How to Pre-Visualize like Ansel Adams

[amolitor]

Adams was massively influential, and is worth a close look on those grounds alone! His influence was almost completely harmful, unfortunately, but we're pretty much stuck with it.

In terms of understanding the processes of photography, both technical and artistic, he's a wonderful bookend to Henri Cartier-Bresson. Those two, more than anyone else, seem to have been able to write cogently about their work, and as a bonus they seem to have occupied almost opposite ends of a spectrum. So, we have a lot of well written material that spans a wide slice of the artistic region occupied by photography, which is quite nice from a critical perspective.

Plus, the pictures are just plain pretty. Ain't nuthin' wrong with pretty.

 

[The_Traveler]

And yes to all that Andrew wrote above.

"Who the hell cares what it would look like with my patented Ansel Adams Style applied, I'm doing it, and the rubes will buy it pretty much no matter what".

What he was selling - and why he is lionized - is that he had a recipe for grandeur. What has been a craft and an art, he restated as virtually a recipe and people adhered to him because his way was reproducible and they could follow it.

Others, like the Westons, who were better artists never got the popular acclaim because you can't make creativity into a step by step technique.

 

[duhast]

Hint for photo students who live near the ocean: Every single student before you has pre-visualized the under-the-pier shot, and every one of them look exactly the same.

 

[The_Traveler]

^:lmao:

 

[Derrel]

I have, apparently, been noodling on this for about a month. The problem of getting from "I wish I could make a picture of some sort" to a clear mental image of that picture is a tricky one, and I wrote out some ideas on how this process works, and what you can do to speed it along:

Photos and Stuff: Whence Inspiration?
Photos and Stuff: Inspiration Thought Experiments

I will probably rattle on for another few hundred words on the subject over the next couple of weeks, or until I see a shiny object of some sort.

I read all four of your essays today, amolitor. And I must say, I was mostly in agreement with you until I arrived at the following passage:

"You can produce pretty good portraits, and mediocre street, by conscious thought. For very good work in both areas inspiration is necessary, there's simply no time to consciously think your way through the possibilities and find a truly great image by sheer mental effort. You might find one by accident, but not through effort. "

Your use of Henri Cartier-Bresson throughout the essays as an example of the, let's call it the "instantaneous" school of previsualization falls apart, terribly, once one becomes privvy to his contact sheets. Peeling back the veneer of mastery, you will find frame after frame after frame of utter crap. Specific scenes and locations, shot after shot, muffed...the people in the FOUND SCENES being out of position,m doing boring chit, and so on. What he presented as his "decisive moments" were in most cases, the result of good timing on scenes that he "worked at capturing". The same is true of the work of many other famous street and candid shooters of the B&W film era of the 1930's,40's, and 50's; their images, the ones that they actually SHOWED, were very good images.

The idea of that the old street photography master practitioners saw scenes as "decisive moments" and made their images without much effort or thought is utter bullspit...looking at their contact sheets, it's CLEAR, blatantly clear, that they "worked" situations, hard, snapping away, failing in the majority of cases, and occasionally, things in the real world came together, and were actually interesting enough to make a print from a frame. Occasionally.

Dog Art Today: First Contact at Silverstein Photography


The Contact Sheet ? Art/Photography Books -- Better Living Through Design


How Studying Contact Sheets Can Make You a Better Street Photographer ? Eric Kim Street Photography

Cartier-Bresson's famous bicycle in alleyway shot from the second story....zOMG...it looks like a hobbyist's contact sheet...it's a "lucky shot"...he tried and tried and tried and tried, and finally, he was lucky enough to get something "interesting enough" to make a print out of. The rest is utter rubbish. He spent a lot of time, and "effort" to get a decent image. Same with the hundreds of other scenarios that resulted in good street images--the contact sheets prove that there was huge effort expended,most of the time. We cannot let the cream of the crop hide from us the huge amount of effort digging in the dirt to get that crop to market.

 

[The_Traveler]

Peeling back the veneer of mastery, you will find frame after frame after frame of utter crap. Specific scenes and locations, shot after shot, muffed...the people in the FOUND SCENES being out of position,m doing boring chit, and so on. What he presented as his "decisive moments" were in most cases, the result of good timing on scenes that he "worked at capturing". The same is true of the work of many other famous street and candid shooters of the B&W film era of the 1930's,40's, and 50's; their images, the ones that they actually SHOWED, were very good images.

