Here’s the conundrum that John Paul Caponigro faced when writing this essay:

There is nothing more defining of your personal style than your personal approach to composition. Therefore, if he just set out The John Paul Caponigro Rules of Composition he would be teaching you his personal style and most likely impeding the development of your own. His solution to this problem is to assume that those who are serious about improving their skills will be willing to engage with the material, think about it, and actively explore how to apply it to their own work. In his writing he clearly is avoiding a prescriptive approach of telling us how to do it in favor of an open style that encourages an active dialog (and dialectic) with the text followed by a method that shows how to apply some ideas to your own work carefully avoiding telling you what you should be finding.

He is writing for serious photographers who wish to actively explore this topic. In fact, for those who noticed there was an offer in the essay for him to participate in such dialogs. Any takers?

Cudos to him.

BTW- here's what worked for me in terms of reading this. I copied the text up to the Exercise part (which does have to be done online) into my Word processor and printed it. I put it by my favorite reading chair and read it. Then I read it again, then a third time. I did get more of his points each time through. In other words, his writing is like his photography, worthy of second and third looks and worth spending some time with.

Ed
artislens.com

Which essay?

The one on LuLa's main page...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/...ion-intro.shtml

This would be the offer mentioned above ...



So far the only thing the article has generated is a bunch of ass hattery about JPC's choice of image to use as an example.

Indeed! ......... and I think it deserves better hence this attempt to start some reasonable conversation in a forum that might be better suited for it.

Ed

He lost me in his first paragraph. "Over the years my students have asked me for good resources on composition. They’re looking for something sophisticated but not overly complex and ultimately practical." The best "ultimately practical" resource on composition is the work of people like Atget, HCB, Walker Evans, Gene Smith, etc., etc. You can't teach composition with words.

What about the 10 or 11 images after the first paragraph?

Sorry, Dark. He loses me in generalities. I guess the images are fine if you plan to build photographs in Photoshop. I prefer to build them with a camera.

I read it and had a good impression from top to bottom. Since the words are easy to interpret in ways JP didn't intend, you would probably have to study it at some length, which requires an act of faith that your time invested won't be wasted, or, get an interpreter.

I was really hoping for a positive conversation about what what we can take from the essay that could improve our work. I would encourage anyone else to investigate the four pages of divergent opinions to be found in the About This Site' forum. I fully realize that neither JPC nor his approachs are everyone's cup 'o tea and those opinions are given full voice at this link, it would be a blatant Dept. of Redundancy Department violation to repeat them here.

Thanks

Ed,

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I think JPC is a very, very good photographer, but that doesn't necessarily make him a good teacher. I'd suggest that looking at his photographs is a lot more helpful than looking at his words. I think the kind of thing he's teaching might be helpful if the subject were painting. But painting is a contemplative art. You can sit down with a sketch pad and construct a composition by following the kind of rules-based approach JPC is putting forth, but you can't do that with a photograph. HCB said it best: "We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory." Photographic composition has to be intuitive. You don't have time to construct it. You have to see the subject and the geometric relationships all at once or it's no go. That's why I keep harping on looking at photographs in order to learn about composition. Photographic composition is something you have to absorb rather than learn.

This is the phrase that hooked me. All of the rest seemed obvious enough.

"It’s interesting to consider whether other dimensions exist in and of themselves or are they instead produced by a relationship of already existing elements, such as position, space, and orientation. Some important dimensions may even arise through psychological attributions, such as weight."

[quote name='RSL' date='Jun 12 2009, 08:18 PM' post='290935']
Ed,


Photographic composition has to be intuitive. You don't have time to construct it. You have to see the subject and the geometric relationships all at once or it's no go. That's why I keep harping on looking at photographs in order to learn about composition.




Exactly, and why talk about teaching it to photographers is, in my view, deceitful, to put it mildly.

I tire of this never-ending yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.... surely to God, has it not occurred to everyone that most of our great snappers have been entirely self-produced, hatched and pushed out of the nest years ago, to fly or die, and those great ones flew. They didn´t need this "mentoring," "tutoring" nonsense: they just damn well got out there and did it! Be like Nike.

