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


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<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>

<p>Do you accept that? Resent that? Love it, use it, exploit it? Or have you never really paid explicit attention to it? The things mentioned in the first paragraph are all actions that all photographers use, so you've been "managing" this quality of photography all the time whether or not you've thought about it. Some of them, sharpness or blur for example, can be used either way -- to either try to eliminate <em>or</em> to allow for surprising extras to surface later. Have you thought about which way you are going in respect to this when using sharpness or blur? How about scale? How about digital "corrections"?</p>

<p>Two stories as illustration of different attitudes/awareness of this. First, historian Beaumont Newhall talking about Moholy-Nagy:<br>

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<p>"He [Moholy-Nagy] seldom previsualized the final print, for he was not interested in capturing on film and paper an already discovered vision. On the contrary, he discovered beauty after the photograph had been completed. Once, in Carmel, Edward Weston was showing Moholy some of his prints. I was an onlooker. Moholy kept finding in the photographs hidden and fantastic forms, which were often revealed only when -- to Weston's obvious, but politely hidden, annoyance -- he turned the print upside down. Those after-products of Weston's vision fascinated Moholy: he considered photographs not interpretations of nature, but objects in themselves fascinating. I was reminded of the first time I met Moholy. We looked together at a score or more of his photographs. One of them, a view down from a bridge tower at Marseilles, held his attention as if it were a new thing and the work of another. "What a wonderful pattern!" Moholy exclaimed, pointing to a pile of coiled-up ropes. "I never saw them before!"</p>

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<p>.<br>

Next, this is Peter Galassi talking about Andreas Gursky:<br>

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<p>"In 1984, while vacationing in Switzerland, he obliged one of his companions by recording a splendid view of <em>Klausenpass</em>. Six months later, when he enlarged the negative, he was excited to find scattered across the landscape the tiny figures of hikers whose presence the photographer, unlike his camera, had failed to register at the time. He thus rediscovered one of the oldest, simplest and most rewarding pleasures of photography -- the patient delectation of details too small, too incidental, or too overwhelming in their inexhaustible specificity to have been noticed, let alone pondered, at the moment of exposure."</p>

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<p>.<br>

As you may know, Gursky is famous for his enormous images. He knowingly exploits the quality of surprise -- ours and his own -- in many different directions (for example, from the single heroic figure, to the all-over of zillions of individually perceptible people in a rave or stock exchange) via the visual depth of his pictures, as one walks ever closer to the picture.</p>

<p>[Worth a mention, though not exactly on topic, there's the example of the kind of thing used in the film <em>Blowup</em>. The experience of surprise discovery and the engagement of wondering about it and exploring it, etc.]</p>

<p>At the top of this post I asked, "Do you accept that? Resent that? Love it, use it, exploit it?" But how do you do any of those things for something that, by definition, you don't know is there? Gursky uses a very formal kind of composition (originating but not the same as that of his teachers, the Bechers), but deploys that composition in a way (large size, extreme sharpness, tons of depth and detail) that can't help but include "details too small, too incidental, or too overwhelming in their inexhaustible specificity to have been noticed, let alone pondered, at the moment of exposure."</p>

<p> </p>

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<p>There are pleasant surprises and unpleasant ones. I generally don't get upset about them unless they were caused by an obvious mistake on my part. The classic example is the portrait where it looks like the tree branch behind the subject is growing out of her head. </p>

<p>At the negative stage, I reevaluate. I may have visualized the final print before pressing the shutter, but I don't want to be constrained by that visualization. Discovering an element that I hadn't noticed isn't much different to me than deciding on a different treatment from what I originally planned. </p>

<p>There are times where the surprise doesn't work for me and ruins the image. I remember one beach shot I made where a bird flew out from behind a pier just as I pressed the shutter. When I looked at the contact print, the bird was in just the wrong place, it drew attention away from what I wanted to emphasize but didn't add much as a separate element. I wasn't upset. It happens. Move on. </p>

<p>It sometimes bothers me when people "misinterpreting" my photographs. This is where they see things in the photo that I don't, particularly when it comes to symbols in the photo. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But then, as the creator of a work, I don't have much control over how others will react to it. </p>

