Adding meaning to your images...how do you do it?

This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time, and

I've gotten to the point of I don't know what to think. I see a lot

of photographs and I see the meaning behind a lot of them. And I

wonder... where does the meaning come from? I wonder the basic

process different people go though to create their images... do you

get an idea for the image first and then set out to create the photo?

or do you sometimes just come upon a photo that you feel needs to be

taken and then proceed to do so?

 

I think that mostly I fall into the 2nd group... I walk around and

find things that I feel make interesting subjects and photograph

them. But sometimes I have an image in my head of what I want a

picture to look like, but I don't know how to get these ideas out of

my head on onto the celluloid.

 

When I take pictures that I just "find", I sometimes feel that their

meaning is flat, almost nonexistant like they're just a record of how

the sun was shining that day and nothing more.

 

Anyone care to share their.... Creative process (I Guess)... with me?

I'm curious to see how others do it.

 

-J

Mostly, I do like you...see something, think "Hey, that would make a neat photo!" and photograph it.

 

On occasion, I do go lookng for a specific shot. But that doesn't necessarily make the finished shot any better or worse than what I take on the spur of the moment. (maybe better on average, but I take 20 times as many of the other, so I can cull 90& out and still have better shots there). And sometimes, I'm looking for a particular "look", not a particular shot. So I'll go out when it's snowy or foggy or with a particular lens.

 

I remember reading a quote a while back that "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's just a stupid thing to try to do." That's sort of how I feel about my creative processes- I don't worry about it a whole lot.

One can't add more meaning to a scene unless it is a created one (e.g. the crude half-burnt smoking cigarette on ashtray and OOF skull in the background ;-) ) ... the best we can do is convey as much of it as we can though the photographs.

<P>

You say -- When I take pictures that I just "find" ... when you find scenes (as opposed to objects) that mean something to you, it is easy to capture the elusive meaning on your shots. All you need to do is the proper composition and the right "moment". The photograph does not have to cry the meaning out loud. That way, it is more of a "feeling" you are trying to evoke, not some meaning that you are trying to attach.

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For example -- what meaning does <a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2097613" target="_blank">this photograph</a> bear? Hardly any. But does it make you "feel" something? Perhaps. At least that's what I tried to do.

interesting... I'd never thought of it in terms of feeling rather than a meaning...

There is no right way to find your voice. Some people work best with a clear conceptual

idea and make their work in a linear way. Others let the work develop on its own and find

the thematic content in the work naturally.

 

There was a great show of Robert Adams' work at Reed College in Portland, OR. The

curators re-examined his work in a non-linear way. They found in his large body of work

constellations of ideas centered around a variety of themes... Sunlight, Solitude, Wreckage,

Flowering, Artifact, Citizen, Democracy, Scintillae, Home and Innocence. These were not

chronological, but were spread out over his entire career. I doubt, especially at the

beginning, that Adams' thought to himself, "I'm going to make a body of work that follows

these ideas over the course of my life." I think it just happened.

 

For many, one just works, and the content or meaning of ones work will start to

constellate on it's own. You will find themes that repeat themselves and you can start to

revisit them. I'm not a big fan of getting images out of your head and onto the celluloid.

For me the magic of photography is meeting the world and discovering a chemical

reaction between events in space and time and your own eye. You work to develop your

eye and the world continues on with all its drama and meaning, waiting to be captured in

your pictures. When the two work together, wow.

 

Try not to try too hard. Those images in your head are good places to jump off from. But

unless you want to go into the studio and meticulously create them, you are never going

to get them onto film exactly as you see them. So let the world do it's thing and you do

yours and something special will happen in the middle.

there is experienced wisdom in Aric's post, especially in the last two paragraphs. for me, there is a lot to be said for facilitating your subjects to speak for themselves through your photos, and for you to help convey or interpret what they are saying based on your feelings and direct experience in photographing them, all the while respecting what or who they are since they will be presented to a larger audience to comprehend. it is often that kind of interactive quality that separates pictures that "work" and those that do not. for me, the latter ones (of mine) simply do not see the light of day. the ones that especially do quite often reflect Aric's "working together" definition of "wow".

The meaning is intrinsic and comes from the photographer's relationship with the subject.

No one can "add" meaning.