Rob C

Hi Russ,

I have to respectfully take issue with two of the points you make. First, at this time I am primarily studying painting in order to improve my photography. In my opinion there is enough commonality of visual principles that there is much to be gained. If you peek over at my site, many of my current images are quite consciously influenced by gestural abstract expressionism, which happens to be of particular interest at the moment. While there are a few pretty obvious experiments with PhotoShop manipulation, the majority are 'natural' pictures, that is, pretty much as I shot them. At this point in my artistic development, while I very much enjoy looking at photography of all types, I'm finding that it's teaching me less all the time while delving into other arts, especially painting is paying big dividends.

The second issue is the question as to why you feel that JPC is advocating a 'rules-based approach'? His statement in the essay: ' .......Forget rules. Forget absolutes. Forget musts. Instead develop an awareness of visual principles.' would seem to indicate his advocacy of quite the opposite. While the various popular 'Rules of Composition' are good training wheels, once one has progressed past 'novice' they need to come off or become a crutch. His suggestion that one needs to understand and learn to apply the basic principles and not be bound by hard and fast Rules is one I heartily agree with.

My own opinion based on my experience is that for neophyte photographers the study of photography is essential, just as painters really need to study the classical methods before they just start slinging paint. The failure to move beyond that and continue to make photography the primary, if not sole, focus of one's developmental effort leads one into that self-referential rut that I mentioned over in the other thread.

Finally, he also explicitly makes the point that the new digital realities open up dramatic new potentials to photographers including a more contemplative approach.

Ed
artislens.com

Ed, I'd certainly agree that learning painting can be a boost to your composition skills, but in my own experience most rote teaching in art has to do with materials and technique. I have to admit that most of my art training had to do with life drawing rather than painting, so painting may go into areas my drawing classes didn't go into. Composition seemed to be taught by example -- in other words, by looking at well-composed drawings with comments by the instructor. I'd also be quick to admit that many of the best photographers had extensive art training in drawing and/or painting. HCB probably is the prime example.



Those statements are easy to toss out, just like his earlier command to "think outside the box." My problem is that I don't see what you can teach verbally or in writing other than rules. Yes, the standard rules of composition make good early training wheels, but after you've taught them, what else can you teach? Even the basic rules, if they're to have any effect on students, have to be accompanied with examples, and to someone who's visually oriented, which a good photographer must be, the examples are going to have a much greater effect than the talk.



I don't see anything in that opinion with which I can disagree. In the ten years my wife owned her gallery I saw a lot of very young people who were convinced they could just start slinging paint, or throwing pots, or blowing glass. Most of it was very bad. If I disagree with anything associated with that, it's Dale's idea that you have to stop looking at the work of the masters in order to break free to create your own oeuvre. You'd have to be pretty impressionable and incompetent for that to be true, and if you were you'd never become anything other than a recorder of information.



I'm afraid he loses me with that one. I don't think photography can be contemplative, unless he's talking about studio still life. If you're doing street photography you're lucky if you have more than a second to line up your shot and shoot. If you're doing landscape the clouds move and the sun disappears, etc. You have to pick your moment and shoot. I don't see that digital makes any difference, unless he's talking about extensive manipulation in Photoshop. I guess you can call that photography -- we went through another very long thread on that subject -- but, as you know if you read that thread, I have a hard time calling it that.

By the way, I do think this is a subject worth a lot of discussion, though off the top of my head, in general I agree with Rob, and also with Elliott Erwitt that when it comes to photography there's nothing to teach in the classroom sense of teaching.

I've been in a lot of classes (in the classroom sense) where we did things - didn't just sit and stare, or fill out test papers. So I guess the "classroom sense" requires some explaining. Hard to accept that there's nothing to teach.

Hi Russ,

Ahh the ambiguity of the English Language....... I didn't mean that I was learning to paint but rather I was spending significant time looking at painting by those painters who are acknowledged as 'Masters' AND whose work I personally respond to. These include Turner, Monet and the Impressionists, Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky and many Modernists and PostModernists such as Rothko, Stella, etc. I look critically with a view to trying to understand the visual principles they are using, why their work appeals to me, and... most important... how it could inform and help me improve my photography. I also read quite a bit, and in the case of someone like Kandinsky who did write about his theories of art, I go to the source.