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<p>If I have the time, before setting up the camera, I like to stand and look at the scene and try to visualize what the photo will capture. If I can do that, fewer surprises pop up later. But, if I'm in a place with lots of vehicle traffic and/or lots of people, that kind of pre-survey is more difficult, and I will miss things I should have seen. This can result in either an "Oh, s**t!" moment, or sometimes even an "Oh, wow!" moment if the photography gods were smiling that day. Here's an example of the latter:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/17589692</p>

<p>I took this last fall on Clingman's Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains, at the height of the tourist season - lots of cars, people, and other photographers wanting my spot. Distracting, in other words. So, I focused my attention on the mountains and clouds, and never even saw the red blossoms on the foreground bushes until post-processing. I'm grateful for the "Oh, wow!" moment...</p>

<p>What is life without some surprises, right?</p>

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<p>I'm somewhat less moved by finding objects or details or previously unseen forms in my photos (though, like most others, I do find them) than I am in marveling at (my own) unexpected reactions to what I see when I process the photos compared to what I saw and felt when looking through the lens. The picture is something transformed from the original experience and I'm often surprised at what I now see and how I now feel. Also, as I slowly process photos from a shoot, I'm kept engaged as I go along because each one changes in terms of my opinion of them and how they make me feel. That usually starts to settle in only after a period of time, as my relationship to the photo solidifies, though the changes do seem to keep coming, even over periods of years. As Alan mentions, with cropping I can create something even more distant from what I experienced when shooting it and that's sometimes really eye-opening and adventurous, though that's usually a matter of cropping for more than just getting rid of a stray distracting object.</p>
We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>As a wildlife photographer, I'm seeking the unknown. I find a bird or an animal in a great pose and expose for as much fine detail as possible, then I'm excited to see the details that my eye did not see. The plainest, brown bird, can reveal twenty shades of brown, subtle eye details, feather patterns and can result in a conclusion such as, "that brown bird sure has glorious and wondrous colors and feather patterns."</p>

<p>Even with my landscape photos, I like looking at all the details. Once, I was at the Grand Canyon after a snow fall, at dawn, with clouds in the canyon and the sun streaming down under the clouds from the Eastern end of the canyon. I was running around, moving the tripod to get multiple views. The real joy is to mount a 50" print on my wall and study different details when I pass by. I can stand back and relive the moment when I looked at the view and framed the image, but now I have time to enjoy the details and let them soak in. I'm not worried about the clouds lifting out of the canyon and the light going flat, because I caught it, now I can study it and enjoy it in an entirely different way.</p>

 

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<p> 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>

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<p>Excruciatingly careful preparation? Hah, not on my watch. I leave a lot to chance, and I like the occasional pleasant suprises. Like an out-of-focus quick capture from years back, that I really love. Will post tonight if I can find it. ;)</p>

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<p>Fred G., that's an interesting observation, and one I, and no doubt others, have experienced as I've reviewed my recent shots.</p>

<p>I love to shoot action because of the surprises that often accompany it. When my children were young and involved in school sports, I had a great time shooting their various games and later seeing what facial expressions I captured. And like David, I find shooting wildlife very enjoyable because of the surprises it can bring, not only in details, but in positioning. The shot below is an example. I couldn't have lined that duck up with that dormer on purpose if I'd sat there shooting all day (note that this is a fairly heavy crop).<br>

Surprises I do not generally like are those regarding exposure and focus (sorry Mendel). They are rarely 'pleasant' surprises, as Allen describes them.</p>

<p>William, I can see why you liked the red blossoms. They definitely add a pleasing element to the picture.</p>

<p>And Julie, you didn't answer your own question!</p>

<div>00cLd1-545173584.jpg.13ded0ce3ae8ad68602e421e1d70e75f.jpg</div>

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<p>Sometimes you just have to shoot some extra shots as a backup. Sometimes the vis annoyance can be erased, such as unwelcomed fly, sensor dust, etc. Hmmm, sometimes you get more than you expect.</p>

<p>Back in the early 90's I was riding a plane in Denali Natl PK and took a pic (still a slide) of Mt McKinley and few months later, when I no longer was working in AK, I discovered that there were peeps climbing the ridge. A v. cool discovery. Another time it was at Sequoia Natl PK, while riding a shuttle I caught this through the open window....off-center framing saved the day, since I never saw the other deer....as I was sooo concentrating on the one in full light. All good.</p>

