Jump to content

Surprised by what's in your own pictures: love it,or hate it?


Recommended Posts

<p>I have to add, now that we are talking about "happy accidents," that a great majority of my people photos I would place in that category. That's what I love about watching people and having a camera ready. My best shots are always from this happening. Here's an example: http://www.photo.net/photo/13303752, or this http://www.photo.net/photo/8433057&size=lg, or this: http://www.photo.net/photo/10178733&size=lg</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 56
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

<p>I guess the direct quote of Pasteur's is: "In the fields of observation chance only favors the prepared mind." I don't think he was kidding around here!<br>

I think Fred summed it up best: </p>

<blockquote>

<p>One might also ask why more and better accidents happen to some photographers rather than to others, or at least are photographically captured by them. I don't think experience, preparedness, talent, and accident are unrelated when it comes to photography.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yup. That's what I think too. </p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Steve, you're getting my OP precisely backward. *sigh* I thought Lex's excellent examples would sort this, but apparently not. I would guess that this is because (as I know) you don't really like this kind of theoretical way of exploring stuff and/or you aren't interested in the idea of building this kind of improvisation into the photographic process. In any event, if only for my own edification, I want to try again to explain what I have failed to make clear so far.</p>

<p>Pasteur = Adams = Mozart<br>

Pasteur does <em>not</em> equal Gursky or Lex.</p>

<p>Pasteur and Adams and Mozart all have in mind <strong>a paradigm</strong> into which they incorporate, digest, make-sense-of, whatever it is that chance throws onto their plate. You can also include HCB and Minor White in this camp. No matter how great the surprise at seeing/experiencing/thinking something, their achievement is in realizing/recognizing that this fits their existing paradigm <em>at the time that it's happening</em>. Their ambition is to use what is given as means to their already existing in-mind end.</p>

<p>Another example of the this mode (Pasteur, Adams, Mozart) is a (very good) poker player. He, by random chance, is dealt a hand of cards. As a (very good) poker player, he will play those cards to maximum advantage. But he will not do anything other than play poker with those cards; he won't play canasta, he won't build a house of cards, he won't eat the cards, he won't tell your fortune with the cards.</p>

<p>An improviser ... might. An improviser specifically does not go to an end, does not work to a paradigm, goes the <em>other</em> way whenever he feels that he knows where he is going. He turns <em>toward</em> 'error' <em>for its own sake</em>. Precisely <em>because</em> he doesn't know what or how or why it's there, and, more importantly to this explanation, because <em>he doesn't know (or care) to what end it will lead</em>. The improviser wants specifically what he doesn't know that he wants -- if he 'finds' something that he knows he wants (i.e. as do Pasteur, Adams, and Mozart as well as HCB and White) -- that is specifically what the improviser does not want. Reposting a quote from earlier in this thread:<br>

.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Recognizing that “frightened improvisors keep restoring the balance for fear that something might happen,” [teacher Keith] Johnstone devotes much time and space to the art of <em>tilting</em>, that is, of tilting the balance that is ever in danger of being achieved in an improvisation, by introducing destabilizing material into the emergent dialogue, thereby “demolishing” or “devastating” it.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p><em><br /></em>.</p>

<p>Gursky, in the work that I'm interested in here, for example his huge (wall size, extremely detailed, exquisitely sharp down to the smallest parts) pictures of a rave and another of a stock market, which include enormous amounts of detail and hundreds of people, he himself doesn't know all of what's "there" and, depending on where (how close, what side, what angle) the spectator stands, he/she gets an infinite variety of different experiences. Likewise, with Lex's pictures of branches, what portion of the contours/lines you focus on, how close, how far, how you group or ungroup the lines and/or the ground changes and changes. Such pictures <em>never end</em>. There is no closure -- and the lack of closure is built into the work.</p>