My belief is that while, as you and others have pointed out, there is a great difference between painting and photography in term of the act of creation, especially in that a photographer must 'see faster', there is a great commonality in how the final product is viewed. In both cases a more or less two dimensional image on a wall that must visually grab the viewer and encourage them to spend more than the average 5 seconds interacting with the work. Given that painters have more time to think about what they're doing, I have to think that they have evolved some powerful visual methods and approaches to composition to accomplish this end and that by studying their work I can 'absorb' it in a way that will help guide me when I'm making those lightning judgments through my viewfinder. I would also comment that it's considerably more than just viewer appeal, there are powerful visual languages and grammers that have been developed that are aimed at appealing to the viewers on many different levels that have been and are currently be explored by many different visual artists that are well worth attention. In fact, I consider my subscriptions to ArtNews and ArtForum as valuable to me as any of the Photography magazines that I get.

I suspect this is no different from what you hope to gain from studying the photographic masters you mention. We're probably doing the same thing, I just have chosen different material to study.

As far as the worthlessness of words when teaching composition. Let's do a thought experiment:

Imagine a gallery hung with the best work from which ever Master you admire the most. I would assume that we would all agree that spending significant quality time in that gallery would be of great value in terms of improving our art. Now imagine that I have a 'magic wand' such that I could summon that Master through time and have them be willing to spend that quality time in the gallery walking with you, answering any questions you have, and discussing their work in depth. Are you really going to tell them to shut up as their words could not possibly add anything to the experience?

I submit for consideration that once you're open to the idea that words from anyone could enhance the value to be had from viewing a given work, then you should consider that there are probably other people out there who have ideas, knowledge, or insights who might be worth listening to. Set them up in front of a group of people and voila ....... a class.

That said, I do agree that there are many blow-hards out there, and, in fact, I rarely attend classes or workshops. I've found a significant BS factor, as apparently you have, and even in the case of people who really know their stuff, there is usually a 'attempting to drink from a firehose' factor that severely limits the value that I, at least, can take away. I do purchase Dvd's, and books........ especially books where are by far the greatest bang for your educational buck if one is willing to spend the time with them.

Ed
artislens.com

Ed, Fascinating. I look at paintings too and it seems our tastes run in similar paths. I'd add Edward Hopper:

Click to view attachment

I call this deserted place my "Hopper Barn." I can see Hopper sitting at his easel in front of it as he gives it that otherworldly feeling photography can't quite pull off.

I also agree that it's worth while to read what artists and photographers have to say about their own work. I don't recall reading Kandinsky's theories, but, thanks to you, I probably will now. One of the reasons I like HCB is his eloquent writing, but he doesn't try to teach composition with words. He simply says that you have to compose with educated intuition.



And I certainly can't disagree with that. Yes, it's worthwhile to spend time with any really great visual art. It's as worthwhile to absorb the elements of composition by looking at paintings and drawings as it is to do so by looking at photographs. The principles are the same, though it's worth while for a photographer to learn about the things you see in paintings that you can't reproduce in photographs. But, I'd suggest that you learn good composition more through osmosis than through words.



Again, I can't disagree, but I suspect Atget wouldn't tell me, "Now, I put that over there because it satisfies the rule of thirds, and I brought all three of these roofs into the picture because they produce repetition..." I suspect his answers to any questions would be on a higher plane than that. And I still think looking at the pictures would be the most important part of the experience.



Here's where we may disagree. Depends on what that class is trying to teach, and whether or not the teacher is also a doer. You might be interested to read a review I wrote back in 2005 on the book, Stieglitz, A Beginning Light, by Katherine Hoffman. Ms. Hoffman is a "professor of fine arts." You can read it at http://www.amazon.com/Stieglitz-Beginning-...howViewpoints=1



Here we agree right down the line.

Regards,

But you can use words and your index finger to point out an element of a composition, or a relationship between elements, that your student might not have seen, or if seen, meght not have registered, or if registered, might not have realized its importance to the effect of the picture. And if that element, or combination of elements, is something that the works of the photographers you name treat in a similar manner, you begin to have a principle of composition that seems to hold true for the style, or styles, of those photographers. Other photographers might or might not treat that aspect of composition in the same way, adding evidence for that element as being more universal or more associated with a given style.

Either way, the words and index finger can help to produce an "aha" moment for a student for whom the issue might never have been seen, or might have been perceived at a pre- or non-verbal level but not crystallized into conscious awareness.

I would also like to state that some of what we do and value in photography works because of fixed principles of perception derived from our neurological makeup, such as seeing certain configurations more quickly than others, etc. These would underlie commonalities in the styles of various art and probably across cultures. On the other hand, ways of using (or not using) these underlying neourological realities of human sight and perception also vary from culture to culture as the meanings of the perceptions become more, or less, valued. Even within a culture, the meanings and values change over time...or not.