<p>Les</p><div>00cLe5-545177784.JPG.c7a0dd7a67cb1d11336a57913712b898.JPG</div>

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<p>I learned photography in the shadow of Ansel Adams. His books, <em>The Negative</em> and <em>The Print</em> were my bibles. Those of you who are familiar with them will know that they are about control, control, control. Not of oneself but of the print/image, which is expected to be made to conform to one's intention. Therefore, I had internalized the belief that "good" photography <em>was</em> control. While I enjoyed (furtively) making "uncontrolled" pictures, I never took them seriously. They, along with "snapshots" were thought of as sort of like daily chatter as compared to literature. When I saw the work of well-known photographers that looked very much like it might have been (must have been!) done "by accident" I think I assumed that it was precisely the ability to intentionally do what I could only do by accident that made them so great (circular, I know).</p>

<p>It was, even after all these years of studying/reading about photography, a surprise for me to have the light bulb go on in my head while thinking about what Galassi wrote about Gursky -- that accidents were not only able to be accepted (endured ...) but that one could (and he did) <em>intentionally</em> use what seemed by definition beyond intention. Gursky knows that photographs are fractal (scaling down/up brings you no closer to a "beginning" or an "end") but, nevertheless, a fractal structure can be expressed in a simple, structural/patterning formula. We can feel the support, the necessary delimiting boundary of the structure while enjoying the endlessly interesting permutations that happen in/because of that structure -- sort of like the playing of a game within the bounds of its "field" and its rules (which are invented to that end).</p>

<p>The Adams of my beginnings, to my mind, seems much like classical music or classical art. Why should photography be stuck in a static form? Why can't we improvise, or rather *how* does one improvise in photography when one has been trained, in every way, to control, control, control the process, the intention, the structure -- and the appreciation -- of photographs? Both makers and viewers of classical art and music had to learn new ways to move on.</p>

<p>If Adams is like Mozart, then snapshots/random photos are like Cage. But then there is jazz and <em>improvisation</em>. Surprise that is not ambient and with which we are able to engage. Some quotes on improvisation:</p>

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<p>… Improvisation, as I understand it, is an attentional practice: the more you attend to movement and memory and sensing and intention, the more you play (improvise) with all the elements of what we call living … -- <em>Kent De Spain</em><br>

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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>

<p>… Erring is drifting, a slipping away, a dis-traction that, while losing sight of the truth, nevertheless continues to “hear” it or “hearken” to it as a distant presence that in actuality requires error in order to maintain and protect this presence. -- <em>both from Gary Peters</em></p>

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<p>.</p>

<p>In other words, the <em>tilt</em>, the "error," the turn and return, is the way into this kind of act, eternally beginning again, as opposed to the classical mode, which deals in closure.</p>

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<p>People often misunderstand what classical music is all about. It's about much more than the score. The score is brought to us through a performance. A classical music performance is not about control. Classical music is a matter of performance and is about how to breathe life into a score and is anything but static.</p>

<p>Speaking of Mozart, it's pretty well known that many of his written scores were simply his after-the-fact notation and memorializing of improvisations he had performed. I'd be careful about comparing Adams to Mozart or limiting Mozart to talk of "closure."</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I've been using film for 40 years, and somehow I still manage to be a bit surprised to see images on the negatives as I unroll them from the reel. I appreciate the physics and the chemistry behind it all, have read Adams's books, am familiar with the zone system, but even so it seems a bit magical. So, yes, the resulting pictures are surprising to me. Then I'm surprised again when I make prints. I have trouble correlating the experience at the camera with making the final print. They still seem like two separate worlds, one real and the other surreal. I accept it and I love it. </p>
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<p><br>

</p>

<p >When I’m taking photographs it’s usually rather quickly done and in my mind it’s the raw material that will later be exploited. Later when I’m working on the image that I begin to realize and discover what I like and don’t like about it. So in the beginning, my expectations are moderate to hopeful. Quite often once I start working on an image I decide that it really wasn’t anything special and I don’t work on it any further. Then, other times, I begin to really fall in love with the image as I work with it and develop it more fully. So I guess for me it’s always about being open to discover what’s there in the raw material. Sometimes that happens right away, and other times it may be years later that I “discover” what I can do with an image.</p>

