they are fired, and the air pressure against the bullet would cause the UV generator to be destroyed before it even hit its target.<br>

Rationality is abandonded for the sake of creativity.</p>

<p>Now take the first <em>Blade </em>movie. In this movie, the hero uses a UV-generating flashlight to kill vampires. Sure we still need to set aside our beliefs to allow vampires to exist - but when we do, the movie's invention works.<br>

Rationality is used to keep creativity from getting too wild.</p>

<p>Now back to photography. Ansel Adams wanted to be able to show as much detail and dynamic range as the human eye could see. His creative side allowed him to think up new shooting, processing, and printing techniques to allow this to happen. His rational side allowed him to do the necessary math to make all that happen. The man didn't exactly have the luxury of copying all his techniques from a book or anything - he had to invent most of that.</p>

<p>I don't think things are so easly split up, art and science. Or they are but it is ultimatley a fiction. For science to be any more real than art (or factual) you need to prove things are real. And the only matter (bits of real stuff) we can suppse to be real does not funcion according to any rational or physical laws. Einstein was wrong. Quantum physics leads us to this conclusion.</p>

<p>We don't reall know how reality works, or if it is "real". That term is itself a fiction. Science can't back it up....... So there are these "Real" particals that jump into and out of existance and can be in two places at once. O yea, LOL what kind of science is that?</p>

<p>Leslie. I never saw it, Is it good? Pesonaly i did not really get into his later stuff. It's good and i like the concept, the way things are not expalined and it's more about feeling of the scene, but i find his subjects or his scanarios a bit too fixed and not my thing.</p>

<p>This makes me a little confused about what you said Phylo, because the cut with the extra bits may have been closer to the book (I.e. Having things explained better) but it was not closer to what he did in his later work. Maybe the studio cut helped in this regard. But who knows what goes on between specific artists and studios. Perhaps it is not fair to judje.</p>

<p>But back to reality. You can impose all sorts of concepts on things but what's interesting for me is the mystery. The extent of which seems vastly unappreciated in both art and science where supposedly people are experts. What an arrogance, not with some concept of god but by looking at nature itself...... Anyway for me (and others) there is some mystery that is involved, or you can let it get involved. Some feeling that if you open yourself you will make discoveries that will move you forward, or arrive at something that is greater than the sum of it's parts.</p>

<p>I duno, Whatever, It's all a bit confusing when you think about it. (:</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ishmael brings up a very good word: <em>mystery</em>.<br /><br />A narrative (visual, or otherwise) that provides a sense of mystery can be very compelling. But if there are hints in that narrative that the answer to the mystery (or the pursuit of that answer) cannot include causality or a self-consistent universe, then the audience - which lives in just such a universe-with-rules, a place of reason - may fail to engage with the work. Photographs that require a conceptual deus ex machina in order to work, to have their mystery and tension resolved (or at least to hold a promise of such), often land with a capricious thud. <br /><br />It's the photographer's rationality that checks up on the integrity of the narrative. <br /><br />Which isn't to say that an irrational image (Dali?) is a bad thing. Only that it's asking you to either sign up for a visual world that operates under differnt rules or for a message that is internally tangled. Either way, it's a much bigger sales job, creatively.</p>

<p><strong>Matt</strong>, would abstracts be the extreme of what you're talking about, even more irrational than Dali? Maybe not, because Dali and his paintings were perhaps rational enough so that Dali and the viewer were aware of the ground he was upsetting and testing with his mysterious images. He gave us enough that was familiar -- more often in unfamiliar juxtapositions, contexts, and appearances or states -- for his irrational images to be sur<em>real</em>. Abstracts may seem more to the extreme of groundlessness and they leave us guessing about the narrative . . . more often they leave me not wondering about the narrative but rather simply looking and feeling . . . and thinking more in associations than in narrative.</p>