<p>Yes, you can do this with any picture (see Moholy-Nagy doing it in the OP), but it's not built-in (see Weston's irritation at Moholy-Nagy's doing it).</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie, yes, thank you, I get your idea now with this explanation. I don’t agree with your use of “improvisation” in this context though, or maybe its just not as black and white as you propose. There is lots of improvisation done within paradigms. Hendrix changed the way we think of electric guitar music, but he still played the same blues chords everyone else played. If he just played random notes we would have all gotten bored. There is “mastery” and “control” in all improvisation, even when following a paradigm. I think it’s a continuum. Gursky is at one end of this continuum where the <em>viewer</em> is left to improvise, which is very conceptual and intentional by Gursky, and at the other end are photographers like myself, who reflexively respond to the visual environment without doing a lot of planning or “thinking,” not on a conscious level anyway. I am the opposite of conceptual. I would rather let my visual mind guide my camera and not worry about “thinking.” There are paradigms all over the place in my visual cortex, but like Hendrix, I just want to “jam” with it. I like to be surprised by what I get when I’m not thinking! For me photography lets me get in touch with parts of my brain that I don’t have control over. I heard an interview with Robert Plant, lead singer of Led Zepplin. The interviewer asked him what he thought about several things pertaining to his music. He replied: “I never stop and think anything, and that's why talking to you is quite a revelation," Plant says. "I never even think about these things. When you're in a recording studio and you've got a microphone, and the tape's rolling, and everybody's playing, you just do it. You go into this place that makes sense for the moment.” For me that’s improvisation. I guess its all about who’s doing the improvising, the artist or the viewer. Does that make sense?</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>On second thought, I meant this "continuum"" to be possibly more of a multidimensional thing, where Gursky is at one end or place, very consciously planning to make a photo that the viewer is left to improvise with, then in another extreme are the photographers who consciously plan everything, and somewhere in another dimension are those like myself, who improvise in the moment. This makes more sense to me.</p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Steve, thank you so much for taking the time to think through what I've posted and then to give me a thoughtful post in response. You are <em>this</em> close to 'getting' what I'm talking about. <em>So</em> close (and, in working to let you understand, you are causing me to discover all kinds of things I had not thought about before. Thank you.) Please, please stay with me for one more installment. If I can get you to back up about two millimeters ...</p>

<p>Every creative act involves a period of improvisation. But they don't "live" there; they pass through, use it to the end which they have in mind. If there is a 'decisive moment' in the process, then you've passed through and out of improvisation. You are no longer in improvisation. There is neither 'decisive' nor '(a) moment' in improvisation. All of the names I've called above (Adams, Pasteur, Mozart) passed through improvisation, but the work that they are known for was 'decisive.' It was not from 'within' improvisation; it is not about or in any way 'itself' improvisation.</p>

<p>On Hendrix and Plant, in the act, they were improvising; in the recording, they were not. Because a recording is closure; a recording has a beginning and an end. It is 'decisive.'</p>

<p>.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"Now, nothing is more dead than yesterday’s improvisation. What’s happening to a listener exposed to a repeated (recorded) improvisation? What’s happening to the music? As [Cornelius] Cardew noted, at least one feature of an improvisation is absent in a recording: that is, its <em>transience</em>. … A recorded improvisation is forever fixed, its routes to be <em>learnt and remembered</em>. This is exactly not the case with the playing and listening situation at the moment an improvisation <em>begins</em>." -- <em>Eddie Prevost</em></p>

<p>"... [at a live improvisational performance] the audience is here denied the all-too-familiar pleasures of the known and forced instead to witness close up not only the contingency of the artwork’s occurrences but also the uncertainty of its continuance, the contestation of its identity, and its eventual destruction at the hands of the improvisers.</p>

<p>… More than any other form free-improvisation turns self-destruction into a spectacle. A microcosmic fragment of tradition, the work is destroyed by becoming a work. It is destroyed by the improvisers, by the audience, by all modes of preservation and documentation, and not least, by the aesthetic discourses (including this one) that would construct arguments to hold the work together even as it unravels before our eyes." -- <em>Gary Peters</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>.</p>

<p>The state of improvisation is like a fall. Say you're walking along a cliff and you stumble and begin to fall into the abyss. Right there. That instant of terror, disorientation, when every fiber of your body is straining to find, orient, locate itself -- that's the 'state' or improvisation. The instant that you begin to regain, recover, save yourself is the instant that you are no longer in improvisation. I claim that the 'decisive moment' of all the creative artists cited above whose work is not made in or of or about improvisation have passed into this condition; they have/are recovered and that is 'the' moment. That's what is 'decisive about it. It's anti-improvisation; it's precisely what resolves or <em>gets rid of</em> the improvisational ingredient.</p>