<p >I too, started out with Ansel Adams’ books <em >The Print</em> and <em >The Negative,</em> and the idea that the negative is the score, in the print is the performance. But, improvisation is a large part of both the initial picture taking moment, and in the development of the image. There may never be an “end point” for me, because my take on the image sometimes changes over time. </p>

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<p>Steve, you will remember that the first book in Adams' series is actually <em>The Camera.</em> Yet, even there, Adams skips over the "beginning" or the true formative moment of his famous "visualization." It's as if he is Mozart, who claimed that composing consisted simply in writing out what was already fully formed in his mind. Adams starts as if the picture is supposed to somehow -- obviously (!) -- be already in or available to our minds. How? Why? From the Introduction to <em>The Camera</em>: "To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see it clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print." Note that I don't think he meant that we would visualize it before he/we saw it through the camera, but rather that, having found "it" we should then be able to re-see how it can/will be conformed by our technique. Nevertheless, you see how he's skipped that most important "how" and "why" of what had to occur first -- the choice of a static, fully-formed and completed "it."</p>

<p>In the middle of the book in a section 'Exploring the Subject' he writes: "The first important image management decisions can be made partly by eye alone as we first approach the subject. Careful consideration must be given to the placement of the camera, elementary though that may sound. Subtle changes in camera position can do much to enhance a photograph, and an oversight can ruin it." [<em>I cannot help a big <strong>DUH</strong>! here ... and a very loud LOL</em>]<br>

"It is important to examine the subject with the utmost care at the outset, to see that all shapes are clearly defined and mergers of line or tonality are avoided." And Adams goes on like that, always skipping over/past the glaring assumption that we know, all the time, and in full realization, what it is that we are after (not to mention that we have all day to do this careful examination).</p>

<p>Against that, and I think this ties in strongly with much of what commenters have written above, I give a few quotes from Merleau-Ponty. He's talking about painting and/or writing, but it applies, I think:</p>

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<p>"What is irreplaceable in the work of art? ... The fact that it contains, better than ideas, <em>matrices of ideas</em> -- the fact that it provides us with symbols whose meaning we never stop developing. Precisely because it dwells and makes us dwell in a world we do not have the key to, the work of art teaches us to see and ultimately gives us something to think about as no analytical work can; because when we analyze an object, we find only what we have put into it."</p>

<p>[ ... ]</p>

<p>"One can no more inventory a painting (say what is there and what is not) than, according to the linguists, one can inventory a vocabulary -- and for the same reason. In both cases it is not a question of a finite sum of signs, but of an open field or of a new organ of human culture."</p>

<p>[ ... ]</p>

<p>"If we take the painter's point of view in order to be present at that decisive moment [heh!] when what has been given to him to live as corporeal destiny, personal adventures or historical events crystallizes into "the motive," we will recognize that his work, which is never an effect, is always a response to these data, and that the body, the life, the landscapes, the schools, the mistresses, the creditors, the police, and the revolutions which might suffocate painting are also the bread his work consecrates. To live in painting is still to breathe the air of this world -- above all for the man who sees something in the world to paint."</p>

<p>[ ... ]</p>

<p>"It is always only a question of advancing the line of the already opened furrow and of recapturing and generalizing an accent which has already appeared in the corner of a previous painting or in some instant of his experience, without the painter himself ever being able to say (since the distinction has no meaning) what comes from him and what comes from things, what the new work adds to the old ones, or what it has taken from the others and what is its own."</p>

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<p>.<br>

Note that in that last paragraph Merleau-Ponty means all of the history of art, not just that painter's own work.</p>

<p>As opposed to Adams's visualization, I am much happier with Merleau-Ponty's "motive" (from the next-to-last quoted paragraph).</p>

 

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<p>Steve, you will remember that the first book in Adams' series is actually <em>The Camera.</em> Yet, even there, Adams skips over the "beginning" or the true formative moment of his famous "visualization." It's as if he is Mozart, who claimed that composing consisted simply in writing out what was already fully formed in his mind. Adams starts as if the picture is supposed to somehow -- obviously (!) -- be already in or available to our minds. How? Why? From the Introduction to <em>The Camera</em>: "To visualize an image (in whole or in part) is to see it clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print." Note that I don't think he meant that we would visualize it before he/we saw it through the camera, but rather that, having found "it" we should then be able to re-see how it can/will be conformed by our technique. Nevertheless, you see how he's skipped that most important "how" and "why" of what had to occur first -- the choice of a static, fully-formed and completed "it."</p>

