Perfect Prints
You have a great camera and you practice precise photographic techniques. You explore desirable locations and shoot beautiful subjects but still your photographs leave you less than excited. What next?
If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person. -Jay Maisel
The formative years for most photographers involve a lot of study and learning with much trial and error about printing and technique. Many spend a good deal of time learning about and poring over technical specifications of camera equipment, chasing after the fastest lens, best bokeh, or some other vaunted features. Aided by YouTube and an infinite supply of online tutorials, many more quickly learn how to use a variety of software and digital darkroom techniques.
There is no question that the learning curve of the digital world is infinitely shorter than the film world. Back then we lacked instant feedback and easy access to scores of experts. We just kept photographing, evaluating, and trying again. Today, the sheer volume of equipment, software, processing techniques, and websites to learn from makes it possible to obsess over equipment and techniques to the degree that little mental energy remains for creative artistic development.
I wished I’d had a photographic mentor in my early years who guided me toward considering my photographic future instead of the immediate present. Experienced photographers are acutely aware of just how easy it is to learn photographic fundamentals. With the right instructor and/or instructional materials, committed students can easily grasp subjects like the exposure triangle and histogram evaluation in half a day. Another half day or so of study with Lightroom or other software and most students can produce good quality inkjet prints in rather short order. The technical end of photography has been democratized – it’s no longer the sole province of committed craftspeople who have been working at it for decades. Despite how it is often portrayed, learning the mechanics is the easiest part of photography.
Many photographers fail to move past this stage in spite of wishful thinking. A particularly strange modus operandi is buying new equipment to create new and more exciting photographs. But nothing could be further from reality. The most difficult part of good photography has little to do with equipment or techniques and everything to do with good ideas. It’s odd that we photographers pursue our medium in a backward fashion. Painters don’t keep buying and trying different brushes, oils or easels in order to improve their art or craft. They just keep painting, developing their craft and their art simultaneously. Few photographers stop developing the craft for long enough to consider creative artistic options.
This article is aimed at photographers who want to move beyond the documentary or representational photographs to fine art photographer, if you will. But as it is a contentious identifier, I leave further explanation to others in other articles. By my definition and for purposes of this article, the fine art photographer synthesizes the external event (the thing worthy of having your camera pointed at it) with the internal event (the intuitive recognition of an idea or concept related to the thing).
Credit is due to Ansel Adams for these terms, the internal and external events, along with a host of other concepts and ideologies he brought to fine art nature, and landscape photography. Those who are familiar with Ansel’s oeuvre recognize his career transition from representational to fine art. He not only wrote the book but he walked the talk.
Ansel said:
Visualization is the most important factor in the making of a photograph. Visualization includes all the steps from selecting the subject to making the final print. In short, Ansel’s visualization refers to our ability to see the finished photograph in what we commonly refer to as the “mind’s eye.” This is a critical skill to develop for the fine art photographer. Finished photograph meaning not just the composition or placement of objects within the frame, but the entire visual and emotional aesthetic: the subject and composition; the look and feel of the finished print; as well as the feeling or state that may be aroused in the viewer. The representational photographer depicts physical appearances as found and doesn’t typically interfere with the subject or the light. In contrast, the fine art photograph may be entirely the result of interference. The finished print might scarcely resemble the found state.
If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person. -Jay Maisel
The formative years for most photographers involve a lot of study and learning with much trial and error about printing and technique. Many spend a good deal of time learning about and poring over technical specifications of camera equipment, chasing after the fastest lens, best bokeh, or some other vaunted features. Aided by YouTube and an infinite supply of online tutorials, many more quickly learn how to use a variety of software and digital darkroom techniques.
There is no question that the learning curve of the digital world is infinitely shorter than the film world. Back then we lacked instant feedback and easy access to scores of experts. We just kept photographing, evaluating, and trying again. Today, the sheer volume of equipment, software, processing techniques, and websites to learn from makes it possible to obsess over equipment and techniques to the degree that little mental energy remains for creative artistic development.
I wished I’d had a photographic mentor in my early years who guided me toward considering my photographic future instead of the immediate present. Experienced photographers are acutely aware of just how easy it is to learn photographic fundamentals. With the right instructor and/or instructional materials, committed students can easily grasp subjects like the exposure triangle and histogram evaluation in half a day. Another half day or so of study with Lightroom or other software and most students can produce good quality inkjet prints in rather short order. The technical end of photography has been democratized – it’s no longer the sole province of committed craftspeople who have been working at it for decades. Despite how it is often portrayed, learning the mechanics is the easiest part of photography.
Many photographers fail to move past this stage in spite of wishful thinking. A particularly strange modus operandi is buying new equipment to create new and more exciting photographs. But nothing could be further from reality. The most difficult part of good photography has little to do with equipment or techniques and everything to do with good ideas. It’s odd that we photographers pursue our medium in a backward fashion. Painters don’t keep buying and trying different brushes, oils or easels in order to improve their art or craft. They just keep painting, developing their craft and their art simultaneously. Few photographers stop developing the craft for long enough to consider creative artistic options.
This article is aimed at photographers who want to move beyond the documentary or representational photographs to fine art photographer, if you will. But as it is a contentious identifier, I leave further explanation to others in other articles. By my definition and for purposes of this article, the fine art photographer synthesizes the external event (the thing worthy of having your camera pointed at it) with the internal event (the intuitive recognition of an idea or concept related to the thing).
Credit is due to Ansel Adams for these terms, the internal and external events, along with a host of other concepts and ideologies he brought to fine art nature, and landscape photography. Those who are familiar with Ansel’s oeuvre recognize his career transition from representational to fine art. He not only wrote the book but he walked the talk.
Ansel said:
Visualization is the most important factor in the making of a photograph. Visualization includes all the steps from selecting the subject to making the final print. In short, Ansel’s visualization refers to our ability to see the finished photograph in what we commonly refer to as the “mind’s eye.” This is a critical skill to develop for the fine art photographer. Finished photograph meaning not just the composition or placement of objects within the frame, but the entire visual and emotional aesthetic: the subject and composition; the look and feel of the finished print; as well as the feeling or state that may be aroused in the viewer. The representational photographer depicts physical appearances as found and doesn’t typically interfere with the subject or the light. In contrast, the fine art photograph may be entirely the result of interference. The finished print might scarcely resemble the found state.
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