<p>Interestingly, abstract painting often differs significantly for me from abstract photographs. Because I know that a photograph at least started with something in the world, something real, as it were, I am more inclined to wonder what it is a photograph of. With abstract painting, unless the painter hints at a narrative or particular object, I am less inclined to wonder what it is.</p>

<p>I'm glad you mention these things because it makes me think that the rationality of the painter, artist, or photographer will not necessarily be directly related to the rationality we experience in the painting, work of art, or photograph (though I suspect it often will be). A very rational photographer may make very irrational photographs and a very irrational photographer may come up with photographs that follow a very obvious narrative.</p>

<p>"It's in this aspect that I feel the trade-off between the rational search for originality against a more intuitive and spontaneous appraoach."<br>

I like your photo titled Coinfishing. There are some reasons why. The subject is off center. The subject is framed by lines slightly diagonal that converge and lead the eye to the subject. The subject itself is interesting and humorous. There is an element of surprise in recognizing after a moment the subject's purpose. Let's say that off center placement, framing within diagonals, and the the element of surprise are rational design choices. All of a sudden, rationality has something new to play with and eventually place within reach of intuition and spontaneity: elements of composition. I didn't have to think about whether or not I liked Coinfishing. I did have to ask myself why I liked it, why the picture communicated something to me. The only thing I've been exposed to on the subject of design and composition is a book by Michael Freeman: The Photographer's Eye. Before that book, I would know I liked a picture, but would have had no idea as to why. </p>

 

<p>Fred, I never did take an art history class, more's the pity. However: I don't find abstractions to be wrestling with (or dancing upon) rationality in the same way that surrealism does. Surrealism uses the visual vocabulary of the rationally understood world, and then speaks in non sequitors in order to gleefully poke reason in the eye.<br /><br />Abstractions aren't anchored, that way. They're deliberately cut adrift from rational communication. An artist working in abstractions may indeed be icily rational (or even very cynical!), but doesn't have to be bothered with the audience's vocabulary in the way that - for example - Dali might have been.<br /><br />Like you, I can't help but digest an abstract photograph differently than an abstract painting. While <strong><a href="http://abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_Grnfthrs_fldr/g0000_gr_inf_images/g051_rothko_vbkoy-wr.jpg">this Rothko</a></strong> and <strong><a href="../photo/7076031">this Keller</a></strong> might fall into the same big enough bucket o' abstraction, my brain still sees the rusty metal in Tim's photograph, and immediately goes off to wonder if it's a tractor, a car, a kitchen appliance, or what, and what time of day caused that light. My usual thought about abstract work (like Rothko's) is that it doesn't contain enough <em>information</em> to serve as communication, and thus it doesn't matter if reason (beyond that needed to physically execute the work) played a role or not. But an abstract photograph requires choice by the photographer, and an interaction with the world. An abstract painting can be wholly synthesized, while an abstract photograph might be only mostly so. And that little part that isn't ... is like catnip for me (as a photographer viewing the work), and may distract me from whatever the photographer had in mind. I'll confess (as the son of an artist and the husband of one) that sometimes I'll look at something like a Rothko, and be thinking about paint thinner, brush technique, and gesso.<br /><br />It's a rare abstract that actually talks to me (or gets me talking to myself), because their very disconnectedness often comes across - to me, anyway - as a signal from the artist that they're mostly interested in talking to themselves. Which is fine, of course. But I rarely want to listen in on that conversation.<br /><br />So, no, I don't find abstraction to be an extreme in that sense - it's not even in the same neighborhood as an irrational/surreal work. It doesn't have the communication lines open enough to carry that information and allow us to think of it in those terms.</p>

<p>Thanks, <strong>Matt</strong>. We're thinking along similar lines.</p>

<p>The thing I'm having a little trouble with in this thread in general is that many have taken <strong>Wouter</strong>, because he has posed the difference between rationality and creativity as a significant question, are responding by saying one entails the other, photographers need both, etc. I just didn't take his question that way. I thought he was asking what roles we see for each in ourselves, and whether photographers as makers might lean more to one or to the other (even while recognizing that you can't do one without the other) and whether when we view photographs we see the photographs leaning more to the rational or creative side, again knowing that both are at play and each is dependent on the other.</p>

