It’s week 3 of the August Photography Book Club and our study of Freeman Patterson’s Photography and the Art of Seeing. Catch up by reading the overview about the Book Club, the summary and exercises from week 1, the summary and exercises from week 2, or just jump right in from here. If you don’t have access to a copy of the book, you can still join in by participating in the exercises and reflections below. If you do have the book, you’ll have a lot more material to draw upon and work with.
Week 3 will focus on several smaller sections in the book: Unique properties of photography, How a camera sees space, Thinking about Visual Design, and Elements of Visual Design: Tone. Below, I’ve provided a few quotations that struck me from these sections and some suggestions for exercises. (All page numbers refer to the 2011 edition.)
Unique Properties of Photography and How a Camera Sees Space
Patterson begins by comparing and contrasting photography to other art forms, both two-dimensional and three-dimensional, and draws up a list of what he calls the “six fundamental characteristics of the photographic medium that distinguish it from other visual media” (pg. 83). These can be roughly summarized as
1. With photography, you have “an already existing object in front of your lens” (pg. 84).
2. “Photography has the capacity to render detail with a precision no other visual medium can match” (pg. 84).
3. Photographers must act with the right timing for the moment or the image.
4. Photographers have the potential to ‘stop the world’ with the speed of their exposures.
5. Photography has a “special connection with chance” (pg. 85) but can still prepare to ‘be lucky.’
6. Photography is dependent on light. “One might say that a photographer paints with light” (pg. 86).
Patterson then moves into a discussion of how a camera can perceive a scene differently that we do with our eyes and warns that photographers must “be sensitive to any elements that will not be recorded as the eye perceives them” (pg. 88).
Try to exploit one or more of these fundamental characteristics this week in your photography. See how ‘stopping the world’ (using a fast shutter speed) can change your perception of a scene or contrast with how you saw it with your eyes. (Here are some examples from the recent technique challenge of fast shutter speed.)
Or, experiment with shooting fast moving or rapidly changing subjects in burst mode (several pictures at once). Take some time to sit down and analyze each image. Does one stand out as a better ‘lucky’ capture than another? What can you learn from that about capturing exactly the moment in only one shot?
Thinking about Visual Design and Tone
“A photographer works with two kinds of visual design – the design she [or he] observes in her [his] subject matter, and the design she [he] creates in her [his] photograph by the way she [he] arranges the subject matter” (pg. 101).
Patterson differentiates between ornamentation (frills and extras) and design (intention in composition) and challenges us to simplify our images by questioning the necessity of what we have decided to include in the frame. Try to draw this distinction in your own photographs this week. Can you eliminate the ‘ornaments’ to focus purely on the design? Share what you changed when trying this approach (or even a ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison). What did you eliminate and why?
Patterson’s section on tone focuses in on light, including both the quality (harshness or softness) and the direction (frontlighting, sidelighting, and backlighting) of that light. Light is then discussed in its relationship to line, shape, texture, and perspective. Try to experiment with light this week. Take a series of pictures changing the direction of the light (front, side, and back) by either moving your light source or moving yourself. See how this changes your image. Or, explore the idea of perspective: play with changing sharpness, relative size, relative location, or the obliqueness of objects in your photographs to see how their visual relationships change. You could even try a forced perspective shot or an optical illusion by manipulating these relationships.
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Please consider tagging any photographs related to or inspired by this week’s book club with the tag bookclub-seeing3 and/or adding your photographs and thoughts about them to this post for discussion. Please also consider joining in the book club conversation with photographers outside of 365 by posting comments or images on the book club blog posts at http://www.archaeofrog.com or by joining the Flickr group: Photography Book Club http://www.flickr.com/groups/photographybookclub/ .
If you are commenting on an individual’s photograph, please consider clicking on it and then commenting on it directly. If you want to share a comment, thought, or picture with the whole group, then include it on the discussion thread itself.
Parting words for the week: “Critics who scorn the ‘lucky’ chance of a photographer are suggesting an accident takes place when a photographer captures a unique event that lasts for only a moment, but it is no accident if the photographer anticipates the event and knows how to use his [or her] tools … A photographer has to hope for and prepare for ‘lucky’ chance” (pg. 85).
From a series of shots with the exact same composition (of a fast-moving subject). This one was my favorite of the bunch, as there was a good mix of foreground to background bikers, and I liked the smiles and similar head-turns of the nearest bikes. (Same event as Bill's shot above.)
A 10 second exposure at f18 while using a variable ND filter set to max.
For the photography book club indicating what the camera can see that the eyes don't see.
Here's one more. It was an inadvertent capture. I failed to remember "Camera Zero", so this was a 5 second hand held exposure. I actually shut off the camera when I realized it was going to be a much longer exposure. So, here's what the camera sees when you hand hold and take your eye from the viewfinder, move it down and shut it off. :-)
That's a full moon and street lights.
My book arrived today!!!! Yay!!! (and it's very different to the 2004 edition I had from the library - can't wait for the weekend when I hope to be able to go back through the earlier sections!)
I took this shot yesterday, but only realised now that it perfectly illustrates the second of Patterson's unique characteristics of photography - that "a photograph becomes an aide to visual discovery". It was only while reviewing my shots that I became aware of how fascinated I was by the backwash from the waves.
August Book Club: Week 3
How a Camera Sees, p. 87
"The camera sees some objects differently from the human eye, because we mentally correct distortions while the camera does not." Perhaps the book's example of looking up at a tall building can be applied here, to looking across a flat object at an angle.
I'm sorry I'm so behind Katie! You've been doing such a good job and I appreciate it. Here is mine based on #5 above: 5. Photography has a “special connection with chance” (pg. 85) but can still prepare to ‘be lucky.’
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For the photography book club indicating what the camera can see that the eyes don't see.
That's a full moon and street lights.
I took this shot yesterday, but only realised now that it perfectly illustrates the second of Patterson's unique characteristics of photography - that "a photograph becomes an aide to visual discovery". It was only while reviewing my shots that I became aware of how fascinated I was by the backwash from the waves.
How a Camera Sees, p. 87
"The camera sees some objects differently from the human eye, because we mentally correct distortions while the camera does not." Perhaps the book's example of looking up at a tall building can be applied here, to looking across a flat object at an angle.