Serendipity in wildlife photography

[DavidTriplett]

Serendipitous events will often pique my imagination, so their portrayal in a photo can be important.

In a conversation with Supriyo regarding my post in Before the Storm, he expressed an assumption that I had accidentally captured a lightning strike in a compositionally desirable way. He saw this as an example of serendipity. I had to disabuse him of this assumption, as the image presented was made with the express intent of capturing a lightning strike, and had been heavily cropped from a much larger FoV to maximize the compositional balance. So, serendipity or not? I certainly did not plan for or anticipate that particular bolt, but I recognized an opportunity and set myself up to take advantage of the unpredictable, in similar manner to Dave Stephens patiently engaging in wildlife photography. What I'm hoping you will help me understand is how your definition of serendipity engages with or is insulated from these type circumstances?

[DavidTriplett]

There may never have existed a Romeo and Juliet who were star-crossed lovers, but that fiction conveys in such real and true ways two young lovers doomed by fate and all the ramifications of it.

Hence the power of allegory/parable as a teaching and communication tool. I'm somewhat fascinated by the role of allegorical photography, and its confusion with both documentary and journalistic images. If an allegorical photograph (or story) can communicate a true principal, while depicting an artificial or contrived event (like the VJ day kiss), is it more or less valid than the documentary or journalistic effort that has been framed, selected, or manipulated to offer a singular, even manipulated message of an event that actually happened? How does one tell the difference? Sounds like a good topic for the Philosophy forum. Let's not get distracted by it here, OK?

[Moving On]

Photography simply lends itself to many forms of manipulation.

That is intrinsic to the photographic process.

Trying to pin down process, reality, integrity, intent in some OCD fashion is an exercise in futility.

From the very first photo a child experiences "Smile" begins the habit of photo manipulation.

Agendas are as integral to the human condition as breathing air. It's no great surprise that serendipity plays a part with that manipulation in varying degrees.

I do not view its occurance as a pure quantifiable element of photography.

When it comes to photographic manipulation I lean to skepticism when I "can't believe my eyes".

But I'm not obsessed with researching every photo.

I enjoy and appreciate many photographs for a variety of reasons.

The documentary aspect of photography need not spoil the fun of the artistic aspect with some mental obsession with reality.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Moving On

[Moving On]

Serendipity is not immune from working in concert with human activity.

[Norma Desmond]

What I'm hoping you will help me understand is how your definition of serendipity engages with or is insulated from these type circumstances?

None of the lightning photos strike me in such a way that I would use the word “serendipity” to describe them. Same with the wildlife photo that began this discussion. Since you’re an architect, if a lightning strike you captured had the distinct look of a Frank Lloyd Wright tower or if I captured a bolt of lighting that looked like the head of Aristotle, I’d use “serendipity” in describing them.

 

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I don’t think serendipity is any more a factor in photography than in other walks of life.

 

I’m happy to analyze photos in light of any such quality, like serendipity, someone brings up for the purposes of discussion and sharing ideas. That doesn’t necessarily carry over to the rest of my photographic life. I am able to separate interesting, analytical discussions, which I think serve a good purpose, from the making and viewing of photos, which oftentime use very different brain cells.

Edited May 20, 2018 by Norma Desmond

[Norma Desmond]

In a conversation with Supriyo regarding my post in Before the Storm, he expressed an assumption that I had accidentally captured a lightning strike in a compositionally desirable way. He saw this as an example of serendipity. I had to disabuse him of this assumption, as the image presented was made with the express intent of capturing a lightning strike, and had been heavily cropped from a much larger FoV to maximize the compositional balance.

Sometimes, what a photo looks like is more important than what it represents. The mistake may be in someone attributing factually to you an accidental way of working when, in fact, you were more deliberate. That doesn't mean the deliberate photo you made can't or doesn't show "accident" to a viewer. Once a viewer is within the four walls of the frame, he's entitled to enter a different reality from the one that existed outside the frame. I think all viewers do that to varying degrees and with different types of photos. We enter the visual world the photo presents. The framed reality in front of us, sometimes void of context, has its own story to tell. How accurate that is may or may not matter. Obviously, in journalism, it matters a great deal and you don't want the viewer separating himself too much from reality. In other types of photos, there's a lot more leeway for "inaccuracy." If a photo of lightning leads a viewer toward, let's say, "sadness" or "melancholy," it may matter only slightly that the photographer took it under the happiest of circumstances. If something about a photo brings forth serendipity, even though the photo didn't come about serendipitously, more power to the photo for doing so. That's why separating actual reality from the virtual reality of the photo, and separating the photographer's intent (to some extent) from the photo's accomplishments can be helpful. I don't necessarily think Tchaikovsky was in a particularly tumultuous mood when he wrote the tumultuous opening chords of his first piano concerto or that Mapplethorpe was necessarily feeling sexy when making his more provocative sexual photos. They were each able to call forth these emotions in a very real way through their art though not necessarily needing to be directly experiencing those emotions at the moment of creation.

[Norma Desmond]

I had to disabuse him of this assumption

It's funny. In a discussion like this with a fellow photographer, I likely would have done what you did with Supriyo. In real life, though, I'll often not "correct" people when they make certain assumptions about photos. I generally feel it's not my place to keep people accurate as far as what occurred when the photo was taken. I'd much rather have them project certain things onto me rather than be too concerned with their accuracy. Their projections often tell the genuine story of what the photo itself is saying to them or making them feel. That's as important and often more important than whether they get my motivations right or assume correctly the circumstances of the photo.