<p>It's kind of like people have brains and intellect and they have emotions. There is a significant connection between the two. And you don't have many people who have intellect and not emotions or <em>vice versa</em>. We all have both and need both. And there is an emotional aspect to intellect and we can intellectualize and think about our emotions. Nevertheless, I know people who I would say are more intellectual than emotional in their reactions, dealings, and relationships and I know others who are what I would consider much more emotional people.</p>

<p>I don't see Wouter's "vs." as a great scientific or creative <em>faux pas</em>. I took it as a casual way of asking about the different roles and varying degrees of each among a variety of photographers.</p>

<p>

<p >This is a late reply but it took me so long to spell check I will post it. Hopefully it brings it back closer to the original subject anyway.</p>

<p ><br /></p>

<p >I don't think I get exactly what you mean on your privious post Matt. But i'll say that while i agree to some extent I feel that if you look at how art and science is moving forward it often does so with a "thud".</p>

<p ><br /></p>

<p >I don't know if mystery is a good word the way you use it. I don't mean something waiting to be solved, but something unknown or unexplained within the process, not in the subject or meaning of the work. There is a difference conceptualizing what goes on and doing it. I'm sure many feel something unexplained in the creative process, call it intuition or whatever. I'm not on about something mystical (necessarily), just the unfathomable connections we share with things as a whole influencing things. </p>

<p ><br /></p>

<p >I have done more painting than photography and don't really see difference, or with films for that matter. We all have tendencies to see things in certain ways but these things have always been changing, no matter what the medium, and things are far less clear cut now than ever. It's easy to put things together accordance to an idea (rational or not) but the most creative people are the ones who change the form. And in this way ideas can be at odds with actuality being creative. </p>

<br />

</p>

<p>It's the symbiosis between looking and<em> seeing</em>, which to me marks the experience of making photographs, rather than the measurement of the rational and the creative in looking at things and/or <em>seeing things</em>.</p>

<p>As a musician I felt mathematics and rational thought served my art. I feel the same way with photography. Being able to turn on reasoned technique, f stops, DOF and shutter speeds when needed and not have them interfere when not, is like a musician keeping count. Always available in the background for support, but it need not intrude on creativity or spontaneity.</p>

<p>Creativity is a mystery to me. I can't explain it any more than I can explain gravity or sexual attraction or why I like one song better than another. These things are all familiar and completely natural. I experience them every day but I have no idea how or why they occur.</p>

<p>When gravity enables me to walk on the surface of the planet, I simply accept it. When I'm in the arms of an attractive woman, I don't question why I feel the way I do or why I like her better than someone else. I just enjoy the experience. When a great song makes me want to turn up the radio, I don't ponder why I'm having that sensation; I just enjoy it.</p>

<p>When I see something that compels me to photograph it, I just pull out a camera and start shooting. I don't need to know why. Life's too short to ponder the minute details. As long as I can capture some percentage of these compelling moments, I'm absolutely delighted.</p>

<p><strong>Wouter</strong><br>

I am a professional violinist. In order to be able (now) to really express myself with this piece of wood and some horse hair, I had to study 20 years averaging 4 hours a day to be able to master the extreme technical difficulties this instrument presents. After I finally mastered and executed any technical issue without much effort, now I can <strong>control</strong> my interpretation. I said control, not let go, because even when you have to let out your personal artistic creativity you must always control it with your brain. Only after years of technical studies your brain can execute quickly all the necessary passages and finally enter the creative world. I would say that it is impossible to fully express your creative side without first having very clear in your mind what needs to be done and how. Even when there isn't too much time to think, only if the brain has gone through a process of exercise and repetition for a long time, you will be able to naturally execute with good results.<br>