<p>While a recording of music can't be an improvisation, I think a photograph can or at least it can be a provocation or opportunity for such. Music is a time based art, while photography is visual.</p>

<p>I would suggest that when you or I or most photographers feel that we are in an improvisational state, we are actually quite securely slumbering in our 'photography' cocoons. When we wield our cameras and leave the house (or whatever we do) we are 'acting like photographers.' We know what 'a photograph' is 'like' (else how can we be decisive?), we 'do photography' because we know what 'doing photography' consists of. That's not improvisation. That's not falling, terror, disequilibrium.</p>

<p>Why would anybody want to terrify themselves and then <em>stay</em> in that condition rather than getting as fast as possible to the safety, the relief, the closure of the 'decisive'? Because, I would claim, that condition of falling is the most awake you will ever be in your lifetime. You are without foundation; you, all of you, screams to 'find' the world again. There is no cocoon, you're wide open and in every danger.</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>I believe that improvisation has a very wide gamut. It can indeed be recorded and captured, but only in the fortuitous instance where the recorder is on when it happens the first time. For some, the improvisation may only be exciting if they fall off that cliff and survive, but for others it may merely mean taking an uncharted path and reacting to where it takes us. It does not have to be catastrophic to be improvisation. Ideally, however, it will move the listener or viewer to a new, unexpected appreciation.</p>

<p>I find the concept that yesterday's improvisation may be dead repulsive. We need to revisit it and honor it, if only to use it as a launching point for the next improvisation. The solos of Armstrong, Coltrane, Hendrix, Plant etc., may seem trite in the context of what's followed, but they're still worth studying. The study helps build a base and mastery of those formerly innovative improvisations prepares us for the next step, our on improvisation.</p>

<p>Could someone ignore Armstrong, Coltrane, Davis, etc. and become the next true improvisor? Yes, it's possible, but the normal path is to roll around in the history, learn it, copy it and then, within some context, burst out into new territory. Perhaps, once a generation, someone like Mozart might be born with a new paradigm swirling in his head and he lets it out at the age of 8. That's a true God created improvisation. Most times, it's something more routine, that has roots in the past, but a view toward the future.</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVvF7S2hW5U">Exploding some myths and clichés about improvisation</a></p>

<p>It's likely the case that how it sounds (or looks) to the listener (or viewer) is a lot different from how it's actually made. The listener who's never made improvised music will often hyperbolize the magic or disorientation of the improvisor. The improvisor, on the other hand, knows how much structure and form has to go into it and what to do precisely so as NOT to fall. Improvising has little or nothing to do with error.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie, I am sort of agreeing and disagreeing with you here. My experience with improvisation is that it does occur in those moments where you are being open to whatever possibilities may present themselves which are at that moment for you unknown. For some this can be uncomfortable, and for some, as you say, terrifying even. I really don't think anyone can literally stay in this moment, because moments are just that: brief. In other words, I don't agree that there is some kind of "state" of improvisation. There are only moments. If you want to get Zen about it, we literally live in moments, everything before this moment is the past and everything after this moment hasn't happened yet. Jon Kabat-Zinn described meditation as going where you linger at the boundary between the known and the unknown. This requires "awareness," not "thinking" by the way. He also equates this open awareness with creativity. Also, I certainly think you can record improvisation. Recording it doesn't change the act: those moments of creativity. I also agree with the links provided by Fred and Alan. Billy Taylor makes it clear that the improvisor needs to have knowledge and skill and familiarity with the forms he is creating in. Gee, that's what Pasteur said! I also agree with what Fred just stated: "That's not to say errors can't be productive and mistakes can't be the wellspring of creativity. But that's something different from improvisation." I think we are talking about improvisation and mistakes in the same breath because they can be very close. When improvising we are opening up to that boundary between the known and unknown, and mistakes, good and bad, can happen, but with the "prepared mind," its more likely good will happen. Also, the creative mind can quickly turn a so called mistake into something great. I also think what we are talking about is putting yourself at that mysterious boundary between the known and unknown and just letting it happen. For some this is terrifying and others a joyous experience. </p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>[<em>turning the contrast dial to 11</em>]</p>

