Here’s to the snapshot (beware: long read!)

[Alpha]

"If you sit by a creek for six hours and watch the light change and hear the crickets and see the flora and fauna, you almost begin to imagine how the rocks were carved by the water. You start to feel the abrasion and erosion. At that point, you are photographing something that has transpired over many lifetimes. You have a much keener appreciation for what it is. If, on the other hand, you stop at the top of a cliff, get out of your car, point your tiny disc camera toward the canyon, and hop back in the car, I don't know if you've seen it or not. But if you got lost in that canyon without water for two days, you would have felt it. It's a matter of how much you're willing to extend yourself into the environment."

--Caroline Vaughan

 

[Mike_E]

"They have so much potential. Not so much because of their abilities but because of their caring." -??

:thumbup:

mike

 

[craig]

It is interesting how photos take on a completely different meaning or feeling x amount of years later. As a matter of fact one of digi's major downfalls is the ability to delete shots in camera. I mean who is to say that x amount of years down the road you would not consider that shot a keeper. I would never take that chance and keep all my shots.

Hertz and MaxBloom (as always) have hit some very valid points. Only truth is that we exposed a piece of media to light and the media rendered it. Other then that it is the photographers perception of the frame. Snapshot or not it is taken out of context of the actual event.

Love & Bass

 

[Hertz van Rental]

The normal perception of the photograph is to see it as just a record of something but it is far more complex than that.
Taking a photograph does indeed take the image out of it's context. The 'context' of reality is the flow of time. A photograph is a 'slice' of reality which is divorced from time - a rough analogy is a fly trapped in amber.*
If the photograph is of a specific thing and that is it's importance - a record of a person, a record of an event - it only retains any use whilst there is supporting information: who the picture is of, what was going on, when the event occured and so on.
If this information resides in the viewer's memory then the image is important to them. If the viewer has no knowledge of all of this then the image changes it's function and we look at it differently.
For example: a picture of your mother will be evaluated by you in terms of your memories and emotions. To someone who does not know your mother, the image will be evaluated purely in terms of it being a portrait photograph.
The two viewing experiences will differ considerably.
This is why there are different types of image and it is possible to take images which transcend these complex problems to become universally significant.
This can happen because the image uses the visual codes to transmit emotional content - it acts as an emotional/intellectual trigger to the viewer - independent of the context of the image.
Thus the images here give rise to a range of different reactions. The American action in Vietnam occured within living memory. Most people will know something of the event. The pictures therefore represent war ingeneral, the Vietnam conflict specifically, a key to emotion if you took part in it, a key to emotion if you lost a loved one in it. It is also important to remember that US citizens will have a different reaction to non-US citizens, who in turn will have a completely different set of reactions to the Vietnamese.
And I have yet another layer of reactions to some of them because I met Don McCullin and I knew Tim Page.
All of this explains, to some extent, why we see pictures we take differently to those taken by others. We have a different memory set surrounding our images - and sometimes this clouds our judgement and makes us wonder why others do not get the same reaction to our images that we do. We have to take all of the above into account and take our pictures differently to do that.



*My current thinking is that the process used to record the image in 2D does so by squeezing out time (time being needed to give the third Dimension). The function of the frame in Photography (to go back to another thread) is therefore not to stop the creative act overspilling but to stop time re-entering the image and destroying it.
I could go a lot deeper with that but I think I've probably lost most of you already

 

[mysteryscribe]

isnt time the 4th dimension. Lenth width and depth being the three....

 

[Tyson]

Nice thread I did enjoy reading it. I have hit "pay dirt" before from a snapshot. I have had a few that were just perfect.

 

[Mike_E]

Hertz, those were some of the very reasons why I posted that the snapshot is more important than art. Because we do not live in a vacuum but rather within a consciousnesses filled with both facts and emotions. These combined, like light and shadow, are what make up a memory.