After some time, you won't need to think about technique very much because it will have become part of you and you will be able to focus on the creative side.</p>

<p>Creativity is pure instinct. However you can use techniques as an un-naturally creative person to get better at being creative. For instance try copying (as a drawing) a picture upside down instead of right side up and I can bet you will do it much better. This is a common method in teaching drawing to the not so natural artist. Observing kids you will obviously see that some are more naturally creative than others. This cannot be denied. Those creative kids will grow up to be more creative adults. Pure genetics (which is very mathematical of course).<br>

So, as a natural person you can increase the creativity you have with practice and training but you will never achieve the pure instinct creativity of someone born like that. If a creative person does not use his or her talent than it is as good as not being present. If you have moderate talent but you work hard to get better and then use it, then you have achieved more than the other person even though you are not naturally creative. <br>

Is it rationalism that kills creativity I don't know? I do know that the people I associate with who are rational thinkers tend to be the type less willing to take chances or experiment. </p>

<p >It has been said by many artists that what defines art is that it can serve no other purpose than to exist on its own, independent of everyday purposes; to be viewed and appreciated only.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >Scientist and everyone else must deal with purposeful endeavors all the time. Purposeless sometimes irrational, illogical art gives the rational thinker a reprieve from what's hard and true and gives glimpses into what's possible, including shifts in ways of thinking.</p>

<p > </p>

<blockquote>

<p >I think development the other way around exist too: very creative people who have to work harder to learn that technical part in photography. I don't know which road is harder, it does not seem like a choice one has, but more a case of characteristics.</p>

<p > </p>

</blockquote>

<p >With art I think it's important to release our preconceptions and technical ways, and simply open the mind to all creative possibilities out there. Some of the most beautiful photographs are of the most mundane scenes.</p>

<p > </p>

<p >To get more into the creative mindset I found it really helped to get to know the equipment and customize as much as possible. By having my main shooting styles programmed into the camera's memory, I rarely ever have to wander menus, sending my brain back to the technical.</p>

<p>As I pondered this topic further a thought dawned on me. Creativity DEPENDS on rationality. Without an investment of intellectual curiosity, our creativity will be limited.</p>

<p>When I first learned to play a musical instrument I learned to play the notes that were on the page in front of me. Take away the page and I couldn't make a sound. Was I creative? Not in an effective sense. I loved music but as a consumer rather than a creator.</p>

<p>Eventually, I studied concepts of music theory. I was fascinated by the fact that all of Western music was composed of twelve notes, yet every one of those millions of pieces of music sounds different. Vivaldi. Mozart. Stravinsky. Ellington. Lennon/McCartney. They all used the same twelve notes. (On average, a song or a composition only uses about 8 or 9 of those notes, sometimes even fewer. Notes to spare!)</p>

<p>I learned how the notes related to one another. I learned how subsets of notes (scales) implied specific musical relationships and how harmonies were built from those relationships and how chord changes moved through the structures impliled by one of more scales. I learned the effect of a finite set of modifiers on that small set of notes (staccato and legato, accents, dynamic markings, phrasing). As my understanding increased, the gap between my creative intentions and my ABILITIES narrowed. Little by little, I learned to piece bits of music together into meaningful units. As my understanding expanded, I had an explosion of ideas and composed hundreds of pieces of music in the next few years.</p>

<p>Now, I'll be the first to admit that emotional honesty and a creative nature are also important factors in musical composition. Researchers have taught computers to combine notes together according to compositional algorithms, but I don't recall a single Top 40 hit or "modern classic" being composed by a machine. However, for all of my creative intentions (and innate love of music), my creativity was locked in shackles until I learned the grammar and structure of the Western music system.</p>

