What and How Have You Learned to See?

[AJHingel]

<p>Fred, if we can agree to agree, I'm happy, and your sanity is saved - to the benefit of us all.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>Defining what is art seems a bit far from the original OT, "what and how have you learned to see", or is this the way, like some other recent threads that one feel's no longer the desire to contribute to, that we conveniently spin out from its original intention?</p>

<p>Yes, before someone reminds me, philosophy is best when freely discussed. </p>

[AJHingel]

<p><strong>Arthur</strong> apart from the apparent rituals going on, we are in fact talking about "seeing". At least that i why have a special interest in "art". It teaches me to see as I have mentioned already in my first contribution to this thread. I would believe that it also has taught many others to see, but definitely we have difficulties of discussing it.</p>

[luis_g]

<p>I also learned a lot about seeing (and art) from art, to which I was exposed from a very early age. Both visual and performance arts, particularly the ballet. And I grew up in a family that included architects and back in the 50's an early project manager for IBM Suisse. They were staunch Modernists, and integrated that into their lives and consequently, mine (I moved on).</p>

<p>______________________</p>

<p>Lots of other things that had nothing to do with art/photography taught me how to see. Spending a lot of time on (and in) the water. On the water, a space with a heavy horizontal orientation, I learned to look for very subtle details of swell direction, wind, currents, places where currents met, shallow areas, weedlines, etc. Decades later when I read about the Inuit's special (and spatial) way of seeing, I saw parallels. In the water, the freedom to assume different POVs, translucence, the inverse square law, color casts, etc.</p>

<p>As I have mentioned before, exposure to the symbolism of the Catholic church as a boy, coupled with the inherent magical realism in the culture, expanded my awareness exponentially, and my universe became (symbolically) textual, no,not in a literal way, but in a way similar to the Celtic "language iof the trees" or the Aboriginal "Songlines".</p>

<p>These things (and others I won't go into now) may not have had anything to do with either art or photography, but obliquely, along with paying attention, they taught me to see. Not what to see (eye towards Julie), how to see.</p>

 

[AJHingel]

<p>Luis, a great thanks for this contribution to the thread, because it referring to real learning experiences on how to see. Somewhere and somehow it surely influences how you shoot photos. I'm convinced it also "select" what you see and what you leave aside.</p>

<p>My own experiences of seeing is first of all related to nature. Fishing in streams, rivers, lakes and by the sea side gave me from an early age an eye for seasons and changing lights. It also gave me en eye for what in literature has been called the "incredible immense in the incredible small details" that I have mentioned earlier. Hunting experiences gave me the strong selective eye necessarily for observing the traces and sounds of your prey (whether you are out for actually shooting it or mainly observing it) and taught me nature and especially forest land in all its complexity. Later on my military training put me in situations of being submerged in the country side in all weathers and seasons and being one with nature. </p>

<p>The city and especially the big city which since has become my playing ground I approach in a much more intellectual approach that can not be separated from the studies and societal engagements I have been involved in my private and professional life. </p>

<p>My relationship to art and especially painting, sculpture, music and as Phylos mentions Ballet but also opera and films (mainly European and Asian) all give "visual" pleasure that find a direct expression in my photographical activities - when I succeed!</p>

 

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>Hold your horse's right there, I didn't mentioned <em>Ballet</em> ?! Where's Steve ? </p>

[luis_g]

<p>Nah, I mentioned it...</p>

<p>"Both visual and performance arts, particularly the ballet."</p>

<p>Anders, I was going to lengthen my post and get into how hunting, hiking & fishing taught me to see symmetries, patterns, breaks in both, and much more. Learning to see fish underwater, or a well-camouflaged animal in the jungle or forest is valuable to any artist (and it also tells you something about how the eye works). When I was a boy, I was hunting in a forest with heavy ground cover, a hundred feet ahead of my father, and there were probably two <em>dozen </em>turkeys around me, but I could not see <em>one.</em> I dropped on all fours, and suddenly, I could see their feet, knew where they were, and still couldn't see them. They knew I was there, but kept pecking and milling around and did not seem concerned in the slightest. They probably knew I was blind to them.</p>

<p> </p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Sorry Phylos, hope you forgive me.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>No prob, it's Phylo, without the S : )</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I learned to see by looking out my dirty apartment window through fire escape bars in NYC.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Phylo I give up for today!</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p> I learned to see by being me and in the end it's <em>photography </em>that learned us to see as <em>photographers</em>, and not hunters or painters or balletdancers, <strong>but</strong><em> "could a greater thing take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant ? "</em> - Henry David Thoreau </p>

