Saturday, July 21, 2007

The role that chance (or luck) plays


Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia (_DSC1650), originally uploaded by hackspot.
Location: Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, 21080 Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens

"Photography is the only major art in which professional training and years of experience do not confer an insuperable advantage over the untrained and inexperienced - this for many reasons, among them the large role that chance (or luck) plays in the taking of pictures, and the bias toward the spontaneous, the rough, the imperfect."

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Posted by Mohd Fadzly Abdul Mubin at 2:20 AM |

Directorial skills of the photographer


Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia (_DSC1532), originally uploaded by hackspot.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens

All portraits are staged, so I contend that they are just being themselves in an artificial environment. Whether they are "relaxed" or "comfortable" is a different question and the answer to that is dependent on both the sitter's psychology and the directorial skills of the photographer.

"Natural" vs. "artificial" light is a false dichotomy. It is false as in the distinction lies two implications:

  • that the photographer has given up some degree of control over a very fundamental formal aspect of their photography.
  • that natural light is somehow more "trustworthy."

Some photographers may be more comfortable just taking things as they find them (I sometimes am), but that doesn't relieve you of the decision of when and where and how to make the photograph.

"If they wear a ton of make up who am I to say they can't." Of course they can! It's their choice. But if you think it looks bad, why, don't you think you have an obligation (as the person making the photograph) to point that out?

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Posted by Mohd Fadzly Abdul Mubin at 1:59 AM |

To show the true being


_IGP9147, Perhentian Island, Terengganu, Malaysia, originally uploaded by hackspot.
Taken with a Pentax K100D and Tamron AF 70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro lens

"...to show the true being of the subject."

Which is something I think is impossible with a photograph. A photographer can show what they as a person perceive to be a truth about a "subject" (see how even the commonly used language that we use make a captive of the person being photographed?), and if as photographers we express that well, I think a viewer is more likely to respond with some sort of engagement.

And the more we know about the person photographed -- the more information we have to work with in judging the "honesty" of the photograph.

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Posted by Mohd Fadzly Abdul Mubin at 1:52 AM |

A conspiracy of "fictions"


Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia (_DSC1535), originally uploaded by hackspot.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
Location: Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, 21080 Kuala Terengganu, Terengganu, Malaysia

Honesty is a loaded word when describing photographs, which are "fictions" the photographer and the person photographed have conspired to create -- but where the photographer clearly has loaded the deck and holds the upper hand. But still, as in all fiction there can be honest emotions and ideas expressed. So I don't mean honest in any sense that a philosopher or jurist would accept. I mean honest in terms of creating a response in me, the viewer. It's something you know when you are experiencing it.

To be clear, the only truth a photograph holds for me is that is a photograph, something a photographer created. I think it is intellectually dishonest to hold one art form, photography, to a standard that we do not hold other arts to. Experiencing art involves a certain suspension of disbelief. After all, when we listen to music that evokes the sea, do we demand that it is only worthwhile if actual sea made sounds are used and that someone is throwing buckets of seawater on us while we listen? But I do want to "connect" in some way with what I'm looking at, tasting, listening too, or touching.

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Posted by Mohd Fadzly Abdul Mubin at 1:46 AM |

Portraits that feel false


Chendering Fisheries Garden, Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia (_DSC1485), originally uploaded by hackspot.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens

Certainly, there are many portraits that feel false, for various reasons. Those reasons can range from too much gauze effect to make a woman's skin supposedly look better to a snapshot-like smile on the subject that makes the emotion feel barren.

I like the more straightforward portraits (I tend to work in black and white) but ones that seem to capture a particular moment or gesture, one that feels vital. Yet some very "staged" portraits feel genuine as well, in the right hands. You seem to use both "honesty" and "reach me emotionally" as criteria. I think the former is more problematic than the latter. For me, emotion from a portrait is crucial. But I'm never sure what "honesty" means with respect to photography.

I think there are great portraits that reach people emotionally, are extremely expressive, and seem quite genuine but are not necessarily what a lot of people would consider "honest." In other words, one may catch a crabby older woman in a gesture or look of sweetness. That still may be a very much "real" look of that woman but not a represenatitive one. So is that honest? If most people who don't know the subject come away assuming that the portrait has captured the woman's "essence" (which I don't believe a portrait does do or should do - I tend to see portraits as capturing essential moments), is there a lack of honesty?

And, sometimes a portrait is able to capture a universal emotion, gesture, or moment that is more a statement of the photographer than it is a representation of anything about the subject. Depending on the situation, that can be a very valid and honest portrait as well. Dramatic lighting may change someone's appearance a lot yet may capture something very poingnant that the photographer is feeling at the moment.

Subjects are "used" all the time in photography just as Hitchcock, for instance, "used" his actors. That could be, but would not by me, considered dishonest. As far as cloning out blemishes, etc., I think that will also depend on the type of portrait, whether or not someone is paying for it, and what the goal and vision of the photographer is.

Sometimes blemishes add to personality, crows feet add great character and lines to faces, bags under eyes can be very telling. But if one has been hired to do a portrait that will hang on the subject's wall, it seems perfectly legitimate to do a little flattering in the post processing. That flattering, however, is where most people get carried away, making their portraits look like plastic and losing any sense of skin texture or life. A refined and gentle hand in the post process would be my preference.

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Posted by Mohd Fadzly Abdul Mubin at 1:36 AM |