Photography: subtractive or additive

<p>This is in reference to a statement made in another forum by John Kelly- "<strong>...</strong><em>photography is inherently a reductive process</em>: it entails finding order selectively, using light to reduce darkness (ie exposure)"</p>

<p>Hope you don't mind John, but this is a great starting place.</p>

<p> Is photography reductive? I can't argue about the selective process that is inherent in photography- but even more than just finding the photo and the location- but in it's framing, in the selection of techniques, in editing the images, etc., etc. We chisel away at the stone to find the photograph inside. However, we are, by the mere fact of being and doing, adding an element that was not previously part of the equation. We are making photographs- we are making prints- we are adding our perspective to the grand narrative. My point is that photography is both a reductive and additive medium. It is predisposed to flexing along with the ebbs and flows of the photographer and observer.</p>

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<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=3679363"><em>Martin Sobey</em></a><em> </em><a href="/member-status-icons"></a><em>, Jan 22, 2010; 10:56 a.m.</em><br>

<em>This is in reference to a statement made in another forum by John Kelly- "<strong>...</strong>photography is inherently a reductive process: it entails finding order selectively, using light to reduce darkness (ie exposure)"</em></p>

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<p>Martin, could you cite (link) the other post?<br>

Thanks,</p>

<p>Bill P.</p>

<p>It's in "body of work"- philososphy</p>

<p>We "chisel"? We "reduce"?</p>

<p>Do we find the man by "reducing" the child?</p>

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<p > <br>

<a rel="nofollow" href="../photodb/user?user_id=3679363"><em>Martin Sobey</em></a><em> </em><a rel="nofollow" href="../member-status-icons"></a><em>, Jan 22, 2010; 10:56 a.m.<br />This is in reference to a statement made in another forum by John Kelly- "<strong>...</strong>photography is inherently a reductive process: it entails finding order selectively, using light to reduce darkness (ie exposure)"</em><br>

<em>Bill P</em>.</p>

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<p >Martin, is this the post?</p>

<p > </p>

<p >Bill P.</p>

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<p > </p>

<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=2963495"><em>William Palminteri</em></a><em> </em><a href="../member-status-icons"><em><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/1roll.gif" alt="" /></em></a><em>, Jan 20, 2010; 09:31 a.m.</em></p>

 

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<p><a rel="nofollow" href="../photodb/user?user_id=2361079"><em>Fred Goldsmith</em></a><em> </em><a rel="nofollow" href="../member-status-icons"><em><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub3.gif" alt="" /><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" alt="" /></em></a><em>, Jan 20, 2010; 09:14 a.m.</em><br>

<em>Addendum to last post:</em><br>

<em>When I print, I print from a second file that is technically and aesthetically geared toward the print medium. I don't simply print the same screen image that gets viewed by others on line. That's because one is not a substitute for the other, as I see it. Backlighting and reflective lighting are so different and have to be engaged differently. Glows are achieved differently, contrasts appear differently. I'm just starting to learn all about that.</em></p>

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<p><em>Fred, you're so right. It's the science of transmittive vs. absorptive color, among other things.<br />Remember in grade school when we learned the three primary colors? they were Red. yellow and blue. That's the absorptive model. The yellow card is absorbing every color except yellow.<br />Then we wandered onto the stage in the auditorium and wondered why the grid had red, green and blue lights. The green light is transmitting only green light. That's the transmittive model.<br />So from jumpstreet, you can't treat one like the other. Of coure, things get really goofy when you consider the color temperature of the gallery lighting......</em></p>

 

<p><em>Bill P.</em></p>

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<p>Martin ... yes <strong>and</strong> no, as usual :-) I do think mostly in<strong> reductive</strong> terms, but might not if I still did studio photography.</p>

<p>Making something boring look unrealistically beautiful (eg city street, shoe in catalog) may be <strong>additive</strong> in your sense, to the point that it's deceitful... postcard/calendar, advertising, maybe wedding or "senior" portrait (though "reducing" zits is standard, right?).</p>

<p>...we're surely "adding our perspective" <strong>if</strong> the frame of reference prioritizes "the subject" ... <em>but IMO not when we're into photographs <strong>themselves</strong>, rather than "photographs <strong>of.</strong>"</em></p>

<p>Gertrude Stein talked about poets noticing things others missed, such as weeds growing up from cracks in sidewalk...I'm thrilled by the rare opportunities when I notice things like that: something of potential photographic interest that's <strong>in</strong> something chaotic or easy to ignore. It's <strong>reductive</strong> to forget what we know about the sidewalk's engineering, enabling notice of that weed, popping out of its seed.</p>

<p>Some photographers start with something of value, then plaster something over it because they want something tacky. Pimping the scene. On the other hand, I do draw attention to weeds sometimes, so maybe that attention is just as <strong>additive</strong>..?</p>