In fact one could say that because of this, this binding of fact and emotion at a point in time -I say this because there is usually a trigger for a memory, a file name if you like, a photograph is such a strong medium for the conveyance of ideas. We live one moment at a time, we tend to think in moments, and we tend to remember in moments. (Try telling this to a [SIZE=-1]videographer[/SIZE]. )

Hertz, since we are waxing philosophic here, what do you think of the idea that art in photography is the reintroducing of movement? An artfully laid table well photographed gives us a longing to move towards that table. The gentle bend in the road makes us want to go around it and so forth. I say this because a memory is the welding of an emotion and a fact (either a thing or group of things, a demonstration of the physical) and in a photo done for art there is no personal emotion involved with the exact fact shown so that the photographer has to use visual cues to trigger emotions stored in the viewer of the photo.

This would also be true for a good historical document I think. Not that someone would look at it and think "look at the funny cloths" (OK, there is no helping some people) but would see an entire slice of life in context and how all of the pieces fit and interacted with one another. Again the 'artful' use of cues and triggers to get the viewer emotionally involved with the subject.

Your thoughts? Anyone?

mike

 

[Hertz van Rental]

those were some of the very reasons why I posted that the snapshot is more important than art.

Not more important, just different. You cannot make valid comparisons because they fulfill different functions.
An 'art' photograph can trigger an emotional response just as easily as a snapshot. And whilst the snapshot will probably only trigger that response in the people connected to it the 'art' photo can be universal and transcend individual involvement.
You could say that 'art' photography* speaks to many whilst the snapshot only speaks to the few.

Any 'movement' in a photo can only be symbolic otherwise the illusion is broken.
Response to photographs is largely intellectual. We exist within the flow of time, as do the 'popular' arts (music, television, film), and so we are used to narrative. We try to make sense of a static image by constructing a narrative for it. We try to figure out what is going on in it (which leads to 'what has gone before' and 'what happens next'). Once you accept this realise just how little information a photograph actually contains (excluding information about surface appearance) and then you see why context and associated text have such a strong effect upon our interpretation.


*This is, of course, when it is done well by someone who knows what they are doing

 

[mysteryscribe]

I like to see what my family looked like when I was a kid. My memory is not good these days so it helps me to remember those times a little better. Sorry not very philosophical and probably a boring response but it's what I liked about my mom's shoe box of old pictures. I can't even remember who has them now.
But I remember pulling them out when family members who had moved away came home for a visit. Aunts and uncles would sit about smoking cigarettes drink strong black coffee and tell stories. Grand old times for a child.

 

[Mike_E]

Not more important, just different. You cannot make valid comparisons because they fulfill different functions.
An 'art' photograph can trigger an emotional response just as easily as a snapshot. And whilst the snapshot will probably only trigger that response in the people connected to it the 'art' photo can be universal and transcend individual involvement.

I am sorry if I was not clear, I was weighting the composite emotional impact of the two forms, not one example against another.


[/quote]
Response to photographs is largely intellectual. We exist within the flow of time, as do the 'popular' arts (music, television, film), and so we are used to narrative. We try to make sense of a static image by constructing a narrative for it. We try to figure out what is going on in it (which leads to 'what has gone before' and 'what happens next'). Once you accept this realise just how little information a photograph actually contains (excluding information about surface appearance) and then you see why context and associated text have such a strong effect upon our interpretation.[/quote]


This is also true but my point-at least the one I was trying to make- is that we tend to tag a memory by an event. For example, 'remember that time Uncle Joe laughed so hard at Christmas that he lost his denture in his eggnog?'. Maybe the misunderstanding is that when I say a moment I am meaning a brief period in time, not a split second of time (and I can't think of any that are a single instant in time). These tags -a metaphor is another name for it, can in fact convey a lot of information just as a mathematical formula or a command line in a computer program. They describe a series of emotions (to which you fill in your own events)


And a thank you to Mysteryscribe for taking my point (intentional or not )

The happiness of several billion people outweigh the happiness of a few tens of millions. Yes, even if I'm in the minority. (I'm used to it by now anyway. )

mike

 

[mysteryscribe]

Ah well wasn't taking sides just saying sometimes it don't matter how intellectual the answer it comes down to just me and what I feel. Actually it always does.