<p>I suspect that many photographers are in the same boat. A burning desire to produce creative images will struggle for years in frustration until some "compositional approach" (formal or informal) is analyzed, understood, and internalized. Unfortunately, compositional guidelines for the visual arts don't seem to be as well-documented as it is in the music world. A music major goes through four semesters of music theory and takes additional classes in composition and arrangement. Do BA Photography students take four fo more semesters of compositional technique? I suspect that photographers are left to learn these rules more passively, i.e., from examples given by professors and mentors, from analysis of the works of other photographers, and ultimately from personal experimentation. But once we do assemble our checklist of compositional techniques - however we manage to acquire it - the ideas begin to come faster and with less far less strain and effort. But without some thoughtful analysis of technique, our creativity will remain perpetually in first gear.</p>

 

<p>Dan,</p>

<p>But don't you find that there is a profound difference between working with the well-defined set (twelve tones; with or against known musical forms and techniques) of music, and the inifinite set and -- on first encounter -- formlessness of the visual; of photography?</p>

<p>Though I do agree that the creativity is in the putting together of "meaningful units." Where the "meaningful" comes from me. To fill out that corny platitude (mine, not Dan's) I offer a comparison:<br>

Here are two nearly identical pictures. First, my <em>Pepper No. 30 from a Fuji apple</em>:<br>

<a href="../photo/6847611">http://www.photo.net/photo/6847611</a><br>

Second, Edward Westons's <em>Peppter No. 30</em>:<br>

<a href="http://www.artknowledgenews.com/files2008a/pepper_weston.jpg">http://www.artknowledgenews.com/files2008a/pepper_weston.jpg</a><br>

I think mine is just as pretty as his (or if it's not, I can make it so in about five minutes). Mine has a ton of technique and involved a lot of rational problem solving (see some of it at the bottom of <a href="http://unrealnature.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/untropy/">this blog post</a>). But my creativity was minimal. I spent about three hours on mine. Weston's creativity was essential, fundamental, all ... ; the picture is all about his creativity; which was growing, evolving, developing for years.</p>

<p>[<em>All quotes that follow are from</em> Edward Weston: Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography <em>by Amy Conger (1992)] </em></p>

<blockquote>

<p>Weston made his first photograph of a pepper in 1927. He placed it ontop of a milk bottle, and it met with decidedly mixed reviews. Since then, he worked steadily with other fruits and vegetables. In his log he recorded twenty-six negatives of peppers from 1929 and the rest of them, seventeen, in 1930 [<em>that's a substantial number of exposures in large format</em>].</p>

<p>Many of the peppers from 1929, and those known to have been made during August, have a low horizon line and a burlap or rough muslin background either in or out of focus. they often reflect his interest in the shapes and interdigitating behavior of the folds as opposed to the elegant and smooth, gently curved surfaces he often looked for in 1930. [<em>Looking at them, I would say they are definitely more ... weird than the ones done the next year</em>.]</p>

<p>On July 19 [<em>now 1930</em>], Weston mentioned working with peppers again, a subject he had ignored since the previous autumn. Sonya had brought them home this time, and he could not resist ... [<em>Weston is quoted as saying of this one</em>] "... This slender, delicate pepper, I place on a green-glazed oval dish, -- it might be a strange tropical plant in itself, spiraling up from the roots, partly unfolded at the top like a fern. It has a mystical significance."</p>

<p>[<em>Finally, getting to Pepper No. 30</em>] He took at least thirty differnet negatives of peppers -- all on four days in August, 1930. He credited Sonya as his temptress, his pepper supplier. On the second day, August 3, she brought him two more. While arranging one of these, he finally solved his background problem. From then on, Westion ususally used a tin funnel to hold the pepper; no longer did he balance it against a muslin background or a piece of white cardboard.</p>

<p>[<em>Weston thought that Pepper No. 35 was his best</em>.] "These last new peppers! They are powerful! ... First I printed my favorite, the one made last Saturday, Aug. 2, just as the light was failing -- quickly made, but with a week's previous effort back of my immediate, unhesitating decision. A week? -- Yes, on this certain pepper, -- but twenty-eight years of effort, starting with a youth on a farm in Michigan, armed with a No. 2 Bull's Eye, 3 1/2 x 3 1/2, have gone into the making of this pepper, which I consider a peak of achievement.<br>