<p>Teasing photos out of chaos doesn't seem much like finding a child in an adult ( as actors and shrinks do).</p>

<p>Photo materials perform when lit. Maybe that's "adding" but I think of it as "reducing" density of whatever is displayed (fundamental technical concept).</p>

<p>A studio photographer typically starts a shoot by adding light selectively: starts with a dark studio and positions/adjust lights until something is lit the way she desires. Add, subtract, add...</p>

<p> </p>

<p>It's worth noting that it's standard photo terminology to refer to "additive" and "subtractive." In cinema color printing tech "additive" light (RGB) is used...in traditional color darkrooms and when shooting chromes, "subtractive" terms are used (MCY).</p>

<p>I play with the idea that the act of framing/selecting/reducing is also an act of transcending/freeing/enlarging.</p>

<p>The "reduction" and "addition" I speak about with regard to photographs entail each other. I don't necessarily see them as two separate or opposing processes.</p>

<p>When I frame, I am often in tune with what's NOT . . . what I leave out . . . what I exclude. Inclusion within the frame entails exclusion from outside of the frame. What's outside the frame, when I'm shooting, still has an effect on my relationship to what I've isolated within the frame. So I haven't really left the outside-the-frame-world completely behind.</p>

<p>Because that act of negation, the NOT, is part of the photographic process, there is transcendence even in the reductive isolation of what's in the frame. That transcendence is an addition.</p>

<p>Since I don't see my portraits as substitutes for the people photographed, the portraits are both a negation and an adding (an assertion). In that sense, a portrait does, to varying degrees, deny the very person who the picture is of. It necessarily leaves things out. It also asserts things. One thing that I assert or add is the photograph itself. Another thing added is what I superimpose onto the subject of the photograph with my perspective and other photographic tools. I also add what I show about myself in the process.</p>

<p>Each portrait, for me, is inherently incomplete as regards the subject. That's its tie to humanity and much of its truth. How I present and handle that incompleteness is significant.</p>

<p>I am (in degrees) aware of what was there at the time of shooting that is NOT in the photo and what is in the photo that transcends what was "there" at the time.</p>

<p>As viewer, there will be other things to consider . . . the viewer will add his responses, his emotions, his meanings, his experience, his judgments to the photograph. He may also reduce it to something much simpler than it was for the photographer or make it much more complicated. The photographer is viewer as well.</p>

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<p>...in traditional color darkrooms and when shooting chromes, "subtractive" terms are used (MCY).</p>

 

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<p>Not in my traditional color darkroom printing Ilfochromes using a Beseler / Minolta RGB colorhead. </p>

<p>I don't think making a photograph is really about the process being reductive or additive, as what is required is visual thinking. That is what you must to do first before you operate the equipment to record what you're seeing.</p>

<p>An aimless eye cannot perceive a calculable order in the chaotic variety of the visible world. To make a photograph, one must use visual thinking to find order and not become seduced by the power of logical manipulations as a substitute for true vision in finding and showing an understanding of the formless, colorless, intangible essence of what you are seeing.</p>

<p>Visual thinking is not something that is can be simply quantified as being additive or reductive. Perception prior to composition includes active exploration, selection, finding the essentials, simplification, abstraction, analysis, synthesis, comparisons, and putting in context. The difference between passive reception and active perception is visual thinking.</p>

<p>Using active perception allows you to find the image by reducing the spectacle of disorder to an organized presentation within the frame lines. While this may be thought of as "reductive" because you are eliminating things that do not contribute to portraying the essence of the subject, you are actively (additively) applying the creative exercise of the eyes and mind towards visual thinking for the perception of a composition appropriate to what is being seen.</p>

<p>Perception, visual thinking (seeing) and image making are not an either / or proposition as the image cannot exist unless it uses the properties of everything perceivable.</p>

<p>Steve, yes re your particular Beseler head :-)</p>

<p>Never saw one in use, though did see a lot of Ciba. I was thinking of the most usual color enlargers, such as Chromegas and Dursts. One pioneering company, Nord, kept small town portrait photographers thinking in RGB terms for a long time by marketing a color negative analyzer that worked in RGB terms with their RGB color enlarger head.</p>

<p>Lots of good points, especially re perception. Zone System is an example of that.</p>

 

<p>Perception goes far beyond the zone system. While the ZS is useful in translating what you perceive, it has little to do with seeing (active perception) as that is finding the essence of what you want make into a photograph. Even the visualization portion of the ZS is not active perception, but the ability to know what you want in the final print, and to translate that into the film exposure and development (if you're working in B&W).</p>

<p>Visual thinking / active perception ignores the property lines between aesthetic and scientific - the ZS does not; as it is intended (designed) specifically for the reproduction of luminance values in the final print and not finding the essence of what you are seeing.</p>

