Musings on Photography

I’m still in the post-SoFoBoMo recovery, so I’m not quite up to speed yet.

Nevertheless, via Joe Reifer’s Ramblings about Photography, I found this very thought provoking post on Tony Fouhse’s tonyfoto/drool.

And here I must rant a bit about digital being “easy”. While it’s never really the machine that takes the photo (it’s the machines’ operator) digital makes it way more likely that just about anyone can come away with an image that’s, you know, properly exposed. Then don’t you just slap the file onto your computer screen and admire it for, like, 20 seconds before you hit NEXT, never really living with the image? But the way digital technology has made so much disposable, made the generation of photographs (and photographers) so easy (and so easy to delete, thereby erasing history) kind of bugs me.

Hmm. Sorry, I’m not buying any. I read/hear this complaint about ‘digital’ all the time, and to be honest, it always seems like complete bunkum to me.

Part of the problem is that I just don’t believe, even for a second, that we can really control how any eventual audience reacts to our work. We can control how WE react to the work, and that’s about it.

So when Fouse says “Then don’t you just slap the file onto your computer screen and admire it for, like, 20 seconds before you hit NEXT, never really living with the image”, he’s saying that for some bizarre reason, he can’t make himself do anything else. There’s nothing to prevent him leaving an image up on his screen for hours or days and interacting with it the way he’d interact with a print on the wall. There’s nothing to keep me from taking, say, a print of Ed Weston’s Pepper #30 and running it through a shredder, other than the fact that I like the print enough to hang it on the wall instead.

So all the argument about digital being ephemeral and ‘not real’ and ‘disposable’ is really more about our own attitudes, and not about the technology.

The part that really fails to stick for me is the idea that in order to make artmaking worthwhile, we must make the process hard. We must pay our dues, the reasoning goes, and we must make the process so difficult that we exclude the vast seething masses of wretched humanity from art-making. And I think that’s blowing smoke. I think it’s little more than some sort of guild behavior. If you’ve been reading here for long, you’ve probably come to realize that’s an attitude with which I vehemently disagree.

But interestingly, Fouhse continues:

Another reason why I’m planning on using the 4×5 is that it changes the ways you work. It slows things down. Each time I push the button it costs me 6 bucks (film and processing). Not that I’m gonna use that as an excuse to become (even more) anal. I’m just interested in using a different process, giving the old brain a workout.

I think it’s interesting because Fouhse seems to have done an abrupt turn, here. He’s gone from saying that if the work is done digitally, it’s too easy. Now he’s saying that doing it the hard way is useful to him because it slows him down and is more expensive, and imposing those constraints on himself is actually helpful and not a hindrance. In other words, he’s saying that using the 4×5 looks harder but is actually easier. In other words, he’s saying that imposing constraints on himself actually makes it simpler for him to get at making the art he wants to make.

One reason I find that interesting is that I’ve long suspected it was true for me, as well. SoFoBoMo is, if nothing else, an experiment in how imposing some seemingly pointless constraints (e.g. you must do everything in a one month period) would seem to make it harder to get a book done but actually makes it easier.

I’m still pondering this whole issue of whether Large Format photography is inherently contemplative, or even more contemplative than other formats.  I finally managed to find an excellent thread on the Large Format Photograpy website, which is well worth reading in it’s entirety, because lots of different viewpoints are expressed and there’s no flamewar.  There are 57 posts in that thread, and there are a broad range of views expressed.  It’s well worth reading.

I still agree with what I wrote on that thread:

…for years, I put up with the meager photographic output that I got when I exposed just a few sheets of film per day. I felt my photography was going nowhere and very slowly.

Then, on one trip to the Olympic Peninsula, I decided to chuck all that stuff, just as an experiment. My goal on that trip was to return with the largest possible pile of exposed film - and screw the whole ‘tuning’ the image thing. If I saw three compositional possiblities, I would expose film on all three. No longer would I spend countless minutes with painstaking focus, agonizing over zone placement, etc. Instead, I’d set up the camera, make the darn exposure, and then move on. If I botched the focus, well, tough.

Before the trip I did a little practice. At the end of the practice, I could set up the camera and make an exposure in about a minute.

On that trip, in one morning, I exposed over 50 sheets of film. Lesson number one was to put more than 50 sheets into the pack when hiking in. My goal was to set up the camera and make an exposure whenever I found something interesting. No ‘editting’ at exposure time. My goal was to get over the threshold where you look at something and ask yourself the question “is it worth spending 15 minutes on this?”. With practice, that question becomes ‘Is it worth spending 2 minutes on this?’ Trust me, you’ll capture far more interesting photographs when the threshold is set at two minutes than when it’s set at 15 minutes, not to mention better results in fleeting lighting.

