Learning to See II

[w.b.s.]

I have recently been trying to understand "seeing". I have started to do

various projects every few weeks...taking pictures of trees, clouds, shadows,

etc... My experience and focused attention thus far, has made me more "aware"

of these things as I start to study them more.

 

For instance, I studied and took pics of shadows for a few weeks... now I

tend to see shadows a little differently. I see more of the shadow, the

outline, the shape, the sunlight that may be dotted throughout it...

 

So...my questions are:

 

Does it take an awareness to something to be able to learn to see something

in a different way?

 

Are there different levels of "seeing"?

 

What else can I do to increase my awareness to this concept so that I may take

a better % of good quality photos?

 

Thanks for your input...

 

Jason

[pablito_pistola]

I'd say the single most important answer to, "what else can I do to increase my

awareness...." is: look at photographs and study the history of photography. The more you

study, the more you'll come to understand that it's simplistic to think of vision as pure

abstraction without regard to meaning. The visual relationships of shape and form in your

pictures -the DESIGN of your pictures- needs to be defined by the content. In other words,

content will dictate the way you see; how you arrange the shadows, outlines, shapes,

within your frame. You ask how you can take a better % of good quality photos but first

you need to define for yourself what a good quality photo is.

[randall ellis]

Take a class that has nothing to do with photography and your vision will expand exponentialy. Try drawing, or painting, or Design 101 at the local community college. In order to expand your vision, you have to break away from what is comfortable and explore things that you have never considered before. Then, when you get the camera out again, you'll see things that you never would have picked out before.

 

- Randy

[pico]

I've suggested to our photography program (university) that they require a class in

charcoal drawing for certain photo classes. Why? B&W tonality has so much to do with

understanding (even if only intuitively) specific perceptual ambiguities of tones. For

example, where in a scene an object looks bright due to its surrounding and design

elements, but another object of exactly the same tone looks darker in another part of the

same image.

 

When you do charcoal drawings from life there often comes a point where it just does not

work, and the drawer is either stymied or unaware of it. That's when one realizes that he's

not noticing the adjacency/environment effect and has to come to terms with the light/

darkness to make it right.

 

Stone lithography is another path to this understanding.

[michelle a.]

What Randall and Pico say is so true. In school my drawing classes helped me to understand light and shadow, and the way it changes the way something looks when it moves. And my color class (which I disliked because I felt like I was back in kindergarten) taught more about color than I ever thought I wanted to know. I finally understood tones, values, etc. Studying art history and classic artist I learned composition and more....

 

Once I started actually taking the photo classes I wanted, I had a base for "seeing"......

[gale]

The previous posters are right. I beleive that when out taking photos, take one camera dedicated to B&W film or if shooting digtial, take the chance and record some shots in B&W only instead of shooting color and converting. When shooting in B&W, you find the shot less forgiving and without color, you begin to see the emotion, lines, shapes, lighting and textures of the shot.

 

The recomendations of taking up some art- charcoal or pen or pencil will help you begin to understand more and see more are correct.

 

Dave

[Kostas Angelopoulos]

Certenly. I don't know what I should have done without this background, in photography. And as someone should "open" his/her eyes by drawing with charcoal and painting with simple colors (color dust, plastic medium and water- excuse my english if you please), he/she should "open" the mind also by reading carefully the history of philosophy of aesthetics (M. C. Beardsley for example), as the general visual experience, a dfferent level of "seeing", requires cooperation of the eye and the mind (I'm seeing things better now...but what am I seeing and with what each moment?) Don't we have to deal with the art of illusion? Please correct me if I am wrong.

[rafael_azofeifa]

After I take a picture I usually change format (if I took it horizontal I change to vertical) and 'scan' the scene I just shot. Sometimes I get a better picture the second time because I realized there was 'something else' that made the picture different. After a while I have learned to pay attention to what I didn't see in that first glance.

[Norma Desmond]

I think Randall makes a great point! I recently completed a Philosophy program at SF State

and that helped my "vision" enormously. Photography is surely a "visual" art but too often

neglected is the content, emotion, and thought involved in both the subjects and the way we

see them.

[randall ellis]

"Photography is surely a "visual" art but too often neglected is the content, emotion, and thought involved in both the subjects and the way we see them."