A musical example: I was taught as a child that "music is a universal language." I also was taught that music in a minor mode often represents sadness, while a major mode represents the opposite. After learning to hear and interpret that way I discovered music from the middle east which, more often than not, was composed in minor modes yet sounded happy to people of those cultures.

I had another shock when a professor from India taught me a lesson when I invited her to hear my collection of recordings from India. She asked if I thought I understood something about the music. She did not mean the musical theory of the music, but the emotional content. She gave me a "drop the needle" test (remember phonograph records?). When she asked "happy or sad?" I would respond. Even though I knew these recordings by heart, and despite the fact that I was a professor of muscal comosition and theory, my "score" on 25 musical examples was not only poor, but less than I would have achieved simply by chance! So much for the "universality" of "the musical language."

A problem in trying to teach anything about composition, musical or otherwise, comes in how elements of style are valued. We can find what appear to be common principles in a given style of art (or specifically, photography), but this is analysis of what certain people did in their photographs. If we then teach these elements of style, our students might learn that photography that does not follow those "principles" cannot be "good" photography, rather than learning that "this is what these photographers did in that style."

I think that Caponigro's approach to isolating elements of composition can, in the best case, give anybody from snapshooters to professionals, a way of learning to be more aware of what they potentially can see and how to explore the use of these elements to make something that works for them.



JPC has done a nice job of isolating elements of composition, without making value judgments about them.

Walter,

Having had ten years of piano lessons, which ended when I became fifteen and discovered that girls were more interesting than the idea of becoming a concert pianist, I’d have to agree that in music, details are important, especially in composition. And though I had a hard time learning to read music, even at a very elementary level, since I could memorize easily, I’d have to agree that in music words and an index finger can make a difference.

But when we talk about learning photographic composition, I’m not so sure that details of individual style matter that much. The common principles you mention, at least the ones that matter, are, in fact, common: a proper grasp of geometry, a proper distribution of masses and lines, and a proper location of the main thing the picture’s about. In photographic composition you don’t want to “isolate” elements of composition, you want to conjoin them, intuitively and at once.

Having spent three years in Asia I’m not at all surprised at your showing in your “drop the needle test.” One of the wonderful things about Asia is that cultures there can be very different from our own. Look at how Asian painting handles perspective. Instead of showing distance with vanishing lines it uses changes in brightness – each receding plane fainter than the last. The difference is lovely and instructive. Unfortunately a camera won’t let you do that.

If you look at well-known photographs (as opposed to photographs by well-known photographers -- that is, if you focus on the images themselves) you will find that most of them are well-composed. If you tear them apart, they have certain structural elements that make them visually engaging.

Some of these things are quite simple, and are virtual cliches -- don't have telephone poles, or anything else, growing out of peoples' heads, unless you're doing it for a good reason. If you have a portrait of somebody taken from the side, don't press his/her nose against the edge of the photo, while leaving space behind the head; that is, if there's space, have the person looking into it, not looking at the edge of the photo. Roads, edges and lines work best when leading the eye into the photo, rather than out. Simple things like these are almost instinctive, but they can be (and are) formulated as rules, and they can be learned, and they can be violated by people who know what they are doing. Other compositional propositions are not so much rules as ideas, but the ideas can be expressed and discussed and taken account of.

To say that photos have to be composed in a split second is only true in certain kinds of documentary photography (I would include wedding photography in that designation) and street photography, and in those areas, there is usually some leeway for poor composition, because of shooting conditions. And yet the very best street and wedding photos are well-composed. People who argue that you really don't have time for composition are correct in a sense -- you may not have time to contemplate a situation, or fuss with the composition. True. But if the composition isn't there, well, your photo won't be great, and won't become famous. Tough luck. The point is made clearest by the photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson -- he made possibly two of three dozen really famous photos (and maybe not that many), though he shot literally tens of thousands. All of his famous photos are well-composed; perhaps not because he composed them consciously, but because statistics were in his favor. That is, if somebody works hard at photography, and makes tens of thousands of photos, some are going to be well-composed, and those, if any, are the ones that will become famous. I think HCB became famous because he actually had such a high hit rate. Another person with a similar kind of compositional eye is James Nachtwey, who has actually been criticized because his best war photographs seem to be composed with an aesthetic sensibility that sometimes can make violence beautiful.