 

[LaFoto]

Even though I am speaking up in favour of "the snapshot", i.e. the photo that has not been thought out in depth before it got taken, planned with attention to every detail of composition and light, and then executed with the express intent to create a piece of art, my little "article" here I does not mean that all the unplanned, uncomposed, unfocussed, badly lit snapshots are suddenly "good photographic work" in my eyes.

I just mean to point that out once again.

And when my dad and sister first started to wade through all the material they were given, they had to make choices (we cannot show ALL, indiscriminately!), and since some of the earliest photos are without any personal connection to them, as well, their choice was - of course - also driven by the photographic craftsmanship displayed in the individual snapshot.

So yes, also they - when they first set out on this mammoth task of making this presentation - sorted out by things that Hertz is mentioning: what photo is there that "speaks", even to them, across the 50 years of time, and across the "gap of not having been there".

And it is those snapshots that now help us (in this very particular instance) put together this slice of history, though some of it happened before even my sister and I were born. (And don't expect me to remember anything that happened when the one photo of the two example pics above got taken - I don't).

But yes, we will NOT have these photos stand alone, uncommented, it is our doing to put them into a quite confined context, which - and this is an interesting train of thought, too, Hertz, thanks for making me think even further on this - is subject to our interpretation of all the material we got PLUS (I assume) our later experiences with the exchange visits and what the entire twinning/partnership/friendship meant to us in our lives later.

Keep philosophising over these matters, I'll come to read your thoughts with pleasure!

 

[Hertz van Rental]

we tend to tag a memory by an event... These tags -a metaphor is another name for it, can in fact convey a lot of information just as a mathematical formula or a command line in a computer program. They describe a series of emotions (to which you fill in your own events)

But the point I am making (or one of the many points) is that these 'tags' are not inherent in the photograph but are external to it - they reside within the viewer. The photograph merely acts as a trigger or an aid to memory.
In fact there is very little residing in the photograph. Virtually everything we 'see' in an image is projected onto it by us. This is why the same image can provoke a different response in each viewer.
Once you accept this fact you realise that what you are doing with a photograph is manipulating memory/emotion - and then you can start to use this to advantage.



And you're welcome, Corrina. You know that my main impetus is to try to get people to think about what they are doing.

 

[LaFoto]

Oooo, don't we all know about the "manipulating" aspect of even photos that we find in the proverbial old shoebox? So that in the end we no longer can tell if our memory of "our holidays in Italy back in 1966" is a real memory or that of a photo or triggered by a photo?

I think this phenomenon is all known and accepted by everyone, isn't it?

And yes, I see what you mean about the "looking at a photo and only projecting our own meaning to it". For I am sure even about the photo of our mother, myself as a baby and my sister as a toddler my sister has different feelings than I have, although she cannot actively remember anything of those times, either.

The interesting thing is that about the photos that were GIVEN to us, and actually don't have any direct (family/friends/joint trip in a group) connection to us. In those, also some factors of PHOTOGRAPHY began to play a part, or so it now feels to me. Do you think they did?

ALTHOUGH, (and there seems to ALWAYS be an "although" in all this) we also chose out-of-focus pics when they showed a very young "Mr Allen", i.e. the person who was the primary instigator of the entire twinning/exchange/friendship, and who stayed with the exchanges for decades. So in that case the decision to add that photographically-not-so-perfect photo to the presentation was driven by the fact that we KNOW the one person featuring in it...

 

[Mike_E]

LOL Mysteryscribe, I didn't mean to say that you were taking my side-I don't really have a side here- just that you were illustrating one of my earlier points.

LaFoto, I didn't mean to say that badly done snapshots were the equal to very well done snaps or anything else really but rather was speaking about the intent with which people used photography in general. I am afraid that I have taken your thread about an Extremely Worthy endeavor and gotten it off track a bit. I am sorry for that.

And Hertz, we are in agreement I think though we may say things differently.

The next step in this discussion, if we can agree to take it (with LaFoto's permission of course), is to begin to describe these triggers in such a manner that they will be easier to assemble into a language that those of us who are still in the process of becoming might use to be better photographers.

mike