 

Something may have a meaning for you but not for the next person.

 

I believe the secret is to be. Someone who is, has no trouble to find meaning even in the meaningless. No matter what such a person touches - it will have some life in it.

 

Speaking practical: Start with what moves you inwardly. Look inside and ask yourself what gives you inspiration. This inspiration will touch your inner nerves and brings to the fore what has a meaning (at least for you).

 

good luck

A simple tutor is this: Try to imagine that you create only for God (or whatever is your highest/immortal concept). Do not worry what your audience, friends, the people on photo.net will think about it. Create only for God and you will notice a rapid development of what people call "meaning".

<P>Your question opens onto a more fundamental discussion of

<i>making versus taking</i> photographs.

 

<P><i>Making</i> a photograph suggests there is a greater degree of direction imparted into the image. It is at this time of formulating your subject content that meaning is may be imparted.

 

<P><i>Taking</i> suggests spontaneity, from the snapshot to the decisive moment.

 

<P>A balance between the two is good territory for any photographer.

 

<P>I believe that all serious image makers or image takers will over time develop, throughout their career, a certain personal sophistication in how they both see the world and how they choose to depict it. When you become an expert at some technique, how many times can you re shoot the same subject for the same result?

 

<P>Art history is good place to examine how artists sought to place meaning in their works. Contemporary photography must have a critique associated with it. Very often, a good photograph is a reworking of a classic pose or composition. Lange's migrant mother is a Madonna. More often than naught every modern image, photographic or otherwise will refer to something else that was made before it.

 

<p>

RT Simon<br>

http://ww.fineprintphoto.com

Very well put, Aric.

 

I think that consciously injecting meaning is a weak approach, and beating the viewer over the head with it is simply bad photography.

 

I believe there must be a universal language. If you like your work, even if you don't know why you like it, you have done your job. It becomes more likely that others will like your work. If they don't know why they will search for meaning.

Maybe the challenge for the photographer or artist is to view the own work with the eyes of someone else an through that learning more about it's meaning.

An excellent question and one I've struggled with myself. Something I've found that works for me is to give yourself projects or themes to work against. Instead of going out looking for pretty or interesting things to photograph give yourself a particular subject. Try and photograph it in as meny different ways as possible. Try for a complete in depth study of it. Give yourself days, weeks or months to complete it but focus completely on the project. The theme could be something concrete ('e.g.', cemeteries, shoes, teeth..) or something abstract...(friendship, commerce, destiny, boredome...). In many (all?) cases 'meaning' is a function of context. Giving the photographs a context will help reveal 'meaning'.

I started a theme project not long ago. doesn't matter what that was but I got no further than a portion of one session and one pic before I got bored with it. unless you're young or a student, life is too short, and the world is too glorious for me to limit myself to one theme for longer than one session. in whatever I photograph that interests me from session to session I try to hone and grow my personal style so that the images I select to show others will communicate my intent and the image's "meaning".

Interesting thread. I've been slogging through a slow-read of a series of essays on photography. Having to wade through the high-brow art-world-speak to get to the "meaning" has been fun.

 

The gist of many recent writers is the dichotomy between modernism and post-modernism in photography, which gets at the fundamental point of where meaning comes from in image making.

 

Post-modernists tend to argue that all images are encoded with cultural and social symbolisms, regardless of the photog's intent, and rarely represent reality. The argument is that a photograph's sense of objective reality is the crux of the medium's deceptive nature. Its the underlying, subtle themes that are paramount.

 

Whereas many modernists viewed the finished photograph as the output of a highly controlled and deliberate process.

 

Its interesting that photojournalism tends to rely on the modernist viewpoint as a given. A journalistic image is assumed to be "real"; that is, to represent, however objectively, a real event.

 

Whereas many advertising images are designed to play on the audience's subconscious through symbolism and metaphor.

 

Its interesting that both viewpoints can be viewed in the same issue of many newpapers and magazines.

 

I don't proscribe to the notion that photography has "evolved" through various "isms"; merely that these theories represent historical discoveries of certain undelying, fundamental truths common to the phenomenon of image-making.