<p>Searching [improvisation] ≠ finding.</p>

<p>If you are searching, you have not found.</p>

<p>If you have found, you are not searching.</p>

<p>Whenever you have "a work" or "a solution" or "a result" you are not improvising. By definition.</p>

<p>[adding: yes, the experience can be -- and often is! -- joyous. Joyous can be -- and often is! -- terrifying.]</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Many artists are searching, certainly not only improvisors, and many artists are open to accidents, not only improvisors. </p>

<p>Listen to any good musical improvisation and you will hear a lot of finding as well as searching. You may also hear some things that sound like accidents (which will be different from the improvisation itself, since a lot of improv does not sound and is not accidental at all). Not all things which are not pre-planned are accidents, and not all things spontaneous are accidental. When an audience bursts into spontaneous applause, that's no accident! Likewise, much improvisation.</p>

<p>In an improv, one might well hear some errors, which don't sound like good improv but rather like clunkers. Even the best of musical improvisors hit a wrong note every now and then and those wrong notes are not brilliant, but rather they are what they are . . . wrong notes, and they sound like it, because they don't fall into the musical structure being created on the spot. Improvisational wrong notes are and sound like errors, yet they can also be quite endearing and yet they stand out like sore thumbs. If there were no musical structure being created, you'd simply have noise, which would be more like a series of errors. Sure, an improvisor may turn a lemon (wrong note) into lemonade by recovering or adapting it, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes an error, even within an improv, is just an error. And sometimes a brilliant improv takes place without any error.</p>

<p>It may ultimately be a good thing that accident, error, and improvisation have been (hopefully temporarily) conflated in this thread, if we can learn from that, because it helps show the nuances involved in all these things and it, hopefully, puts a finer point on the specialness of accident and what it actually is and how it can be discovered and then used.</p>

<p>Accidents are unintentional. Improvisations are not.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie, you've made the thread about a lot more than what's in the picture (for example, by bringing up Mozart) and it's led to some good discussion. Gursky and Lex do seem to get improvisation. I wasn't questioning any of their pictures or assertions!</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<blockquote>

<p ><a name="00cLYK"></a><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=3885114">Julie H</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub7.gif" alt="" /><img title="Current POW Recipient" src="/v3graphics/member-status-icons/trophy.gif" alt="" /></a>, Jan 29, 2014; 07:09 a.m.</p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>No matter how hard you try, there are always things in your own pictures that you didn't see (notice?) when you made the picture. No matter how carefully you arrange the light, how scrupulously you figure the exposure, how shallow the depth of field you use; no matter how close, how small, how long, how slow, how excruciatingly carefully you prepare, there is always going to be something that is a surprise in the resulting picture.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'm reminded of something I once read about painters and photographers. The painter starts with a blank canvas and draws in only the contents and parts he wishes to include. He arranges the composition, lihgting, structure, and perspective best according to his mind's eyes.</p>

<p>The photographer's job is harder (leaving out the actual painting and drawing talent of painters). The photographers starts with a canvas that is already full. Full of much that he does not want or need and that detracts from the final image. The colors and lighting may not be perfect. His job is to figure out a way to eliminate the parts that don't belong and arrange the remaining parts in a way that relates to one another in perspectives and composition that are pleasing. He has to wait for times of the day so the lighting is pleasant. </p>

