JaiGieEse Loc: Foxworth, MS

There is a seemingly never-ending supply of arguments here on UHH between those who insist that a photograph accurately depict a view of a scene, with little or no processing, and those who favor use of the camera as a tool, with which to create art. Here's a nice take on this argument lifted from an email I receive from David duChemin, a noted photographic artist.

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Painter Robert Henri (1865–1929) admonished his students to “Paint the spirit of the bird in flight, not its feathers.” His words have echoed with me since I heard them, joining photographer David Alan Harvey’s plea: “Don’t shoot what it looks like, shoot what it feels like.”

There’s a place in photography for the merely illustrative to show the world what a thing, person, or place looks like. At one point that was the primary role of the photographer: to go into the world where others might never go, and to report back with “what it looks like.” Or, similarly, to make portraits and create a likeness. But in 100 years, we’ve come to the point where nearly every corner of this world has been photographed, and at a minimum, most every person documented annually throughout their lives, if not selfie'd to the point of absurdity. There is less and less call for us to show anyone what anything looks like. We already know. Few of us really need more illustration, although the camera still does that very well.

“Don’t shoot what it looks like, shoot what it feels like.”
~ David Alan Harvey

What we need, and have always needed, is interpretation and inspiration. We don’t need to know what it looks like (whatever it is), but what it might mean—what it might feel like. More than ever, we need images that speak to a deeper part of our humanity than the thirst for details. We need, and hunger for, for context, insight, hope, and the kind of visual poetry that stirs our hearts, sparks our imaginations, churns our stomachs, or light a fire in us.

This is one reason the ongoing hunt for more megapixels or sharper lenses is so profoundly irrelevant. We’ve got the best tools we’ve ever had and photographers just can’t stop flocking to sites like PetaPixel and DPReview to argue about edge-to-edge sharpness and how many angels you can fit on a single pixel. I wonder how much more they need before the realization sets in that the human heart doesn’t give a tinker's damn about the things they so passionately debate. I used to wish people had more passion, but that’s not the problem at all; there’s passion aplenty out there. It just hasn’t found the courage to stand on a hill worth defending, so it thrashes around in the mud pretending to matter, pretending to accomplish something. Passion needs an outlet.

“Paint the spirit of the bird in flight, not its feathers.”
~ Robert Henri

We don’t need better tools and we don’t need more passion. We need direction and something to say with the tools and the passion. If you want to photograph “what it feels like,” you have to experience that feeling. And the more deeply you experience it, the more you can put that into the photographs you make. It’s hard to do this at the beginning. How do you experience something deeply while also giving 100% of your attention to the buttons and dials and the histogram and the depth of field? OMG, by the time you’re done you’d be happy just to have the damn thing in focus, right? At the beginning it’s hard enough to shoot what it looks like. What it feels like? Hell, it feels like frustration, that’s what it feels like, duChemin!

I get it.

This is why it’s so important to master your craft. Not to geek out and become a so-called techy or a pixel-peeper, but to get so comfortable with those buttons, dials, technical choices, and thought processes that you can concentrate on feeling. On knowing what you have to say and interpreting that with the tools in your hands. We become more free with the creative work when we can pay less attention to the technical.

When I say mastery I don’t mean it in some elite way, just that you control the tools and not the other way around. I mean it in the sense that you’re not freaking out all the time about highlights or what your f/stop should be because you’ve made those choices a million times before and your focus can be on other things.

"An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it."
~ Robert Henri

We photograph how something feels by feeling that thing ourselves, which in turn gives us something to say. The camera and all the elements of our craft are merely the means by which we say those things. And since our craft and our vision are inseparable from each other, if you want to be better able to express your vision, you need to get more comfortable with the tools that do that. That means focusing your efforts and getting on the path toward mastery: the more you master your tools and get comfortable with them, the more you'll be to use those tools creatively, playfully, and powerfully.

I just want you to start thinking about this: while it's all well and good to want to "shoot what it feels like," the way you do that is more practical and requires you to be so familiar with your tools and technique that they become what Robert Henri calls translucent. Forgotten, even. He was referring to painting, but it's the same thing.

The path to mastery isn't a secret thing and it's not unattainable. It takes time and focus. The sooner you get on the path toward mastery instead of just messing around with your gear, the sooner you can "shoot what it feels like."

For the Love of the Photograph,

David duChemin.