Sear Reid, who does the review forum, goes to a Daytona Beach motorcycle rally every year (if I recall correctly), sets up a camera and shoots passers-by. It's a form of street photography, but by choosing a background and an idea, he almost guarantees himself good composition. That is, he uses building elements and backgrounds to emphasize the movement and appearance of his street subjects. Many photo artists do that kind of things - and some of them create entire fictional scenarios that they then photograph, and these photos are usually beautifully composed. Most of these people know what they are doing; this is not happening by accident. They learned to compose photos, and not by random experimentation.

JC

I found this to be a very interesting and instructive story. How did you feel about your previous enjoyment of the music? While your engagement with the music obviously changed with your increasing knowledge, did that somehow invalidate the meanings and enjoyment you had previously had?

Does the idea of music being a 'universal language' mean that everyone everywhere needs/must draw the same experiences from a given piece or performance?

I would comment that while hearing a flat spoken language that I do not understand doesn't do a thing for me, I can engage on some level with pretty much any type of music. For example, the first time I ever heard Tuvan Throat Singing I went 'WOW' and immediately bought several CD's. Now, I am under no illusion that this music has anything like the meaning to me that it would to a Tuvan, and I actually have no interest in understanding the lyrics. I mean, if a given song speaks to me in such a manner that I feel all mellow and relaxed what do I care that it might actually be about Mongol Hordes ravaging a village, raping and enslaving the women and eviscerating the men, staking them out under a blazing sun to have their living guts pecked at by crows? (Got to love those Mongols!).

The bigger question of interest to photographers, given that visual art is likewise a 'universal language', is to what extent should an artist predefine the reaction and meanings that a viewer draws from their work? Or is it simply enough that we hold up our end of an invited conversation, and as long as people are willing to take the time to engage with our work on some level and walk away feeling/thinking/knowing/... something that wasn't there before, we should be happy.

Thanks,

Ed
artislens.com

I think you have hit the nail firmly on its bonce. Other than the fact that a universal language still has the problems associated with accents, I do believe that the pic should do the talking. In many cases, what the viewer brings to the party might well be more rewarding than that which the host has provided on the house.

Rob C

Thanks for a very thoughtful response. I think we basically agree. On your statement about not wanting to isolate elements of composition, but to conjoin them, hopefully intuitively and at once, I don't think it is contradictory to say that if a photographer becomes more consciously aware of ways of conceptualizing the elements within a composition, even through exercises such as suggested by Caponigro, they eventually become integrated into a way of seeing and the expanded vocabulary hopefully becomes intuitive again. On the other hand, I would argue that some studio photography can be planned down to the last tiny detail (still-life, portrature, mis-en-scene, etc) yet those choices can still be made on an intuitive basis.

Your example of perspective depiction by decreasing layers of brightness is strong. But when you say "a camera won't let you do that," it makes me think of some of the pictures made in the early morning or at dusk from a peak in the mountains, looking across several layers of terrain with the top of the image being another row of mountain tops meeting the misty layer of sky. Nothing in the scene provides a sense of scale, and no "leading lines" are available to imply convergence into the distance, but we are awed by the layering produced by changes in brightness and saturation.

In fact, looking at (and comprehending the techniques of) Asian painting can sensitize and motivate us to look for such scenes to capture and convey the feeling so well expressed in the Asian styles. So, where you say the camera won't let you do that, I would say if you learn to see perspective as depicted in an Asian painting, you can then fool the camera into capturing the same effect.

In my own creative work, whether as a composer of music or a photographer, I can say that while there are similarities in the processes of both, there are also differences. I can also say that some of what I do in each was the result of a core way of seeing or hearing that was present from the beginning (even as a child) and continue as a "red thread" even in my latest efforts. Yet many of the things that have been taught to me would not have come through intuition, yet have been so worked into my way of creating that they can operate on the intuitive level. Yes, sometimes the struggle is to let that happen and not let the "knowledge" interfere.