<p>The other part that painters have it easier is in interpretive work. They have greater allowance to take what they see and paint, let's say in cubism style. The photographer is restricted to a large degree. It's hard to change what is put before you.</p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Alan, that's an interesting take on photography. For me, it has a ring of truth, though only only partially so. I think many photographers, and probably more and more as the medium evolves, don't see the fullness of a capture as being full of distractions but rather as being full of life. It may be a simple matter of different ways of looking, some of which assume it all belongs and that it's a matter of finding coherent or interesting or challenging or provocative or even sometimes harsh and ugly ways of showing it. Some photographers will not, do not, or cannot wait for those times of day, the golden hours. They will take it as it comes and see it in other ways than pleasing, in other ways than pruned.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Julie. Going back to your original post (the picture): “Do you accept that? Resent that? Love it, use it, exploit it? I would have to answer: “all of the above.” Maybe its because I’ve been making photographs a long time, but I just expect to have things happen that were unexpected. It’s the material you work with. This happens more when you are shooting spontaneously as events unfold in front of you. The majority of my portraits were happy accidents. I “found” a person sitting there and was lucky enough to get eye contact and tacit permission to photograph them at that moment. This could be understood as improvisation. <br>

From the Oxford Dictionary: Improvisation:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Create and perform (music, drama, or verse) spontaneously or without preparation.<br>

Produce or make (something) from whatever is available.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You stated: “If you are searching, you have not found. If you have found, you are not searching. Whenever you have "a work" or "a solution" or "a result" you are not improvising. By definition.” I’m sorry. I simply do not understand your definition! With your definition here, one cannot produce anything with improvisation because if you create something you have “found” it and by your definition you are not improvising. The actual definition as presented above clearly states that you are: creating, performing, producing or making (something).<br>

Anyway, thanks for opening up the discussion. We may never agree on some things, but that’s OK too. The thing is, most of us responding here are producing interesting and creative work regardless of how we define the processes involved. </p>

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p><em>"This happens more when you are shooting spontaneously as events unfold in front of you."</em></p>

<p>I don't find this to be the case. Many people who shoot spontaneously get fairly predictable results. All I have to do is look at some mediocre street photography to see this. Though the shooting is supposedly spontaneous (and I'd even question that, since genuine spontaneity is not all that easy to achieve even when a shoot is not pre-planned), the results often don't look it and don't seem to have many accidents at all, since there is still an awful lot of willfulness and control even in the most seemingly spontaneous sorts of shooting. Just because one doesn't plan their shots in advance, doesn't mean one will fall upon, recognize, or make photographic use of accidents. I'll bet most accidents are unconsciously avoided, actually. Many people go into shoots not having conscious expectations or expectations they're aware of and yet still (spontaneously) reject things based on habit or conformity or expectations they don't even realize they have.</p>

<p>Likewise, the most planned out photo shoot can allow for accidents and often are chock full of accidental opportunities (also often not realized). Such accidents can be much more subtle in nature and more a matter of expression and innuendo as opposed to a more definable detail.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Yeah Fred, good points about differentiating accidents from spontaneity. However, the fact that "many people who shoot spontaneously get fairly predictable results" to me that just supports the idea that people who are really good at it are relatively rare. I agree, accidents can happen even in the most planned studio situation, and again, a great photographer can use them, and a mediocre photographer will reject them. The idea of "unconsciously avoiding accidents," to me is the same idea: great photographers remain more open to the unplanned, and mediocre photographers tune out the things that are outside their intended/pre-planned framework. </p>
Link to comment
Share on other sites

<p>Steve,</p>

<p>At the instant that one puts the camera's viewfinder to the one's eye, 100% of the possible photos that one could make are a surprise. 100%. "Good," or, in your post "really good" photographers are those who are better/faster/more experienced at the process of de-surprising what they see (if I can make that into a verb). That's what all aspiring-to-be good photographers do, from raw newbie to the World's Greatest (or <em>Most</em> Really Good). I don't think that's news to any of us. We know that because we do that. All the time.</p>

<p>What I'm interested in (one more time), is when, in the picture (In. The. Picture.) the photographer is genuinely, sincerely, totally surprised by something that is there. Not <em>was</em> surprised, or <em>seems-surprised-but-subconsciously-he's-not-because-he's good</em>. Really, really, really surprised. Really. He/she had not idea <em>whatsoeve</em>r that something significant that is there <em>is</em> there. See the OP where Moholy-Nagy says:</p>

<p>"What a wonderful pattern!" Moholy exclaimed, pointing to a pile of coiled-up ropes. "I never saw them before!"</p>

<p>I'm interested in what is the photographer finds in his own pictures that he has not 'de-surprised.' (Hint: if he has "used" it, it was not a surprise.)</p>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...