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To this, I'll comment no further, save to add the headline from my own website (jaigieesephotoart.com) - "To capture the light, to caress it just so, to cause it to speak, to live, to breathe, so that it reveals to all, and clearly so .... What I See."

If Mr. duChemin's philosophy interests you, here's a link to his website - lotsa good stuff to be found there. - https://craftandvision.com/collections/david-duchemin


Until such time as I have the pleasure to speak to you again, I remain,

Your humble corespondent,

Jon G. Stephenson
Owner/Operator - JaiGieEse PhotoArt

https://jaigieesephotoart.com
https://jaigieese.wordpress.com

blue-ultra Loc: New Hampshire

Interesting read. While I would agree with the passion, which I believe most photographers have, at the end of the day in order to be masterful, one needs to know how to use his/her tools properly. Hence the reason we have this wonderful blog to exchange ideas, to help each other and to share our passion...

Thank you for sharing yours.

Bob

Pytrouble

Well said. Amen.

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Good post.

JaiGieEse Loc: Foxworth, MS

Of course. What Mr. duChemin advocates is achieving a mastery in the use of your tools, to the point that this becomes second nature.

There are numerous ways to delve into the automobile, and how it operates, and which of the multitude of auto brands would be best for you. Lots of buttons and whistles available in every car out there - but, in the end, they all lead to one thing: getting you to where you want to go. It's much the same with photography.

When you're driving through the magnificence of the Smoky Mountains, are you REALLY concerned with the gear-ratio of your car, or with the nuances of the engine, or whether the lights stay on automatically? Of course not. You're enjoying the magnificent view and how said view makes you feel. The car has become second-nature - nothing more that a tool, a means to an end.

As a young man, a beloved uncle was teaching me to drive one day. He advised me to view the car as an extension of my own arms, legs, eyes and brain. Get familiar with it, he said, enough so that you don't consciously think of how it is doing what it does - but rather that it gets you where you want to go, and safely.

A camera is an extension of not only our hands and fingers - it is an interface with our MIND - to our thoughts and feelings, and the desire to express same to others.

Look at this image of mine - I call it "Sentinel."

Some of you will feel the warmth of the sun as it floods a bare mountain ridge. Perhaps you'll note the contrail in the sky beyond the tree, there long enough so that the atmospheric winds have begun to shred it. That might lead you to ponder what sort of aircraft left the contrail, who was flying it, and where they were going. It may be that you observe the blueness of the distant ridge-line, and so come to understand why one mountain chain in the Southeast is called "the Blue Ridge."

Perhaps your eye will initially be drawn to the sun and its star-burst rays, and from there to the starkness of the tree-trunk, standing bereft of leaves and limbs in its solitary nature, and maybe you'll be curious as to what killed this single tree and not the others nearby. Then, perhaps your eyes will be drawn further down the trunk to the jagged shadow which leads neatly to the bottom center edge of the image. It could be that, along the way, you'll notice the colors of the foliage clothing nearby ridges, and you'll become aware of the lack of reds, yellows, oranges and brown, and from this, you'll deduce that this image was captured on a brilliantly clear and cool spring day, on which the warmth of that afore-mentioned sunlight will be more than welcome.

Or maybe you'll just see a picture of a tree. And perhaps you might quibble with my choice of f-stop or exposure settings, or wonder what kind of camera and lens combination I use, or where my focus point is, and why I chose that point, or whether and how I used post-processing. And in doing so, you'll have totally missed the FEELING of the moment. Pity. It ain't about camera brands and lens choices and settings, or whether to use manual or program or full-auto. Nope. This image is not an attempt to document, but rather an attempt to COMMUNICATE!

But that's just me. What you'll do is whatever fills your sails.

(Download)

duane klipping Loc: Bristow iowa

Thank you for this post. I guess one has to decide if one wants to be an artist or a photojournalist. Me I decided to be an artist first . I no longer fiddle with my camera anymore in a confused manner. After one does something a hundred thousand times it becomes second nature.

You know what you are capable of and better yet what your tools are capable of. That is when you can explore your artistic vision. I like being free from the rules so many here try to force upon everyone. Rules limit artistic freedom and personal growth as an artist. It is good to know the rules and use them as guidelines only. Don't get hungup on by the book crap all the time. Look at the really popular images today, these artists are rewriting the book.

duane klipping Loc: Bristow iowa