<p>I also like Fred's 3rd and 4th and 5th expansions on this additive/subtractive dynamic.</p>

<p>1) Transcendence, whatever that is, does seem to be. New Mexico's most wonderful road signs say "Winds May Exist." (on the Navajo Nation, the best advise "Walk In Beauty").</p>

<p>2) Photographer's memory of what is/is not in the image, a memory that's not available to other viewers.</p>

<p>3) And we could add the "opinion" or "response" of viewers who find themselves "in" his portraits, who might believe they have more hair on their heads than Fred's shown, or are pleased to look so much more handsome than they'd imagined :-) This isn't a high-level artsy/fartsy kind of factor, but it can't be denied.</p>

<p>Steve, re: Zone System. You seem to be over-emphasizing the reproduction side, minimizing or missing the (perception) side that Minor White and others taught. There are/were at least two schools of thought on that...I think the Ansel Adams version emphasized the analytic to the detriment of the perceptual. But we'll never resolve that one, and it probably isn't that important :-)</p>

<p> Here's a musical parallel: Joe Pass, departed jazz guitarist, said (and demonstrated) he could name every note he played as he played it, and could hear it when it was named. I think that's standard with high level musicians, and believe something similar is at work for some with Zone System. That is to say, I think some photographers can see the grays in the colors. Or at least, we fooled ourselves into that :-)</p>

<p>I like your use of "property lines."</p>

<p>Minor was always searching for "something" outside of the photograph, which was manifested in his religion hopping (sampling?) - an effort to find the intangible link to what he was seeing. I don't think Minor used the zone system to help him see things but to translate his personal philosophies into the visible via photography. His ZS Manual is straight to the point on the scientific whereas his writings and photographs are the culmination of his seeing abilities and the marriage of the aesthetic with the scientific.</p>

<p>Steve, this isn't something we can argue out...</p>

<p>...and... I'm not convinced that <em>aesthetic</em> and s<em>cientific</em> , your words, are as different as you imagine. Scientists seem characteristically obsessed with the aesthetics of their work, with "elegant" for example being very high praise for experimental design.</p>

<p>fwiw I, although some writers make the claim, I don't think Minor White was "religion hopping" or "sampling" (less prejorative)... my own sense , third hand, was that he wasn't concerned with religion so much as discipline and perspective., which included Zone System.</p>

<p>Zone System isn't a religion, Zen isn't a religion, Gurdjieff groups aren't religions..they're all disciplines. Catholicism is a religion for those who remain connected to it, something else to those that leave it: my impression is that MW abandoned it...did he ever return ?</p>

<p>I feel that the process is primarily reductive. In film photography, we cut into emulsions. The control of that cutting is successive: we have succeeding layers of balancing (like exposure or contrast control) which regulate the cutting.</p>

<p>Even if you were to add another image to the first, the process would still be reductive; it's just that the reductions would be filtered through another cycle of the process.</p>

<p>It's not to say that the process can't have additive aspects, like makeup or costuming. Yet, fundamentally, I view it as a reductive process. I feel the whole process is basically a set of five layers of reduction: camera, negative, print projection, print development, and final viewing. In digital media, I feel that there are equivalents to these stages; the base layer would be visualization before the camera, but I don't count that as a mechanical stage as it is the over-arching guiding idea throughout the photo-making cycle.</p>

<p>I would have no heartburn with someone who said the whole thing was additive. I suppose the main benefit would come from thinking about it for a while. If they can make good photos with an additive view, more power to 'em.</p>

<p><em>"Is photography reductive? I can't argue about the selective process that is inherent in photography- but even more than just finding the photo and the location- but in it's framing, in the selection of techniques, in editing the images, etc., etc. We chisel away at the stone to find the photograph inside. However, we are, by the mere fact of being and doing, adding an element that was not previously part of the equation. We are making photographs- we are making prints- we are adding our perspective to the grand narrative. My point is that photography is both a reductive and additive medium. It is predisposed to flexing along with the ebbs and flows of the photographer and observer."</em><br /> (Martin)</p>

<p>I think the selective process is much more than just finding the photo and the location, or in the framing, the selection of techniques, the editing the images, etc., etc. It is above all not finding the photo, or not just finding the photo, but one of creating the photo. That is what I call a "deterministic" approach. It is, as far as the definition of reductive and additive go, an essentially additive approach. The part that is reductive is that part of the photographer's intent that is reduced from his experience, approach, philosophy, subconscious, that are being called upon to create the image.</p>

<p>I am fairly sure that you may feel somewhat that way as well, Martin (in regards to the selective and additive act being one of creation, and less one of simply finding a photo and location), judging by the examples seen of your work.</p>