An amusing example. About a year ago I spotted this pile of snow fading in the warming weather. To my eye it so clearly looked like a woman in traditional Japanese garb kneeling and gazing off into the distance that I could not imagine seeing anything else. I put together this PhotoShop montage in which I attempted to capture that feeling. When I showed it to a couple of photo-literate friends they burst into laughter. I was very puzzled, and it turned out that all they could see was a rubber chicken!!! Talk about a dialectical difference

A very good lesson for me, and the picture (until now) was regulated to the dustbin of my personal history.

Ed
artislens.com
Click to view attachment

Sure it can, Russ, the attached is a straight shot. To my eye there isn't a lot of convergence perceptive, but naturally occurring mist and fading clearly delineate at least three different distance planes.

I'm sure you know the reason why the Chinese, at least, use their approach to perspective is that the paintings are traditionally done on scrolls which are unrolled and viewed a little at a time. They did not adopt a 'framing' approach, but rather the image is all one, the story changing and evolving as the scroll unrolls. The European mathematical perceptive approach simply could not be rendered with any sense in that format. While the vanishing point approach was the most recently adopted, back in the Italian Renaissance, Western art has continued to use the relative size and the fade approach to rendering distance right along side.

Ed
artislens.com

Click to view attachment

Ed: I took the liberty of numbering your statements so that I can address them without repeating the words. You raise questions that have been debated in the worlds of music and the visual arts probably since the first cave paintings, and they will be debated as long as there are creative people around this old planet. I will address these statements, and I emphasize that they are just my own thoughts...I am not trying to give definitive "answers." I relish discussions like this as long as people do not get doctrinaire, and divide into "camps."

1: As I learned more about, in this case, Indian music, my perceptions of it changed and I was able to appreciate it on a new level. However, what I did lose was the first response to what was the "newness" of the music to me. While I usually feel that what I gained is more gratifying than what I lost, sometimes I do wish I could hear it more naively again. But my greater "sophistication" does not at all negate the value of hearing the music in an untutored way. I remember my mouth dropping as a kid when I first heard Beethoven's 5th symphony. I had never heard (nor heard of) symphonies, much less Beethoven. I can now point to any phrase in the piece and show you how it relates to any other part of it, and I fully enjoy that. But even though I can still "get lost" in the sound of it, I would give my eye teeth to go back and re-experience it for the first time.

2: Even two musicians playing the same piece after years and years of learning and practice don't have the same experience or derive the same meaning from the music. And music is more abstract than spoken language, so what we have left is just the hope that something basically human is communicated, and let it mean what it will to each person that hears it.

3a: Related to my answer to "2," I have to say that thankfully, we are free to relate to music or any of the arts at the level we choose. I love Salsa, but my meager Spanish is often not sufficient to grasp the meaning of a song. Yet I feel the rhythm, hear the sonorities and find my foot tapping. Would finding out that the song was a commercial for Budweiser Beer make a difference? I don't know. But when I have taken the time to translate the words of some songs, I derived an additional understanding that I feel enriched my experience of the music. But sometimes, I just like to let the sound wash over me, completely unaware of the meaning of the words.

4a: The answer is that the artist (photographer, in this case) should "pre-define" what he or she wants the viewer to get, to the extent that that photographer chooses. Even then, what the viewer brings to the photograph is unique and not under the control of the photographer, any way. But if you are doing photography for advertising, you sure try to make that cake look appetizing, or that resort look like a getaway from work. There is no right answer to this, and there probably shouldn't be.

4b: Essentially, I feel that to whatever extent we want to express something specific in a photograph it is incumbent on us to do our best to convey our message. Yet we also have to remember that what the viewer brings to it is valid, and they may still have an experience quite different from what the photographer had hoped they would get when viewing the work. And, I think it is perfectly valid for us to make a photograph that we don't "understand" in terms of theme or story, but just wanted to make because something in the scene attracted us. And, if the viewer cmes away with any reaction whatsoever, I for one am glad.

I am 68 years old, and am now much more mellow about what art is or isn't supposed to be, and about what people are "supposed" to get out of it. But I still feel that for me, at least, it is a means of communication, and what is implied with that is that it is communication of something about me to somebody else who will find a responsive chord when viewing my photograph.

Thanks, Ed, for the engaging questions.

Hallelujah Brother!!!!!!!!! and thanks for the thoughtful reply which I'm rereading and thinking about. What forums like this should be.



Have you read Mark Twain's 'Life on the Mississippi' ? He has a great passage discussing what becoming an expert riverboat pilot had done to his appreciation of a beautiful sunset. Where before he could revel in the beauty, he could now only see it in terms of how the swirls of water marked sandbars and what the color of the sky meant for the next day's weather.