[je ne regrette rien]

<p>We walk through life, seeing.</p>

<p>Some perceive.<br>

Some take pictures.</p>

[jtk]

<p>Not sure I want to "look through each other's eyes for an instant." Instants don't have the potential of longer periods of time, and a near infinite number of instant perceptions by "each other" are already swamping Flickr.</p>

<p>One of the unfortunate results of our evolution has been the replacement of olfactory lobes with cerebral lobes (if it doesn't disturb you theologically you can convince yourself about that via embryology and dissection): We form big ideas but we can't navigate in nature nearly as well as other animals can.</p>

<p>If one spends enough time in wordless and instant-less environments (like <strong>Luis</strong> did, hunting), one may begin to notice new smells (slow deer hunters can smell deer beds, fast ones can't) as well as very faint momement... however, one can't be as perceptive as one's hound, and one's hound can't be as perceptive as the cougar (except perhaps re sense of smell)...and the cougar can't begin to be as perceptive as a herd of antelope, which is a remarkably coordinated, often fifty-eyed visual system (it's a herd, not an antelope) that's acutely aware of movement...</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>"slow deer hunters can smell deer beds, fast ones can't"</p>

<p>Very good, and relevant.</p>

<p>What I did not see at first site is what I have learned to see now.</p>

<p>How I learn to see (and beyond past/continuing experiences in museums and galleries, books of photographs, and so on) ? By thinking in a manner to better understand the subject, to analyse, decompose and restructure it in my mind as I really "see" it. It might be more impressive if it were more complicated than that, but simplicity does have its value.</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p>John's right. Fast hunters only see the deer (and nature) they spook.</p>

<p>____________________________________________</p>

<p><strong>Luca - "</strong>We walk through life, seeing.</p>

 

<p>Some perceive.<br /> Some take pictures."</p>

<p>That's a neat, X-acto knifed dichotomy, Luca. Are perception and photography mutually exclusive? When you photograph, do you cease to perceive?</p>

<p>_____________________________________</p>

<p>IMO...Learning to see is not exclusive to photography or photographers.</p>

<p>Every photograph we take is a parable on how to see. Before the exposure, there's what we want, probabilities, our ideas, desires, what we imagine will happen. Afterwards, that's transmuted into the image. The gap is always a lesson for those who allow it to be. You may want the photograph to come closer to what was in your head pre-exposure, others you want to move closer to something revealed unto you after the exposure (& PP). Or both.</p>

<p>This is not a one-way pilgrimage to a destination, or successive approximations towards an ideal. It's a living, organic, messy, ongoing dialogue between ourselves, our delusions, the medium, & more. <br>

___________________________</p>

<p>Although it has nothing to do with impressing anyone, it can be a bit more involved than neatly encapsulated (or is it compartmentalised?) notions. Holistically, if you want to transform your photography, you have to transform yourself. A lot of this happens randomly for most photographers, but there are ways to enter and further the process. </p>

<p>[Thinking of the picture of the book Phylo showed] </p>

<p> </p>

 

[je ne regrette rien]

<blockquote>

<p>slow deer hunters can smell deer beds, fast ones can't. (<strong>JK</strong>)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If a deer hunter is slow and he is incapable of smelling deer beds he will have a hard time hunting deers. Eventually, if he needs it to survive, he will not manage to procure nourishment (and try something else, maybe).<br>

Smelling deer beds might be a talent, or experience, or both. If one doesn't have it, or is slow at following them, they might be better doing something else.<br>

<strong>Luis</strong>,</p>

<blockquote>

<p>That's a neat, X-acto knifed dichotomy, Luca. Are perception and photography mutually exclusive? When you photograph, do you cease to perceive?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>not at all in my opinion: to be clearer:</p>

<ol>

<li>with "living" I mean exist and feel, by our 5 + 1 senses. Everybody uses their senses, to a higher or lower degree;</li>

<li>perceive: there is a varying degree in perception. Some perceive more, some less, some are more sensitive, other less;</li>

<li>take pictures: not all who perceive take pictures, not all who take pictures are good at perceiving.</li>

<li>Perception and photography are absolutely not mutually exclusive, their reciprocal relationship is varying.</li>

</ol>

<p>It was not meant as a dichotomy.<br>

It was a way to express my fun for what I was reading, in particular <strong>Fred</strong>'s</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I learned to see by looking out my dirty apartment window through fire escape bars in NYC.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If I may add my personal remark on this:</p>