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<p>Why should we believe everything Adams said? He was a salesman too. How many crummy so-called "visualization" pictures did he throw away that you never saw?</p>

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<p>I use Adams only as a representative of one kind of approach to photography.</p>

<p>He was and is, in my opinion, <em>the</em> best teacher of the <em>craft</em> of making a good photographic print that ever took the time to put it into clear, cogent book form. And his "kind" of photography, is, again in my opinion, not diminished by other "kinds" of photography. I enjoy him. I enjoy Gursky. They're different. I'm interested in exploring that difference.</p>

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<p>Julie: <em>"It was, even after all these years of studying/reading about photography, a surprise for me to have the light bulb go on in my head while thinking about what Galassi wrote about Gursky"</em></p>

<p>For me, there's a difference between the kinds of light bulbs that go on in my head when I read about something (even by the most insightful of writers) and especially when I read what someone wrote about someone else, and the kinds of light bulbs that go on when I experience something for myself. There's nothing like the first-hand experience of a photographic accident to make a light bulb go on in my head!</p>

<p>I do gain some insights by reading about Adams and Mozart and by reading Galassi on Gursky. But let me interpret a Mozart score, let me actually compose a musical composition, let me make a photo, and that sort of active participation (as opposed to the more passive reading about it) will have a much more profound effect. The reading, for me, can be a good accompaniment to the first-hand experience. But it is not the definer of that first-hand experience.</p>

<p>Accidents <em>happen</em>.</p>

<p>Julie: <em>" . . . Mozart, who claimed that composing consisted simply in writing out what was already fully formed in his mind . . . "</em></p>

<p>But how did these compositions ever got fully formed in his mind? Without accident?</p>

<p>And, as I already said, they got fully formed in his head often only after he had already improvised them or something akin to them in a performance.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>I agree Fred that first hand experience is the best teacher. We often don't really understand it unil we lived it. Then it becomes the <em>aha</em> moment. </p>

<p>Additionally, what works for someone else doesn't necessarily work for us. I've seem many pictures from adherents of the zone system and Adams. Their pictures don't look any particularly better than anyone elses. That could be because technique doesn't have much to do with vision. (pre-visualized or post-visualized). </p>

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<p>[Alan, just read your post. The following was not a response to you, just further thoughts of my own on the subject. In terms of your post, I tend to think that vision and technique are often inseparable, symbiotic, and intertwined though I would agree that some photographers with stellar technique don't have very creative visions and some people with creative visions have a lousy technique. For me, sometimes lousy technique will really undermine a good, creative vision and sometimes it won't. As you said, what works with regard to one photographer (or photo) won't necessarily work with regard to another.]</p>

<p>The point of the thread seems to be that accidents happen and I've enjoyed reading the first-hand experiences of those who've shared about their own photographic accidents. Whether Adams and Mozart worked differently from Gursky and John Cage is probably pretty evident, though I'd say all of them experienced accidents and utilized them creatively. But the latter is more an academic question that seems to me goes a bit off topic from the original very good question about <em>"our own"</em> pictures.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>This pic is part of a documentary project I'm doing at a community in New England. I thought I was getting a picture of Jason joyfully carrying groceries into the communal dining hall while the head of the community was busy candidly unloading in the background. As I shot the picture, Donat noticed me taking the picture and was caught looking on. He apologized to me and I told him he'd made the picture . . . and my day.</p>

<p>Now, what Alan says is interesting, that what works for one photographer might not work for another. I was quite happy with this accident because it provided an intentional overseeing moment by the head of the community and a direct awareness of the picture-taking activity. Another photographer might understandably have been disappointed by a perceived spoiling of a more candid moment. As terrific as accidents can be, they can also ruin a photo or photo opportunity, which is probably why they are so very special.</p><div>00cM29-545233584.jpg.2fe6824ac709d862e41855a2b0e0c6e0.jpg</div>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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<p>Many of my personal favorite photos are the result of quirks of luck, but I have always depended on the kindness of strangeness.</p>

<p>I'm accustomed to enjoying the unplanned and unanticipated expressions in candid/street photos, which is why I love the genre. So I'm not sure whether I should consider these surprises, since I'm actually anticipating surprises - I just don't know what sorts of surprises they'll be!</p>