I 'feel your pain' in terms of losing that naive viewpoint, in fact I recently volunteered to be a docent at our local art museum, in part to have an excuse to spend a lot of quality time with a rather good collection, but also in part because most of my touring will be with elementary school kids and I really want the opportunity to see the works through their eyes.

Ed, That's all true, but I don't know of any way to get rid of the vanishing point in photography. You can correct to some extent with a view camera or a lens with shifts and tilts, and you can pull things back into line in Photoshop, but the fix is limited. Yes, with the kind of shot you used as an example, where there aren't any reference points, the vanishing point appears to have vanished, but it's still there.

Thank's for the clarification, Russ,

Yes, you're right, unless you can place your film/sensor square to a flat subject, the vanishing point is along for the ride. In fact, in my example, the ice on the left converges toward the top center right leading the eye in to the dimly seen bridge. I thought you were saying that one couldn't do 'fade' perspective at all in a camera, not that it would have to be in addition to the convergence perspective which is quite true.

Ed, For heaven's sake, don't destroy it. With stuff like that you could become another Jackson Pollock. Don't pay any attention to the scoffers.

Walter, I don't think I can argue with any of this. If reducing things to their elements can help a photographer improve his* work, I'm all for it. Reducing things to their elements certainly helps in learning to draw.



Well, Ed popped up a good example of what you're saying, below. You can even add the fading planes effect in Photoshop. But you can't repeal the laws of physics and get rid of the vanishing point, though, who knows, Adobe may come up with a way to do that too. (I hesitate to say that because I wouldn't like them to think that's something they ought to do.)



All I can say is that I love Asian painting and Asian art in general. When I was in Korea in 1953 and early 54 I spent a week in Japan while I waited for my airplane to go through periodic maintenance. I bought several stunning woodcuts and shipped them home. Somehow, in one of our many moves over the following years my wife and I lost them. I'm still sad about that. I can't really replace them.



After I dropped the piano I took up poetry. By the time I was 19 I was beginning to get some of it published. I was fortunate enough to have a very, very good English composition teacher in high school, and even more fortunate to have an outstanding English literature professor at University of Michigan. I think poetry and photography have a lot in common, though, as you point out with regard to music, there are differences. But I think what you just said about learning an art is almost exactly what I've been saying. I don't think you learn to write or to photograph by intuition, but I do think you learn to write by writing, and, at least as important, by reading the works of the masters, and I think you learn to photograph by photographing, and, at least as important, and possibly more important, by looking at the work of the masters. The intuition part comes after you've absorbed what you've been reading or seeing. I can't write a good poem by planning. I have to sit down, stop actually thinking, and let intuition take over. Same thing with a photograph. As you said, you can't let the detailed "knowledge" interfere.

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* I hope I haven't insulted the distaff element in any of any of these discussions, but I absolutely refuse to corrupt the grammar of the English language to satisfy the dictates of political correctness.

Russ,

You might want to check out these guys. I did purchase some prints from them, and they're on the up and up. They also have a lot of good information and images online even if you're not in the market.

Thanks ( I think) I'm too much of a packrat to throw anything away.

Actually Pollock was a gesturalist, my current stylistic explorations are more along those lines than 'lonely girl' was..... Here's one I shot yesterday. I'm getting ready to take off for Photostock in a couple of days, so perhaps we'll defer the indepth conversation about applying Gestural Abstract Expressionism to photography until my return as I'll be pretty much offline while up there and I can't imagine that discussion could be concluded in just a few days! And, as I'm considering this a 'photography' retreat' in which I plan to do nothing but improve my work (my alternative to expensive workshops), I would hope I'll have more to say in a few weeks anyhow.

BTW- I might mention that this is a single shot, not a PS construction.

Click to view attachment

I looked up distaff in my Collins English dictionary, a fine uncensored dictionary not afraid to offend. Def.1 is a rod used in spinning, and def.2 is "figurative, women's work." Based on that, your grammar isn't politically incorrect, it's bigoted.

Nice image! It had a disorienting effect on me until I realized what it was. It reminded me of driving across the prairie in North Dakota one time, on a very narrow one lane road through wheat fields, just kind of taking in the scene, when several dark bugs walked across my windshield. I blinked, and the bugs became crows flying across the field and I realized how my eyes had misinterpreted their image. Or, rather, how my eyes had seen their image but my expectations led me to misinterpret them.