Now for the bottom line - I got several great shots from that trip - more than any other trip to that point. I got lots and lots of shots ranging from ‘really good’ down to ‘darn good’. On top of that, I got perhaps half a dozen ‘what the heck was I thinking’ images.

I say forget the whole ‘contemplative’ thing. Practice ruthlessly with your gear to the point where you can set up, expose, and tear down in minimum time. You don’t have to always make exposures in a rush but the practice will mean that most of the time you *aren’t* rushing. Assess your gear for how efficient it is. If your meter is too fiddly and it takes more than a few seconds to make an exposure decision, ditch the meter on Ebay and buy a simpler one. At least for B&W work, exposure boils down to a simple decision and a fast way to mark the film for your development choice. I have labels pre-printed with ‘N’, ‘N-1′, ‘N+1′ etc which I just slap on the readyloads. I don’t fill out lengthy exposure records, take careful notes, or any of that stuff anymore.

And the real bottom line is this: on those trips where I have practiced and can make exposures quickly, I come back with more images, and better images. On those trips, I have more fun, I feel more satisfaction, and often I find myself swept up in a ‘flow’ which is really gratifying. None of that would happen if I continued to take 15 minutes to set up each exposure.

and

I think it’s a mistake to equate ’slow pace’ with ‘contemplative’.

If I spend a morning on the beach, and my process is that I just wander where my attention draws me, taking three minutes to make an exposure every fifteen minutes or so - that seems pretty contemplative to me. At that rate, I’d make 4 exposures an hour, or something like 16 exposures in a four hour morning of photography. At that pace, things seem unhurried. 12 minutes out of each hour are spent fiddling with the camera - 48 minutes are spent looking at things. In other words, you’re spending 80% of your time *looking* and 20% of your time setting up and making exposures.

Note what happens if it takes you 15 minutes to set up the camera and make an exposure - suddenly, four exposures an hour means that you’re spending 100% of your time on setup, and 0% of your time looking. It’s hard to be alert and attentive to your surroundings when you’re spending 100% of your time on setup.

So what happens is that you end up slowing down the pace. To get back to the 80% looking, you ease up to the point where you take one exposure every hour and a quarter. The results of your four hour foray have been reduced to 3 exposures. It’s tough to attend to what’s around you when each exposure you make represents 1/3rd of the morning because each exposure represents such a huge investment.

What I’ve learned, I think, is that it’s important to be able to make an exposure quickly and with little effort for two reasons: 1) it leaves more time for ‘contemplation’, and 2) it lowers the threshold between the impulse to make a photograph and the act of making it.

But don’t just consider what I wrote.  Go and read the entire thread.

One common thread from this post on the contemplative nature of large format (or rather my disbelief in same) stands out and deserves comment.  Mike Sherck writes:

It is, though, a little presumptuous for one person who doesn’t happen to respond the same way I do to tell me that I’m an incompetant fool.

And Jim Jirka echos the sentiment with

I too do not feel that I am an incompetant fool when I emerge after 10-15 minutes under the dark cloth.

Let’s be clear, here, who dragged these terms into the discussion.  Nowhere in my post did I use the word ‘fool’;  that word appears first in Mike Sherck’s comment. 

I think there’s an interesting discussion to be had about whether there’s any reality to the idea that large format is inherently more contemplative than other camera formats.  Unfortunately, it appears that a lot of the large format photographers who might contribute to the discussion are so defensive that any real discussion can’t take place.

I think that’s too bad.  If large format advocates can’t engage in a discussion without taking umbrage at statements that people who disagree with them didn’t make, I don’t see much future for large format.  The only realistic way to ensure the availability of large format gear, film, etc. is to persuade people that large format offers something that other gear doesn’t.  Reasoned discussion about the relative strengths and weaknesses of large format seems like a good way to pursue that goal.  Claiming you’ve been insulted when you haven’t seems like a bad way, especially when it shuts down the discussion.

Some of the responses to yesteday’s post on the probable fate of my large format gear raise some issues that I think are worth discussing.  In particular, Ed wrote:

There is more to large format than just pushing the button and shooting, especially if you use movements. There is a contemplative way of working that is impossible with digital because you cannot see squat through the viewfinder, so you just have to keep pushing the shutter and hoping.