<p>Here, I intended only to tease Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographer Richard Rodriguez a bit when I struck an exaggerated paparazzi style pose and snapped his photo. But my timing was a bit off and I mashed the shutter release button before he'd actually turned toward me. I didn't notice until later the delightful expression of the woman behind them to the side.<br /> <a href="/photo/17509599&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17509599-md.jpg" alt="Photographing photographers" width="680" height="510" border="0" /></a><br /> *<br /> Here (also outside the Bass Performance Hall, one of my favorite venues for candid photos), well... I have no idea what I intended to photograph. Presumably I thought I saw something and was a moment too quick or too late - usually too quick, as my reflexes often win out over my patience. But the fellow's impish smile tickled me, so I kept it despite the wonky framing.<br /> <a href="/photo/15830014&size=lg"><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/15830014-md.jpg" alt="Tour bus" width="680" height="510" border="0" /></a><br /> *<br /> But, again, I'm not sure whether to attribute these to chance, in the sense of Julie's original premise, since I always anticipate little surprises when I'm taking candid photos. I may not know what I'll pull out of the grab bag, but the bag itself is clearly marked with a giant "?".</p>

<p>I suppose the most recent example of a genuine surprise came from returning to the landscape type genre after several years of mostly photographing people. My neighborhood isn't particularly picturesque and while the sunsets are often spectacular, especially in winter with the unusual cloud formations, it's difficult to frame photos with anything interesting in the foreground to give some sense of scale and perspective.</p>

<p>A few weeks ago I began walking into a nearby vacant field, between sets of apartment complexes and the corner beer store, stopping every few yards to snap a photo of the clouds being gradually reshaped and recolored by the setting sun. I'd glance at the rear screen and saw nothing interesting. Until I reached this frame...<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17668987-lg.jpg" alt="DSC_7887_Stickplace Archer Origins-1.jpg" width="679" height="455" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> That's an uncropped frame, straight from the camera. The photo wasn't particularly interesting. Oh, sure, lovely clouds and colors, but I've seen that before over this same vacant field. But I'd been looking at the sky and didn't even notice that peculiar formation in the brush until I reviewed the photo on the rear screen. Had I been shooting film I'd have missed it, and quite likely would have turned around and gone home.</p>

<p>But I was intrigued by that formation in the brush. It appeared to be a skeletal arm, perhaps drawing a bow, or perhaps beckoning toward some stick figure children. And perhaps my imagination was primed by my usual bedtime habit of dozing off while listening to old radio dramas or audiobooks. Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" came to mind, his metaphysical or supernatural tale that reveals how modern era practical minded people can still be vulnerable to superstition, given the right circumstances.</p>

<p>Since spotting that one particular bit of brush - barely visible from the road and among the shortest in that field - I've come to regard it as my geographic muse, akin to Stephen King's "Castle Rock" and Peter Straub's "Millhaven", those places in the minds of creators where writers return to battle their demons. I've photographed it several times, against spectacular sunset clouds, against nearly speckless blue skies, against whited out overcast skies, against fog (very rare here in Texas), and see something different each time. Some evenings it appears to be an ominous skeletal hand summoning sacrificial victims. Other evenings it offers a peace pipe. At times it seems to be drawing a bow.</p>

<p>The funny thing is, that skeletal hand/arm doesn't actually exist. It's a trick of forced perspective and silhouetting the brush against the sky. In brighter light the illusion vanishes. It's a wonderful example of how our myths about the mysterious, ominous, threatening forests evolved.<br /> <br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17648801-lg.jpg" alt="Summoning" width="679" height="511" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> <img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17652270-lg.jpg" alt="The Stickplace Archer" width="679" height="1014" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> Opposite that figure is another that alternately resembles Wadjet's eye, the Eye of Horus from one view; and, from another view, a skeletal dragon or even a child's stick pony.<br /> *<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17650285-lg.jpg" alt="Wadjet winks" width="679" height="450" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> *<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/17648800-lg.jpg" alt="Smauggy" width="679" height="450" border="0" /><br /> *<br /> I'm learning to enjoy these surprises and hope to find more, as I don't really have the imagination to create from scratch the amazing conceptual art I see in the portfolios of some photographers I admire. I envy those visual artists. Even when photographing landscapes, no matter how unusual, I'm still only documenting what's there, at best hoping to lend my personal sensibility, yet still wondering what a truly imaginative photographer might do with the same subject matter and lighting.</p>