I take it that this image is a reflection of clouds and plant stuff in water, but it has a strong pull to *not* see it that way, producing really interesting tension.

I think many of the posts in this thread elaborating on the complexities of composition are works of art in their own right. You guys are just so good with words, I wonder if I can capitalize on that talent..

What I have in mind is an abstract painting created in the following manner.

I have a dog who is very obedient; will stay in the same position until I tell him to move.

I have in mind positioning a canvas immediately behind the dog as he faces me. I'll dip the dog's tail in paint of a certain color, then utter all sorts of endearing expressions, "Good boy!", "Aren't you a cutie!" etc etc.

As the dog wags its tail, all sorts of terribly meaningful paint strokes will occur on the canvas. I'll occasionally wash the dog's tail and apply a different color of paint, perhaps moving the canvas slightly to left or right.

Eventually, I'll have something that resembles a Jackson Pollack painting, but I need some authentification from the art critics.

That's were you eloquent guys come in. Perhaps I could employ you guys to wax lyrical on the complex relationships between the various element in my composition. I could become famous.

You need a better dictionary, Dale. Another, and probably the most used definition now that most people don't spin (unless they're politicians) is: "a woman or women collectively." Check it out in an unabridged.

Ray, When you finish getting the dog to create the wagtail panel, set the panel flat, then, taking a piece of plywood, dump out several colored paints from various tubes to make a palette. Finally, get the dog to walk over the palette and over the panel so that his pawprints will be added to his tailprints. Once you finish and show the result I'm sure the dog will be offered a show at MOMA, probably with an extensive catalog containing a complete analysis of the complex relationships between pawprints and tailprints. Your dog certainly will become famous and you can carry his bags as the show moves around the country and even the world.

That certainly is the way that I interpreted it, and speaking as one who does try to watch my language, I respect your opinion on the subject, and I also agree that there is a lot of linguistic ugliness that can and should be avoided One amusing story...... I had a good but very PC friend who insisted on refering to her Leatherman tool as a Leatherperson tool, I tried to explain that Tim Leatherman might not really appreciate it, but old feminist habits die hard

Now can we PLEASE return to our regularly scheduled programming..........

might want to check out this site

I would point out that pretty much every innovation in art and music was treated with considerable scorn and mockery. I recall that 'The Rite Of Spring' caused a riot at its first performance and that Van Gough didn't sell a single painting during his life (well maybe one, I'm too lazy to look it up) and died thinking himself a total failure as an artist. So perhaps you might want to hold open a space for the thought that there might be just a bit more to artists like Pollack than is apparent at the moment.

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps I'm finally getting somewhere thar I want to be.

Since you're the one who pontificated on "political correctness" and your mastery of the English language, perhaps you're the one who should study more. When I need more than what I've given you, I consult the etymology in the Oxford dictionary. That's that "really big" dictionary you see in the library.

That's very cute, until you go looking for accessories on the Internet. That's when you come face to face with reality. Words are "just words" after all, but they can also get you into big trouble, so I'm not at all impressed with peoples' arguments of innocence. And feminists are a better class of people.

Thanks for the advice, but I really think that would be a complete mishmash of style and technique. I lean towards simplicity in my art works.

I know! I know! I once had the opportunity to buy an elephant painting in Thailand but couldn't get my hand into my wallet fast enough because I was holding a camera.

The following shot is of a very proud elephant who has just painted some lovely red flowers.

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Taken from an aircarft window, perhaps?

Well, simplicity has its place, but think of the commentary you could do on the significance of the arrangements of tailprints versus pawprints.

A couple months ago I was in the Orlando Museum of Art looking at a painting that resembled a two-dimensional rendition of the "installation" -- don't remember where it happened -- that got a janitor fired when he cleaned it up and dumped it in the trash. Then I looked at the artist's explanation of the painting and found that it was a portrait of his mother. Since a docent was nearby I tried to suppress my reaction, but she caught me laughing and gave me a very dirty look.

Dale, are you sure you want to get in even farther over your head than you already are? You're probably already one of the world's top contenders for posterior orifice of the year.

Sure, Rob. It's what Stieglitz called an "equivalent." You pointed a camera at it and tripped the shutter. Good "equivalent."