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<p>I don't have the time right now to seek some examples from my own work, but I just posted a comment in the body of work post that is related to this process. See Photo Techniques Jan/Feb. 2020 issue or <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.julieblackmon.com/" target="_blank">http://www.julieblackmon.com</a>. It shows an example of deterministic photography by Julie Blackmon in a body of work in which the theme defines the eventual content.</p>

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<p>"A studio photographer typically starts a shoot by adding light selectively: starts with a dark studio and positions/adjust lights until something is lit the way she desires. Add, subtract, add..." (John)</p>

<p>You are right in that sense, John. Although the final result is being created, what you say applies mainly in a <strong>technical</strong> sense, how to handle the light to obtain some <strong>preconceived</strong> effect. The preconceived effect is a hypothesis developed by the photographer, a creation in his or her mind. The degree to which that creation is additive or reductive is another matter and has little to do with photography as a technical process, except that the constraints and the opportunities of the medium are recognized. I think that it is primarily an additive process, but I admit that I could be ignoring some factors. </p>

<p>The studio shot or photo collages used much more addition than street shots that are abstractions of the moment.</p>

<p>First of all, let me say thank you for an engaging and insightful forum. I haven't been able to look all weekend! </p>

<p>Bill- the original statement by John was made on Jan. 18, 2010 in the "body of work" discussion. -Although I do think that your "addition" of a segment about light/color theory is relevant here.</p>

<p>Julie- "We "chisel"? We "reduce"?</p>

 

 

<p>Do we find the man by "reducing" the child?"<br>

I think there are pointers to a child's potential as an adult- the characteristics that can be attributed to who they may one day be. But that is quite simple- of course. I do think that some of the best art- maybe not photography specifically- is made by chiseling away at the man and finding the child inside- easier said than done.</p>

<p>John- "Gertrude Stein talked about poets noticing things others missed, such as weeds growing up from cracks in sidewalk...I'm thrilled by the rare opportunities when I notice things like that: something of potential photographic interest that's <strong>in</strong> something chaotic or easy to ignore. It's <strong>reductive</strong> to forget what we know about the sidewalk's engineering, enabling notice of that weed, popping out of its seed."</p>

<p>I find this highly relevant to my street installation work which you may be familiar with. Where I have chosen, sometimes, to place my installations is within those very cracks. It is a reductive skill to find those spots- although I think it also goes to focus and intent. Sometimes though, for me, those raised or sunken cracks represent a glaring counterpoint to the otherwise consistently smooth(ish) sidewalk or street. None-the-less, it is a great insight into how a photographer's mind works John. The ability to see something -for lack of a better word- beautiful, in an otherwise overwhelming scenario. Of course for each person that weed may be something different- rust, or garbage, or light or color.</p>

<p>Fred- "The photographer is viewer as well."</p>

<p>Absolutely. As you mentioned about the incompleteness of a photograph or photographing- is very important. Is sort of an open book. But do have to impose our perspective as to get our intent across to the viewer. I am definitely always aware of those things that aren't present in the photograph- vs. the photographing- and do my best to either allude to them or engage the viewer as to not consider it. I am a champion of the moment however, and not just the decisive moment, as in a print- but rather the qualities of photographing. The "got to get back behind the camera" feeling- the shape and spacial qualities of the "moment", all coalescing into a rectangle. I think this is a general feeling amongst photographers (not just those point and shoot party moments). I don't know if that adds to being additive or subtractive, but...:)</p>

 

 

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<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=3679363"><em>Martin Sobey</em></a><em> </em><a href="/member-status-icons"></a><em>, Jan 25, 2010; 10:19 a.m.</em></p>

 

<p><em>First of all, let me say thank you for an engaging and insightful forum. I haven't been able to look all weekend! </em></p>

 

<p><em>Bill- the original statement by John was made on Jan. 18, 2010 in the "body of work" discussion. -Although I do think that your "addition" of a segment about light/color theory is relevant here.</em></p>

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<p>Thanks, Martin. I was addressing a different isuue, and I wanted to be clear. I'm glad you got something out of my post.</p>

<p>Bill P.</p>

<p><em>"...insight into how a photographer's mind works.... see something -for lack of a better word- beautiful, in an otherwise overwhelming scenario.</em> - Martin Sobey</p>

<p>Martin, I suspect your identification of a "photographer's mind" is the difference between "<strong>photographer</strong>" (in full) and <strong>decorator</strong> or <strong>recorder-of-fact</strong> with camera. </p>

<p><strong>Your cautious use of "beautiful"</strong> seems an accomplished photographer's wisdom: knowing that significance isn't similar to beautiful, and that beauty in the otherwise-ugly is no different than photographing flowers and sunsets. </p>

<p>Flowers do grow in trash, and the sun sets over it...<strong>plenty of opportunity for insignificant work</strong>, if we aren't cautious about "beautiful".</p>

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