The idea of that the old street photography master practitioners saw scenes as "decisive moments" and made their images without much effort or thought is utter bullspit...looking at their contact sheets, it's CLEAR, blatantly clear, that they "worked" situations, hard, snapping away, failing in the majority of cases, and occasionally, things in the real world came together, and were actually interesting enough to make a print from a frame. Occasionally.

I don't think this is so damaging as you make it. Many, if not most, good shots of an 'instant' are made by projecting that the moment will come because the situation is there and being ready. Lots of people can see the situation at the instant of its occurrence; it takes talent, skill and experience to anticipate and put oneself in the position to capture it when it happens.

 

[manaheim]

It astonishes me when I realize how little I have paid attention to other photographers, their philosophies, their methods, etc.

I have little doubt it has "gotten in" at some level... after all, who hasn't been subjected to Ansel Adams? My parents even had one hanging in the house, and they're not exactly art freaks.

It makes me wonder... would my work be improved if I were more actively aware? I wonder.

Anyway, I'm just talking out loud. Feel free to ignore me.

 

[Derrel]

I don't think this is so damaging as you make it. Many, if not most, good shots of an 'instant' are made by projecting that the moment will come because the situation is there and being ready. Lots of people can see the situation at the instant of its occurrence; it takes talent, skill and experience to anticipate and put oneself in the position to capture it when it happens.

Ummm, it's not meant to be "damaging", but rather to refute the facile position amolitor's essay takes on 'decisive moment' photography as having been done without much "effort". It's pretty clear from looking at the contact sheets that these "instantaneous" masterpieces were 1) not done in an instant, but were often the tenth or fifteenth or thirty-first try at one scene and 2) were more lucky happenstance than 'mastery' over moments. and 3) were made ONLY as a result of effort expended.

The vast majority of the shots are utterly, terrifically unremarkable. I am just pointing out that amolitor's description of these shots as lacking in effort is utterly incorrect, once the ACTUAL, real-world creative process is revealed through the contact sheets. Sheets that have been for the most part, kept carefully hidden away, and which by their absence, have led many to over-exhalt these peoples' methods and abilities, and to incorrectly portray their process.

 

[amolitor]

Well, yeah. With HCB, and far more with Garry Winogrand, one has to wonder how much of the magic was just random chance. Winogrand shot 100s of 1000s of frames (yes, multiple 100,000) and wound up with a few hundred frames that we see in books and on walls. Maybe he made 75,000 excellent images. Maybe he made 400. We'll almost certainly never know.

I am more willing to believe in the decisive moment with HCB, I think it just doesn't work very reliably. My current thinking is that you're cruising along, relaxed and waiting for that moment to explode into your mind, and you get a ton of false starts since you kind of have to be shooting as it happens, and there's also a lot of 'aww hell, let's just keep the shutter lubed' shots as well. It's HARD to hold a little camera like that and NOT press the shutter button.

My "inspiration" theory seems to be to accord well with what HCB says, anyways. How either viewpoint relates to reality? Eh, I dunno.

 

[amolitor]

Portraits are maybe a better example. I saw a film of Karsh working, once, and it was pretty interesting. He had an assistant popping away with a 35mm, setting stuff up, working on things. Karsh fiddled with the big camera and engages the subject. The subject gets used to the little camera going pop pop pop and starts to relax a bit. At some point, Karsh goes pop. One presumes that the big camera goes pop at the right time.

Also, you're quite right that claiming things to be "effortless" is poor phrasing. What I meant was that you're not going to reason your way fully to a good portrait or a good street photograph. You're not going to get a great portrait through a fully conscious process. You may put an enormous amount of labor into the portrait or the street photo, in fact, and you may think through an immense amount of surrounding material. Putting in that labor, together with appropriate technical skill, will produce a solid workmanlike portrait, and a decent portfolio of mildly interesting street.

The point is, though, that the best you're going to get this way is "pretty good". To get great, you need either luck, or inspiration. Either will do, and the difference between them is subtle and perhaps irrelevant. I think inspiration is perhaps a little more reliable.

 

[The_Traveler]

I don't want to show the x number of frames I've shot for every keeper.
If every shot is a keeper, either one's standards are too low or one is taking no chances.