Is
It Art, or Is It Technique,
or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard?
<rant>
Is
It Art, or Is It Skill, or Is It just that he's a lucky Bastard? This
question has plagued the photographic community for over a century
now. This is just a short opinion article on my personal beliefs on
the subject. I was born with a very technical mind. And in general I
believe that good technique is a base to all great art! Thats not to
say that there isn't any great Art produced by people with little to
completely no technical skill. I in general try to look at
photography though lenses colored with proper technique. Every
picture I take I try to maximize every pixel or piece of Silver
Halide with the use of proper technique. Unfortunately, this does not
always work out. Sometimes no matter what techniques you use or how
hard you try, the picture just refuses to work out. If you look at
this situation from a purely techniques based viewpoint, it would
tell you to abandon the possible photograph due to the fact that none
of the techniques work for this photograph. Therefore it must be a
bad photograph. This is where your artistic mind comes into play.
When you use your artistic mind you can find unorthodox solutions to
problems. What I'm trying to say is that Techniques are not rules.
They are guide lines meant to be bent, broken, disassembled, and then
reassembled to fit the current situation. If
you use nothing but pure by the book techniques while shooting you
end up with a portfolio of nothing but sterile cookie cutter work.
When you first start photographing the world, by the book techniques
can become a suit of armor. One thing I failed to realize when I
began is that it's ok to wear by the book techniques like a suit of
armor but you have to remember to remove the helmet or else it will
impair your vision of the world.
Now
to change to the purely art perspective. From the purely Art
perspective ,all by the book techniques exist purely to restrain your
artistic vision and serve almost no practical purpose in this world.
The content of the pictures is the only thing that matters. Technical
quality is only good when it does not interfere with the picture
making process. I have tried shooting this way and I must say that
it's refreshing not to be bound by technique or quality standards.
Not having my camera glued to the tripod really freed me to move
around and explore. Unfortunately, the down side of that way of
shooting is that the amount of keepers is drastically decreased
compared to when I used proper techniques to photograph my subjects.
And
now onto the people who say that great photographs are based purely
on luck and how expensive their camera is. These are the kind of
people that say that Ansel Adams was just in the right place at the
right time and had a VERY, VERY, VERY, expensive camera. They are the
people who think that it's the camera not the photographer who takes
the photos. They equate the price of the gear they use to the quality
of the photographs they take. They fail to comprehend that it's the
photographers vision and use of proper technique that takes the
photographs, not the camera. Luck on the other hand does play a part
in photography, just not as large as you might think. Everyone has
the one photograph where everything came together perfectly, and in
other words you got lucky. What lots of people fail to realize is
that there are infinite chances in this world, that happen everyday
that we miss. Unfortunately we fail to see the world with eyes
unclouded by distraction. Henri Cartier-Bresson developed the theory
of The Decisive Moment which in its most pure sense is how to get the
I Got Lucky moment fairly often and increase your luck ratio. Here's
a good quote by him.
“The
simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the
significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms
which gives that event its proper expression... . In photography, the
smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can
become a leitmotif.”
This
is how Professional Photographers make all that luck. It's almost all
skill, and actually almost no luck.
To
have a great portfolio of work, is at best a difficult task. Proper
use of techniques can help, as can a proper amount of artistic
vision. The main point of this article is to say that Great
photography is made by the photographer, not the camera, not the
lens, and definitely not luck! Only a small amount of artistic vision
is needed. Photography is a technical skill based art form. If you
look at history, the pioneers of photography were scientist, chemists
and/or people with large amounts of scientific knowledge. Photography
has always been a technical based skill, and not all about art. That
was added later in history. In the modern day photography has become
an art form. However, it is important to remember that it's still a
technical based art form. So we all need to find the correct balance
between Art and proper technique. This balance is essential to the
shooting of great photography.
</rant>
P.S.
This was originally meant only to be a paragraph or two long, and
some how it grew to a much larger size. L.O.L
P.S.S.
If this article seems a little random, that's because it is. This
article is me using writing as a medium to help myself figure out my
own personal thoughts on the subject. Sorry if it doesn't make a lot
of sense.