This might be true for some folks.  But because I worked with large format for more than a decade, I don’t engage in photography by wandering around looking at things through the camera.  With a large format camera, it’s often the case that I make all of the important decisions before even setting the camera up, and I find that with the EOS-5d, that’s still the case.  The viewfinder is used to check composition (as is the groundglass), not to find it. 

I make a lot of exposures with the 5d, often bracketing exposure.  Typically, I make two exposures - one at the exposure suggested by the in camera meter, and then another one at the exposure I calculate to be optimal based on the histogram from the first.  That means that I typically have two exposures per setup - not dissimilar to my LF practice of shooting an in-camera dup negative.  But that’s vastly different from making 30 exposures, each with minor variations in composition, and hoping I hit one that was good.

In other words, my practice is that I see a photograph I want to make, I set up the camera and make the photograph, and then I’m off to find the next photo.  The time and economic costs of an exposure with the 5d are lower, and so I tend to take more risks with the 5d, but I don’t find using the 5d to be a less contemplative experience than using the 4×5.  If anything, the 5d is more contemplative, simply because there’s less physical hardship involved in carting the stuff around.  I’m not unaware of the spiritual aspects of physical labor, but frankly schlepping a pack full of heavy stuff around never really served any positive photographic purpose for me.

So why do I end up with more exposures with the 5d than I did with the 4×5?  There are a number of reasons.  One is that the 5d is faster.  I’m pretty fast with the Linhof TK45s, but it’s still not as fast as the 5d with a zoom lens.  There’s also the fact that the EOS-5d pack is smaller and lighter than the TK45s pack, so that I cover more ground  in less time.  Finally, there’s just less futzing around with the 5d - no readyloads to label, no separate meter to tuck into the right vest pocket, no extended metering and exposure calculation.

 On a similar tack, Kurt wrote:

As Ed alluded to, comparing your digital output to possible LF output is really an apples to oranges comparison. I’d be willing to bet that if you gave the medium the slow, contemplative time it demands, not only would you shoot much less than digital (making the money a non-issue), but your “winners” or “keepers” ratio would go exponentially up.

When I first started using a large format camera (in 1993) I bought this business about the ’slow, contemplative process’ of large format hook, line, and sinker.  To my eternal embarassment, I once hung a show where the artist statement even referenced it.  But somewhere along the way, I realized it was a huge bolus of crud, more a marketing thing than anything having to do with the reality of making photographs.

Spending 20 minutes with your head under a darkcloth, gazing lovingly at the ground glass, fiddling with your focusing loupe, adjusting and readjusting camera movements, etc. does not magically imbue your photographs with greater creativity, higher image quality, more artistic merit, or greater economic value.  There’s no special magic to photographs made after 20 minutes of camera adjusting as opposed to those made after 20 seconds of camera adjusting assuming you are competent at adjusting the camera. 

To put it another way, if it’s taking you more than two minutes from the time you decide to make a photograph to the time you have your 4×5 camera on the tripod, movements adjusted, focused, aperture set, shutter speed selected, shutter cocked, and film in the camera with the darkslide pulled, I think you need to practice until you achieve competence with your camera.  Anything longer than two minutes is not a contemplative experience, it’s bumbling because you don’t know what you’re doing.   (those of you who are tempted to tell me 2 minutes is unrealistic might want to consider that John Sexton, that luminary of Large Format/Fine Art photography, told me at a workshop that when he teaches students to use a LF camera, he won’t let them expose film until they’ve proven to him that they can go from pack to exposure in less than 60 seconds.)

Lots of large format photographers like to go on and on about how slow it all is, how ritualized it all is, how difficult it is and thus how contemplative it is compared to every other kind of camera.  But here’s the dirty secret of large format photography - using a view camera is just not that hard.

So when I see a large format photographer spend 15 minutes with his head under the dark cloth, focusing and adjusting movements and so on, I don’t think to myself “Wow, that photographer must be having one blissed out contemplative experience!”  Instead I think “Wow, that photographer really needs to learn how to use his camera.”

The bottom line, here, is this: the camera that produces the most contemplative experience is not the camera that’s hardest to use, nor the camera that’s slowest to work, nor even the camera that is fastest to use or easiest to work.  Using a large format camera does not magically transform your photography into a contemplative experience.  The camera that produces the most contemplative process flow for a photographer is the camera that comes closest to a seamless, perfect fit with the photographer.  For some folks, that’s going to be an 8″x10″ Toyo 810m II; for others, it’s going to be a Leica M8. 

And that’s ok.