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<p><em>Bless you</em>, Lex. From the bottom of my heart. You've given me the perfect examples and text to use to try to clarify what I'm thinking about.</p>

<p>Starting with the first picture (of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographer). I think this is the kind of accidental image with which most of us have had happy experience. However, it is (as you point out) not entirely a surprise in the print as much as in the shooting -- which is not really what I'm interested in here. But I'm happy to have the example <em>in order</em> to point out that this is not exactly what I'm after. :)</p>

<p>The second picture, "outside the Bass Performance Hall" (which picture I <em>love</em>; it's a treat to explore), is of the kind I'm interested in, especially because it's a super example of what I think of as the -- necessary -- intermediary evolutionary stage that leads to (though it is not the same as) what Gursky does. In this picture, there are tons of delightful "easter eggs" in pattern, line, figure, form, gesture. This kind of surprise-in-the-print, which can't have been tabulated at the moment of shooting simply because there are so many of such variety and the moment is so fleeting, is kind of like throwing a net into the sea; sometimes you make a great catch; sometimes you get nothing. And therein lies the problem from an artistic point of view. There is always a niggling bit of doubt as to how much credit one can claim for an accident.</p>

<p>Beyond the "credit" issue with accidents, notice that what is there (to be found, by surprise or not) is there. The surprise is in the discovery, not in the picture's actual content. Once found (to one's delight), it is found. The content, though rich, is more or less static to perusal.</p>

<p>Not so the wonderful series of the tree branches. And not so for Gursky. They are fractally irregular; the more you look, the closer or farther you focus your attention, the more or less and in ever different formations, do the lines "show" themselves. Conjunction, divergence, corkscrewiness, rise, fall, thicken, thin, grouped or solo, etc. This (though via entirely different means) is the kind of thing Gursky works. If you stand close to his pictures you see one thing; if you walk back, you see another. If you move to one side or the other, the "view" changes and reconfigures. Unlike the prior examples, <em>the content is not static</em>. It changes according to what <em>you</em> do, according to what <em>you</em> bring to it. Gursky not only accepts this, he loves it. He works it. He makes (very carefully) a very deliberate support composition/structure <em>within</em> which the viewer can effectively generate his own content.</p>

<p>Likewise, Lex's branch is obviously the same branch from picture to picture, within each picture, yet exploration of the lines goes to what the viewer brings to the picture.</p>

<p>Think of Japanese gardens -- carefully raked gravel with carefully placed rocks/boulders. They depend on what is brought to them; how the viewer moves, where/how he stands, what the light "does" with/to them in order to "become" what is seen at any given moment. The rigidly prepared structure frames a view that changes according to what/when/how the spectator moves to the garden. And it is intended to work that way. Realizing that this is the same kind of thing that Gursky does was my "light bulb" moment.</p>

<p>There is a huge difference in kind between mastery and control. Adams enjoys control. The first example given by Lex has some mastery, not much control (happily in this case). The second example can't really claim mastery or control -- but it leads to, and I think is of critically important use in one's imaginative development -- awareness of what's "available" beyond control ... and therefore to the possibility of exploiting that new territory as Gursky and Lex have done. The final example shows mastery liberated from control, as does the Japanese garden. In my opinion.</p>

<p>Again, thank you so much, Lex, for the perfect examples, especially the tree branch series.</p>

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<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>

<p>Why should one have doubts about claiming credit for an accident? Who else is going to take the credit?</p>

<p>An interesting twist from Napoleon:</p>

<p><em>"There is no such thing as an accident; it is fate misnamed."</em></p>

<p>And lest fate or accident become over-empowered, here's the Buddha on fate:</p>

<p><em>"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."</em></p>

<p>What I do may just affect what accidents happen around me and whether and how I experience them.</p>

<p>Is it possible that a looming accident has ever <em>caused</em> me to take a shot, without my actually realizing it, and not just popped up in the shot as if by magic? Intuition? Many factors, both in and out of my control, are causing my finger to press the shutter when I do, each time I press it. In the grander scheme of things, every shot is a kind of accident, the determined or serendipitous coming together of a chain of events that has led right up to it.</p>

<p>If I'm there, I'm more likely not to miss it.</p>

We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!
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