... This is the "significant presentation" that I mean, the presentation through one's intuitive self, seeing "through one's eyes, not with them"; the visionary."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I think that last is the key to creativity; what is in Weston's pepper and not in mine, his is "through one's eyes, not with them." Mine was made with my eyes but not through them.</p>

<p>On the other hand, look how long it took Weston to get what finally satisified him. The final pictures were reached because he worked his way to it -- rationally. (And, perhaps -- probably -- if he had continued to work with peppers there would have been ones that he liked even more.)</p>

<p>The images of electrons and chemistry that I linked at the top of this thread are, in my opinion, seen "through the eyes" of their maker.</p>

<p>Thanks for many interesting posts. I took a bad time to run into internet connection issues... my apologies for being slow to follow up on this thread.<br>

There are more or less 2 threads, maybe. I understand my choice of title inspires to the difference between rationality and creativity. I know there is no difference, and one does not exist without the other. However, many of the postings on that point raise interesting examples and viewpoints, that do allow a lot of extra insight (for me at least).</p>

<p>Some posts I'd like to respond on;<br>

<strong>Matt Laur</strong> (8:12 post mainly): thanks for a look into your kitchen of photo-cooking. It is very helpful for a relatively unexperienced but not entirely un-amibitious mind like myself. The 'internalisation' of the technical process, making one more ready, freed up to focus on the creative.<br>

<strong>Antonio Bassi, Dan South</strong>, your posts, through music maybe, bring me to similar conclusions.<br>

Thanks for underlining the significance of training hours. Ambitions to improve and develop need a solid foundation, and that's maybe one of the things I left out in the topic start (and one where I also have to critically re-assess myself - although I am sure I grew further with the camera than I did with my violin, but I was/am an extremely bad violinist). Practise maybe does not make perfect, but it sure will help a great deal.</p>

<p>On a sidenote, I do find it amusing and interesting how often in this forum, when discussing the more 'process-side' of creating photos, analogies with music (composition and performance) are made. And how it nearly always is very clarifying.</p>

<p><strong>Ishmael Pierson</strong> (9:27 post) and <strong>Fred Goldstein</strong> (8:21, in reply to Matt); your interpretations of the question is indeed the one I meant originally. Not a strict "versus", but how they interact.<br>

In that light, <strong>Charles Wood</strong>, the book you mention has helped me a great deal too, and in fact the things I picked up from this book is what brought me to the point where I'm now: wondering whether these (mainly rational) ideas on composition and aids in composition are aiding me become better, or are holding me partially back. It does seem to go at the cost of some spontaneous, intuitive photography - because I start looking for more deliberate improvements to the composition.<br>

And thanks for the compliment on my picture!</p>

<p><strong>Phylo Dayrin</strong>, <em>It's the symbiosis between looking and seeing, which to me marks the experience of making photographs, rather than the measurement of the rational and the creative in looking at things and/or seeing things.</em><br /><br />Maybe I am reading it wrong, but I do not see looking/seeing or rational/creative as mutual exclusives... Is seeing is the way it should be framed as a photo? Or is seeing the recognition of a photographic oppurtunity? Process-wise, to me, a significant difference.</p>

<p><strong>Mark Jordan</strong>, while I do not think I agree with all creativity being pure instinct, I think you touch a very significant point for the discussion: <em>...rational thinkers tend to be the type less willing to take chances or experiment</em>.<br>

This seems to imply that rationality does tend to lead to more predictable results, and to a less wide array of creative possibilities. That's indeed what I had in mind when starting this thread. Many of the examples and discussions in the thread give me clues to believe it does not or should not be necessarily true, but in my thoughts, the jury isn't out yet.</p>

