{"id":654,"date":"2015-02-27T10:48:53","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T15:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jrileystewart.com\/blog\/?p=654"},"modified":"2020-09-12T06:43:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-12T10:43:58","slug":"revelations-about-art-and-artists-beyond-the-photographers-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jrileystewart.com\/blog\/revelations-about-art-and-artists-beyond-the-photographers-eye\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the “photographer’s eye”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Falling<\/a> “Falling Light, Grand Tetons” Cover feature for the February 2015 edition of Elan Magazine<\/p>\n

I sometimes\u00a0hear\u00a0“you have a good eye” when speaking to folks visiting in the gallery. They are being complimentary of course, saying\u00a0that they like the subjects, find them interesting, and clearly are\u00a0worthy of a \u00a0picture. They might\u00a0even have been emotionally affected by the photograph, an outcome every artist hopes for.<\/p>\n

Making an emotional photograph requires so much more than the\u00a0subject alone. It must also tell a story that moves people.\u00a0Having a “good eye” isn’t nearly enough.<\/p>\n

As humans, our eyes can see almost 180 degrees (a full semicircle) in front of us. There may be hundreds or thousands of distinct objects within that field of view, especially in nature. Including too many of them or putting them in the wrong position in the photograph will make it difficult to\u00a0tell just what is going on.<\/p>\n

Master photographer Ansel Adams once said “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”\u00a0That was his way of\u00a0saying that good photographs tell a\u00a0clear, compelling\u00a0story. And just like a literary story, the photograph must have a leading character \u2013a subject\u2013 certainly, but it must also place that subject in\u00a0context with other elements of the story in order to evoke an emotional response.<\/p>\n

I think that\u00a0telling a good story is the hardest part of creating art photographs. Sometimes the lighting isn’t right. Sometimes the colors or tones clash. Sometimes the rhythm is way off. Lighting, color, and rhythm are each important contextual elements that can either celebrate\u00a0or belittle\u00a0the best of photographic subjects.<\/p>\n

I want to use “Falling Light, Grand Tetons” as an\u00a0example of one\u00a0approach to making an artful photograph.<\/p>\n

A couple years ago I visited the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming specifically to take pictures. One of my objectives was to capture a picture of the famous Moulton barn on Antelope Flats, one of the most photographed barns in America. A quick Google search illustrates how others have photographed this subject:\u00a0Typical Moulton barn photographs<\/a><\/p>\n

The image just below is an unaltered image of the scene that closely approximates what my eyes\u00a0saw at the time. This view approximates\u00a0what anyone\u00a0would see if standing next to me at the time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I saw a story\u00a0in this scene. It was\u00a0a story of human struggle\u00a0on the high plains of the Grand Teton mountain range. The main subject was the old abandoned barn, dominated by the eternal, massive, menacing\u00a0mountain range. To me, it was a story of humanity’s neverending fight with nature: in this case a battle\u00a0lost by those\u00a0who abandoned their homestead simply to survive.<\/p>\n

But my story wasn’t being told very well in my first take. I felt my subjects were weak and not really as sublime as I wanted\u00a0them to be. I needed\u00a0to isolate the barn\u2013my leading character\u2013within the scene and make it appear more intimate with the\u00a0mountains. \u00a0So I changed to a vertical perspective and replaced the lens with a zoom lens.<\/p>\n

\"Falling<\/a><\/p>\n

Compositionally, I felt that this was getting closer to my story: the barn was now\u00a0isolated from the surrounding visual clutter and the\u00a0supporting subjects (the mountains and foreground) were in the right proportion. Placing the barn near the bottom of the frame supported an illusion of pressure and force of nature upon it.<\/p>\n

But things still\u00a0lacked\u00a0a strong sense of desolation and hardship that was important to my story. The tension and sublimity I felt on site was missing in the photograph; my camera had failed to capture my\u00a0emotions (as it always does). In other words, other contextual elements were not supporting my story. I knew\u00a0I’d need to modify them\u00a0for my story to be told\u00a0well.<\/p>\n

This image clearly needed help with the lighting, so dodging and burning was called for. Dodging and burning are\u00a0techniques used to brighten (dodge) or darken (burn) specific elements or areas of an image to create an illusion of light and shadow. These techniques have been used since the invention of photography, and I use them\u00a0often as I artistically\u00a0interpret my photographs. Here I felt the barn (and therefore the foreground grasses) needed brightening to\u00a0make it clear that it was the subject of the story. The mountains also required a bit of contrast boost to make them appear menacing\u00a0and stark.<\/p>\n

The final\u00a0important\u00a0changes affected\u00a0the colors in\u00a0the image to emphasize rhythm and visual depth. Warming the mountain peaks and the foreground accomplished both. The warmer foreground advances toward you, inviting you into the scene, and the warmer mountain peaks improves the illusion of them hovering (dangerously?) over the barn. I felt the final result told the story I wanted to tell about this famous barn.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Making successful\u00a0photographs requires much more than having a good “eye.” \u00a0Finding a great subject is certainly critical, but telling a story about that subject is so much more important. Not everyone will see\u00a0the same story as the photographer. But this is true:\u00a0if the artist<\/span> tells a good story, it is much easier for someone else to emotionally engage in the scene and dream up their own\u00a0setting, plot, or ending. And that’s what art is all about.<\/p>\n

If you are an art photographer, here’s a trick I’ve found useful. \u00a0Force yourself to title the final photograph before you click the shutter. Use a conceptual title, such as “Falling Light”, “Fight with nature”, “desolation and abandonment..” or whatever reflects how you feel about the scene before you. Once done, you have a concept\u00a0about the story you want to tell. That concept will then guide you as you compose and interpret the scene much better than a title like “Barn in the Grand Tetons” \u00a0or “DSC12345678-1.”<\/p>\n

Happy storytelling.<\/p>\n

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