 

That's it exactly! Photography people tend to be almost exclusively focused (ouch!) on the technical and many never learn to 'see' past all the numbers and names. You *must* move past the technical aspects of the medium to achieve what Fred is talking about. A photograph can be technically perfect, and many are, but still be totally evocative - to achieve that extra something you *must* be able to identify more than what settings to use on the camera or all you will have is a well-crafted but really boring image. Don't get me wrong, you need to have control over your craft in order to achieve good results, but craft is like the foundation of a building, it is not the whole, but rather just a part of the whole.

 

I never understood the fascination with the work of many 'famous' photographers that photography people seem to have, but when I began to study design and other forms of art I began to make connections to what I was seeing and more of it became fascinating to me. I still don't like landscapes that much, in color or black and white, but I do see *great* value in the details of things. Almost all of my work now involves looking to the little details - I just can't get enough! I 'see' things now where once I would have seen nothing at all, and the more I learn the more I see - it's like opening a door to a hall filled with doors(!).

 

You have to experiment with new ideas in order to engage your own vision. It's there, always has been, but you need to put a lot of effort into understanding it or you may get lost in the endless pursuit of emulation the work of others and never make the connection...

 

- Randy

[randall ellis]

Sorry, the damned spell checker changed my word! The word 'evocative' above should read 'unevocative'

 

- Randy

[Norma Desmond]

Randall, good to note the correction, although I knew what you meant and assumed it was

just a typo.

[spanky]

Any class that has the words "Art and the Humanities" in the course title will do wonders for "seeing". What's important is that whatever path you take you must at some point decide what works for you and what does not. There are never any hard and fast rules to this. Once you've discarded whatever you don't need what's left must become a second nature, an unconcious act. If you find your mind gets cluttered with following a certain concept prior to pressing the shutter then go back to start and begin again.

[pablito_pistola]

As per several of the above posters, I REQUIRE my students to take a drawing class before

they can enroll in my photography I class.

[k5083]

I wish I had had some of you guys as my photography profs. Mine was a local commercial/product photographer. He taught us to shoot through a hole in a white screen so that the reflections in the silverware would look nice.

[Norma Desmond]

Thanks for that, Hogarth (LOL). Of course, it's never too late to start "seeing" differently. :)

[toddcurry]

I have to agree with Randall Ellis in part, I also would say to stop buying photography

magazines, the main ones in the UK are designed for amateurs and are designed to be

?nice?, not showing great work but ?nice? pictures as great pictures can put off some

amateurs (a very poor attitude) and they wont to see photo?s that they could take.

Seeing as you call it is something you can or can?t do I feel, you have any ?eye? or you

don?t, if you do you can develop it, I would say to shoot film not digital and shoot slower

even if you miss some pictures, before you click the shutter take a second and have a look

at all in frame, move about a bit if you wish, but shoot slowly and shoot less, that way

when you have taken a shot you are happy with it.

As I said even if this is costing missed pictures doing this all the time as training and you

will over time get quicker until you do without thinking, you learn to see the hole frame in

a second.

[toddcurry]

Sorry, I did not mean to use?, I was hitting the wrong key, I meant ".

One last point that might help, it did for me, it's sounds stupid but go out of photography

days and don't take you camera, just learn to look at things.

[henryberkins]

study your own photographs to learn what you "saw" in them, this can be as useful as actually seeing the image before you photographed it.

 

no matter which picture you took, somnething motivated you to take it. seeing is essentially finding out what that is and representing it the way you want others to see it. you must be in sync with yourself to be able to truely "see".

 

after you find your motivation, you can go about finding different ways of representing it and eventually decide on one that effectivly communicates the way you felt to your veiwer. and in the best case scenario they feel the same way you felt.

 

its not showing them what you saw, its showing them what you want them to see.

 

my thoughts

 

chris

[jgalyon]

for me, seeing is often like speaking my native language aloud and disassociating the sound of the words from their meaning. it's very difficult to do. the natural tendency is to see them in their everyday context. there is a passage in the Bible that tells of a man's first sight after being blind. he says, " i see men as trees walking". point is, if we can begin to contemplate the ordinary as something extraordinary, something beyond what we've come to know it...then we can begin to see. that's my lesson in philosophy for the day.