All Technique, no Philosophy?

notturtle said:
Pixtu, hopefully those not interested won't post!
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There should be room here for all kinds of discussion (and generally is) but hijacking of threads can also happen - there's more piracy here than off the coast of Somalia :D

I sometimes struggle to understand why I take the pictures I do, but I keep doing it in case one day I have a Eureka moment and it suddenly all makes sense.
 
chris000 said:
I sometimes struggle to understand why I take the pictures I do, but I keep doing it in case one day I have a Eureka moment and it suddenly all makes sense.
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I photog because I want to get to a place where I can capture a beautiful image. Ralph Gibson talks about having a vision and his thesis resonates with me.

In the days of the guilds people would be mentored for 7-10 years before they were considered good craftsman. Today people pick up a camera and think overnight they will become great photographers. I've been at it 18 years w/ Leicas and only recently did I begin to show consistency in my portraits.
 
is there any difference between technique and philosophy, thinking and acting? philosophy, "love of wisdom". Music, Mathematics, Astronomy, are parts of the 4th order of Philosophy according to Aristoteles...
Can't think? Can't act. You act? Then you think. Putting what you think under the shape of words and sentences is another story, but even if it's pictures, it's the expression of a concept. No need for word for this concept to exist.
But it can be interesting to think about a theory for that concept, so that you can express it to your neighbour and be happy to transmit your knowledge and vision of the world. Aren't you a photographer for this reason? Taking a picture is an act of philosophy in a way.
(I'm giving philo lessons btw so if anyone living near Paris's interested please contact me, otherwise Skype is welcome :))
 
Bill Mattock- Thank you for injecting some sanity and humor into this thread.
 
Richard Jenkinson said:
I've never understood the mentality behind "digi=machine-gunning."

I've used dSLR's (Pentax *istDL and Olympus E-420) and a fair number of p+s but it didn't change the number of shots I took. (Well, just a little, when it's a new camera, but this is the same with anything new).

I carry a camera every day, though lots of days I don't shoot anything. Some days I don't even bring the camera up to my eye.
It's good to be ready, open to any circumstance, but 150 shots a day, 365 days per year is...well, I don't know.
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My friend Jan in Berlin, as a project, used one P&S to make one photograph a day for a year in 1999. I thought it an interesting project to find one thing each day you wished to include in the collection leading to Y2K.

There was certainly a time when the technology of photography, among many things, required almost a guild philosophy, requiring participants to apprentice themselves to the work.

Technology frees us from the long preamble to mere participation, but not from the thought and feeling you are looking for in a serious photograph.

I have met people who just pick up a camera and achieve something good with the first roll, and many thereafter, and I know people who are going to be snap shot photographers. There is a lot in between. I can say, that there is a feeling when you find a photograph, and it is continued if you capture the image.

Much of photography is a found art, knowing where to look plus having sufficient technology to capture it, completes it.

I do not pretend to have figured it all out, I still wonder, at times, if there are "magic" rolls of film, because sometimes I have a single roll of film upon which I record unrelated images, a number of which are good. Images you feel when you are capturing them. I also can predict that I will find better photographs when I am in the company of my friend and fellow photographer Zuzana, whether I am shooting her, or with her. No explanation.

I suppose if it were all easily explained, it would be much more common.

I do know people who have more "magic" rolls than I.

I very much admire Sudek, an early 20th century photographer with one arm and the technology of the time producing great work. I have met people who have crossed paths with this one armed photographer with a huge tripod and camera in the night streets of Prague.

A lot of the gear fascinates me, well, because some represents a more elegant way of finding some of what I am looking for, and I admit, I enjoy mechanical things on a number of levels.

They are not mutually exclusive, but the synergy between them is no means guaranteed, that is up to the operator.

Regards, John
 
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I have not the foggiest notion of why I do what I do - really . All I know is that I will see something and it will flash through my mind that "there is a nice image somewhere in that " So I shoot it.

My philosophy of photography is simple - photography is an art and the goal of any good artist is not to reproduce how something looks, it is to reproduce how it makes you feel (if I can put it that way) i.e. you should be seeking to evoke an emotion in the viewer rather than just turn in a faithful reproduction of the image you captured. If you can do that (and hopefully the emotion is a positive one then you are in front.

Also, these days (in a digital world) its more about "image making" than "photography". Image making is a result of a system involving the image maker / photographer, the camera and the digital post processing. So in my book its perfectly AOK to Photoshop the bejesus out of an image if it gets the result you want. (And as long as you are not pretending its something it is not.)

I used to be a gear freak but that is changing. I still like good gear to shoot with but whereas I used to buy it and own it and take it out and stroke it like the family cat (but seldom really put it to its intended use) now I go out and shoot. And then I spend hours in front of the computer working on the images - I do not resent this. To me this is the consummation of my work and the thing that produces the end result so I am happy to do it. The difference between now and then is that I now mainly shoot digital and because I do, I can shoot more, at effectively no cost and this is making me a better photographer as I can learn. And because in a digital world you do not need an entire dedicated room in your house to post process, I can do this too at little cost and produce images I am really quite happy with.