<p>Sorry Fred, I misquoted your name completely.... Shouldn't have second windows open when typing responses like this, I start to mix up things. My apologies.</p>

<p><strong>Julie typed: "</strong>On the other hand, look how long it took Weston to get what finally satisified him. The final pictures were reached because he worked his way to it -- rationally."</p>

<p> I'm not so sure. Is working in successive approximations, or serially, synonymous with the rational? Is Weston's Realism automatically rational?</p>

<p> [On Pepper #30] " It is classic, completely satisfying – a pepper – but more than a pepper: abstract, in that it is completely outside subject matter. " </p>

<p> --- E. W.</p>

<p>That doesn't sound exactly ultra-rational or enslaved to Realism to me. His language, the way he thinks, is very clear (though sprinkled with tantalizing apparent paradoxes), but his passion seems to exceed his rational thoughts.</p>

<p> I've been several times to a current, local exhibition of Matisse prints. He worked in this way, making an incredible number of variations on a particular idea, most of them thin-slicing nearly identical refinements. It is tempting to say he was driving to the end painting or final version, but the entire process is fascinating, and any of those studies can easily stand on its own, though one can see the evolution of the idea towards a very specific thing. Would I say it was a rational process? Perhaps partially.<br /></p>

<p>I have been going back to the same places in coastal Georgia over the past decade or two. Healthy and ravaged trees and bushes, dunes, dune plants and dune bridges, old military foundations, weathered piers of former wharfs, cemeteries, staircase elements of Anti-Bellum mansions. Each photograph is based upon an initial perception, an initial idea. As time goes on, the places change slightly or a lot, the perception changes because of that or because of me, although the idea runs constant. My partner questions my repetition. There may be a rationality to my pursuit, but I think each time I try to capture, improve, my original perception, I feel something acting that is irrational or the effect of a desired layer of fantasy or momentary altered seeing. Not every return exploration works, but when I think it does I cannot describe the result as one from a process that is completely rational.</p>

<p><strong>Wouter</strong>, no worries about the name. I've been called worse! My mother married a Goldsmith and her sister married a Greenstein. Our families often travelled together. Imagine the confusion we caused. ;)))</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I do find it amusing and interesting how often in this forum, when discussing the more 'process-side' of creating photos, analogies with music (composition and performance) are made. And how it nearly always is very clarifying.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Initially, I thought to make a similar analogy based on principles of improvised dance but decided that more people could relate to music. Plus it's really difficult to describe dancing in text. :)</p>

<p>It's the same idea, though. When I started learning to dance, I mostly just memorized the steps that the teachers showed me. It wasn't until a teacher explained the fundamental structure upon which the steps were based that my ability to improvise began to flourish.</p>

<p>There is an added degree of complexity in dancing. In music one improvises/composes alone in most cases. If you improvise a solo or a cadenza, the band/orchestra waits for you to finish. In dancing you have to convince a partner to follow your improvised steps in real time, even if she's never seen the step before. It's like guiding a high-heeled friend backwards through an obstacle course. When I compose a photograph or a piece of music, at least I don't have to worry about knocking someone over or stepping on their toes. :)</p>

<p>Actually, I was photographing the other day with 5 models and 3 other photographers, and I stepped on more toes than I care to admit! ;)))) Many of my photos are with human subjects, so I do consider it a dance. Others have used <em>pax de deux</em> to describe even their photographing of the world, and it seems apt. But I do get your point, for sure.</p>

<p>Fred, yeah, I actually thought about event or sports or animal photography where we're moving around trying to react to the movements and positions of our subjects. That, too, is actually a dance of sorts (and we CAN end up bumping people along the way). We don't control what the subject is doing, but we create images by positioning the camera dynamically in real time. This is very much like a dancer reacting to changes in the music, the size and shape of a room, the position of the other dancers on the floor, and the occasional clueless person who carelessly crosses the dance floor to greet an old friend. Good point!</p>