 

Once discovered, we continue to find new uses for these principles, rather than discard them. For instance, pictorialism is still commonly used in Hollywood-style cinema. And iconography is still used as a principle, even though it dates back to at least the middle ages.

wow... so many good responses... I guess when I said "add meaning" I didn't really mean taking a meaningless picture and doing something different to it to make it mean something, I think I meant more of how do you capture the meaning you intend to.. and where do you get that meaning from... but I like what I'm reading here... it is discussions like these that help one develop their "photographic philosophy"...

the meaning of any photograph you makes comes from within you, and you

are not responsible for how others derive meaning from your work. more

often than not, there will be some overlap and others will understand

the meaning as you intended to portray. heck, good photographs don't

even need to have meaning per se... as long as they give some kind of

resonant quality parallel with your heart, then you have suceeded. . .

Hi everybody,

 

I just joined photo.net today, and this is my very first post.

 

There are times in my photography when I rely on a very deliberative,

cognitive process, and other times when the process is highly intuitive. And

sometimes they intertwine, and are parallel.

 

It seems to me that when Richard Avedon made the photograph of, I think her

name was Natasha Kinski, and the serpant, that he must have known, at the

time he was shooting, that this was a biblical referance to the Garden of Eden.

How could he not have known? And yet, even if he didn't, even if he was

totally unaware of biblical literature, I think he would have been impelled to

take the same kind of picture.

 

Joe ...? can't think of his name, but he writes earlier in this thread about

modernism and post-modernism. Post-modernists argue, according to Joe,

that all images are incoded with cultural and social symbolism, regardless of

the photographers intent, whereas the modernists view the photograph as the

result of a deliberative, cognitive process.

 

But people are very complex, and creative people even moreso, and it isn't

quite as easy as creative process works this way, or that way. Both processes

can work in the same person at the same time during the same creative

endeavor.

 

I submit Richard Avedon, Natasha Kinski and the serpant, as an example.

How could RA not have known of the of the deep literary, cultural, and social

references of his subject matter. He's a literate man. He had to have known in

a deliberative, modernist way. And yet, even if he was not a literate man, can

we imagine that he would not have reacted to that subject matter in a similar

manner. Who among us would not have?

 

I know that, like Avedon, I work in both a cognitive and deliberate way, and

also in a highly intuitive and instinctive way. And I feel it behooves me to pay

attention to both of them.

 

Tom

 

P.S., from what I've read in this thread, I really think I'm going to enjoy you all.

You may be able to see 'your' meaning but there is no way you can see the photographer's meaning. We are all individuals and we see different things. We even see colours differently. Thats why there is so much disagreement about individual pictures. If we all liked and disliked the same things what a boringly predictable world it would be.

All my best photos are the ones that remind me of somthing, the ones that tell stories to me. I can only hope that others will see what I see in my pictures, and some times they do.

The meaning of anything is up to individual interpretation, people may find great depth in one of your pictures that you yourself do not.

So all you can really do is make your art meaningful to you, i'f your aim is only to please others then you will only meet with medeocrity.

A good photo is not a record of light but a record of life.

Thank you for the subject, Josh. For a long time the meaning of

photography for me was in releasing that inner tension to express my

thoughts and feelings in a way that other means (words, etc) are

unable to do. Later I noticed that by means of photography I could

see the world deeply because every time I'm going to make a shot I am

thinking about (or, to say more precisely, feeling) the hidden

metaphor of the objects around and my perception of the world. Now I

think the meaning has shifted for me to dialog with people who look

at my pictures - I'm happy if by means of photography I can bring

them to the point from where I saw the world at the moment of taking

the picture and reveal the 'meaning' that sometimes I was unaware of.

I'm a bit late on this one, but never mind...

 

They say if you want to be a writer, the best thing to do is read a lot. I think this is true of phorography. If you unsure of direction, spend regular periods studying the approach of others and see what appeals to you and then try to emulate. And, no doubt about it, photo.net is a tremendous source of thought-provoking images which make one want to go out there and join in the fun.

 

Personally, after years of waving a camera about on holidays and at my family, etc. I have finally decided to make more effort to be creative. For me, that takes effort. But instead of reading equipment reviews now, I prefer to study technique books in my library. I feel like a complete beginner really, and I'm sticking to the basic principles for now: light, pattern, lines, curves, color, angles, etc. Perhaps not a lot of 'meaning' in the pictures, but I have a bit more purpose in my photography.