<p>"<em>I increasingly see/perceive as if I were looking through a viewfinder</em>"</p>

[Julie H]

<blockquote>

<p>"... if you want to transform your photography, you have to transform yourself." -- <strong>Luis G</strong></p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"If you come to a fork in the road, take it." -- <strong>Yogi Berra</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>That doesn't just mean changing your "soul" or your "out"-look; it doesn't (just) mean that being Faust or St. Theresa or farting roses will change your pictures. It also means building and constantly confirming your idea of what you're doing from-the-outside -- the birds-eye view, your "in"-look. Your self narrative. "I am ..." "I do ... "As we find Fred describing in #3 of the OP and in his description in the Character thread of how he now approachs the Abercrombie and Fitch men.</p>

<p>I think that saying (and believing ) that "I am an artist" makes you see differently from the person who says (and believes) "I am not an artist." I think that the person who characterizes themself to themself (in their own narrative) as working "quietly, slowly, gently" will take different pictures than a person who envisions themselves as aggressive and bold -- all before any any act of seeing takes place. In other words, the development of a narrative about who you are as a photographer will strongly affect how you see. It will put you in a particular road -- one road and not another, or one as opposed to another.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Julie wrote</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I think that the person who characterizes themself to themself (in their own narrative) as working "quietly, slowly, gently" will take different pictures than a person who envisions themselves as aggressive and bold -- all before any any act of seeing takes place. In other words, the development of a narrative about who you are as a photographer will strongly affect how you see. It will put you in a particular road -- one road and not another, or one as opposed to another.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Very well written Julie. However, although you are surely right about the link between narrative and photography, narrative and seeing, and photography and seeing, I would believe that they are all interrelated and change in relationship to each other.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<blockquote>

<p>"... if you want to transform your photography, you have to transform yourself." -- <strong>Luis G</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p><strong></strong>If you want to transform yourself, you have to transform your photography.</p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Julie -"</strong>That doesn't just mean <snip> farting roses will change your pictures."</p>

<p> <strong>No? *Beep* </strong>There goes my next product idea...</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>"There is no better time for success than now, you can achieve whatever you want, you are what you think most of the time." -- From an infomercial just now on TV...<br /></p>

<p>_____________________________<br /></p>

<p><strong>Julie - "</strong>It also means building and constantly confirming your idea of what you're doing from-the-outside -- the birds-eye view, your "in"-look. Your self narrative. "I am ..." "I do ... "As we find Fred describing in #3 of the OP and in his description in the Character thread of how he now approachs the Abercrombie and Fitch men."</p>

<p>This is based on the assumption that a self-narrative is de rigueur because you and everyone you know does it. Fred's probably the poster child for that camp. Outside? Inside? Talking to yourself? Whatever happened to Holism? To the baby and the bathwater? Was that a splash and thud I just heard?</p>

<p><strong>"How can you think and hit at the same time?" </strong>-- Yogi Berra</p>

<p>________________________</p>

<p><strong>Julie - </strong>"I think that the person who characterizes themself to themself (in their own narrative) as working "quietly, slowly, gently" will take different pictures than a person who envisions themselves as aggressive and bold -- all before any any act of seeing takes place. In other words, the development of a narrative about who you are as a photographer will strongly affect how you see. It will put you in a particular road -- one road and not another, or one as opposed to another."</p>

<p>I think they will take crappy pseudo-calm (or bold) pictures unless they become calmer or bolder. IMO, the internal self-narrative is largely delusional, ineffective and a serious hindrance to self-development and transformation. It's like becoming intoxicated with the waft of the imaginary (hopefully <em>very </em>short-stemmed & thornless!) roses one is farting in Mondo Julie.</p>

<p>__________________________</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Luca, </strong>thanks for clarifying. I think we're mostly in agreement.</p>

<p>You mean Fred <em>wasn't </em>serious about his window comment? I thought he was alluding to the 5D Mk II's viewfinder!</p>

<p> </p>

[luis_g]

<p><strong>Phylo - "</strong>If you want to transform yourself, you have to transform your photography."</p>

<p> Yes, it's commutative.</p>

[fate_faith_change_chains]

<p>I agree that the self narrative, the "birds eye view", the in-look, the I-am I-do, only illustrates that we do not possess an ego ( an *artist*,... ) but are possessed by the idea of one. Ask the Awakened. Being possessed can have its charm though, as long as it doesn't make our heads turn around in full 360°.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>"Yes, it's commutative." <strong>-- Luis</strong></p>

<p>Dear lord. The roses have to go in the same way they came out?</p>