So why am I doing this? I suppose you may as well ask, I dunno - a Picasso (not comparing myself folks) why he painted. Releasing some creative urge I suppose. To me its all very simple I take photos and make images because I have to.
 
notturtle said:
It strikes me that there is an awful lot of time spent on which kit, technique, critique, work flow etc but virtually none spent on the bit that takes place between your ears.
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Perhaps because individuality, as a manufactured good, is a contradiction in terms. The kit, as a built product, has a point or points of comparison, technique has a set of guidelines, critiques are more of a judging and qualifying process relying on pre-established rules, and workflow is based on objective of the finished product.

Philosophy has been going on for thousands of years, and it still hasn't found what it's looking for.
 
Technique is something concrete, and thus much easier to talk about and be constructive.

The trouble with talking about why you photograph is twofold as I see it: 1) it's a deeply personal thing, so it's a complete toss up if one shooter's POV is going to in any way resonate with another and 2) talking about philosophy is usually much more about "talk" than "philosophy."

Of course, we can share our points of view in a friendly way, but I think it's wrong to expect the same kind of frequency and quantitative utility from discussions about motivation as say, a talk about graduated ND filters. The best you can hope for is to be inspired by somebody's energy.
 
After several decades of paying the bills with my cameras I've gotten a devil-may-care attitude towards my shooting, most always carrying my Bessa L with the 15mm and posting full frame on my blog http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com

I guess that what the blog has become is a local newspaper of sorts, covering local politics and events. Both of the neighborhood weekly papers are gone now and the Miami Herald doesn't really cover the smaller cities in their circulation area. The blog's writing is factual but tongue-in-cheek, and has a good local following. It makes photography fun again. It features a toy monkey, Monkette, who claims to be the brains behind the blog. She bills herself as a political consultant and takes credit for getting people elected mayor, and to the city council.

Every few weeks I'll go in the darkroom and make some prints from my old negatives. I probably should be doing more of that. I just can't bring myself to do any "serious" shooting these days. Monkette and I spend too much time at various candidates' parties, drinking wine and eating free food. They all want to be photographed with Monkette and get some fanciful story about them posted in the blog. Is that a philosophy? It sure is fun. June second is the run-off election and then I'm sure that Monkette will insist that I do something with those two 250 sheet boxes of Ilford Multigrade paper I bought, so it'll be back to the printing!
 
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I think the problem is a lot of people like to take pictures, but they aren't interested in anything else. It isn't just about making pretty pictures, it is about telling a story. Telling a story requires a concentration on a subject for a period of time, maybe years, and putting together a unified body of work that shows the viewer what you saw, how you felt, what you want to say. To do that effectively requires not just the time and work, but an interest in what you're portraying and knowledge about it before you begin work.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I think the problem is a lot of people like to take pictures, but they aren't interested in anything else. It isn't just about making pretty pictures, it is about telling a story.
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Why?

Telling a story requires a concentration on a subject for a period of time, maybe years, and putting together a unified body of work that shows the viewer what you saw, how you felt, what you want to say. To do that effectively requires not just the time and work, but an interest in what you're portraying and knowledge about it before you begin work.
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You proceed logically, but from an invalid assumption. Maybe it is just about pretty pictures. Don't you suppose that the photographer is able to decide what he or she wants to do? I have no interest in telling a story, nor building up a body of work that says something amazing and fascinating about me.

When I want to make spaghetti, I just make spaghetti. I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out what it says about me that I like making spaghetti, or how it will affect the world after I'm gone.

They're just photos. Ephemera, 99.99% of them.
 
If you were a chef you'd realize that your spaghetti defines who you are in people's minds. Then the spaghetti gets consumed. I guess you could say it becomes ephemera but 99.99% of us call it something else.
 
Leighgion said:
The trouble with talking about why you photograph is twofold as I see it: 1) it's a deeply personal thing

(...)

and 2) talking about philosophy is usually much more about "talk" than "philosophy."
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Unfortunately, "talk" is a lost art, and shouting matches are all the rage. When it is not a shouting match, it is a back and forth of "I'm right, you're wrong, and you're stupid for not seeing that" rather than "this is why I think I'm right, but perhaps you're right too" or "maybe we don't know what we're talking about" or "what Truth is there in our limited semantic constructions".

No. Unfortunately, it's all too often reduced to either "you're with me or you're against me" or "you're wrong and that's all there is to it".

Then the universal "Who Cares!"™, which actually makes threads less cluttered and easier to read. :rolleyes:
 
Richard Jenkinson said:
Philosophy of photography, yes, I'd love to discuss it but it doesn't go down too well here. The gearheads don't like it, example:



Then it turns into confrontation between the Artists and the Hobbyists.

Polls are pretty popular, neck and wrist straps too.
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i wonder why you do come here richard?
what do you get from us gear heads other than someone to feel superior to?

if you want to talk about the philosophy of photography then do so, have the courage to speak your mind instead of typing cheap shots about straps.

as for why i photograph i doubt that most would sincerely be interested.
joe
 
I would be VERY interested in getting a converstion going about why we photograph what we photograph! Especially you, Joe, and that G1 of yours. By the what kind of strap do you use on that thing? :)
 
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