*The* Most Important Thing In Photography...

Here is another where I kept exploring a scene. I began to photograph a middle age woman with her baby outside a little shack in Cienfuegos Cuba. I shot several frames. Her daughter came out with her own baby of the same age. I kept shooting. The daughter took her baby inside to bathe it. I follow her in and kept shooting. She dried and dressed the baby. I kept shooting. She sat on the bed with the baby. I kept shooting as she talked to me. Then she started nursing and I kept shooting. This was about the 20th frame since I started. Certainly not what I expected when I started photographing her mother outside.

nursing-mother-1.jpg
 
wgerrard said:
Assertion: The most important thing in photography, overwhelming everything else, is the ability to see a good picture before you press the shutter.

Assignment: Is this true? If so, explain. What do you do after you see the opportunity for that picture?
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Gary Wingorand:

I frame in terms of what I want to include, and naturally when i want to snap the shutter – and I don't worry about how the picture's gonna look, I let that take care of itself. You know, I - we know too much about how pictures look and should look. And how do you get around making those pictures again and again? It's one modus operandi to frame in terms of what you want to have in the picture – not about how to make it a nice picture. That, anybody can do.

...You don't learn anything from repeating what you know, in effect. So I keep trying to make it uncertain. ....hopefully, your risking failing every time you make a frame.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl4f-QFCUek

In part two, we see Winogrand going through proof sheets for a show, culling from 2,000 rolls shot in southern California.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zk1nkZ3-kE
 
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Bob Michaels said:
I think if you look in advance for photos that you know will be good, you will always get photos that are merely good.
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Agreed, Bob. We do tend to repeat what has worked before. So, if we don't take chances. we will just replicate what we have done before, in a new guise.
 
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I think those Winogrand quotes support the notion that we decide that a portion of everything our eyes take in at a given moment is worth pointing a camera at. Some of us may shoot dozens of frames. Others may shoot only a few. None of us would be pointing the camera at some random location.
 
wgerrard said:
Assertion: The most important thing in photography, overwhelming everything else, is the ability to see a good picture before you press the shutter.

Assignment: Is this true? If so, explain. What do you do after you see the opportunity for that picture?
Click to expand...

I think I see where you are going with this - and I agree more or less. I think great photos reveal some mental vision or image of the photographer's that the viewer can identify with and appreciate. I find myself thinking of writing.

A great story may be about common events but it captures us in some way and activates our imagination in a pleasant way. It reveals some essence of our lives or life in general. Shakespeare wrote about war, and love, and muder - things we relate to. His stories are timeless and captivating.

Writing can also be just journaling; perhaps just recording events over a period of time. I think many photographs are like this; they just record a moment. Just as a journal may be well written with wonderful vocabulary and great punctuation - it is still just a record of events. Some pictures can have great technical quality, but they are still just a recording of a moment.

The great pictures capture something more than just the sum of the components. For this to happen I think the photographer must have some passion about the subject. So in my opinion *the* most important thing is a passion or enthusiasm about the thing being photographed. I don't know that we always see it before we release the shutter, perhaps that's why so many of my photos fail. I do think we are trying to "see" or capture something we want to express as we press the shutter release.
 
FrankS said:
Most things can be taught. Not sure about vision/ability to see the picture.
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Frank - this reminds me of a woman I had the pleasure of shooting with down in Mexico. She had with her a Canon G12 (when everyone else was sporting a pro DSLR) that she left in auto mode - had no clue what iso was...

...but dang she was very visual.

To the OP:
...most important thing is to remove that darn lens cap! 🙂
 
Bob Michaels said:
I think if you look in advance for photos that you know will be good, you will always get photos that are merely good.

But if you search for photos that may be great or may be a stinker, you will occasionally get some great photos and a whole lot to reject. These are the high risk / low probability photos. I am happy to get one usable photo per day.

I hope you grasp the difference being more than merely semantic.

FWIW, I don't think you can identify any one thing that is most important. It changes with every photo.
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Dear Bob,

Another vote for this one. There's not just "Might work -- has to be worth trying". There's also "Pure accident/stroke of luck." In other words, you have to be open to seeing the picture after you have pressed the shutter release, when you're looking at the negatives/contact sheets/Raw files on the screen. Hardening of the categories can lead to rejecting pictures that are very good, but weren't what we thought we were going to get.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Well, I'd say the camera is the most important part in photography.. because it makes it possible.

And second to that, is the subject.
 
Without wishing to sound daft I'd suggest a blank mind. Any preconceptions I may have; i.e what I may hope to find, always results in appallingly dull pictures.

I think this touches on Bob's point. Take risks and keep shooting for as long as you can. Nothing hinders me more than expectation and I expect too much 🙂
 
OurManInTangier said:
Without wishing to sound daft I'd suggest a blank mind. Any preconceptions I may have; i.e what I may hope to find, always results in appallingly dull pictures.

I think this touches on Bob's point. Take risks and keep shooting for as long as you can. Nothing hinders me more than expectation and I expect too much 🙂
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I often think the same thing. it's always best to shoot what's in front of you, and not something in your head that you made up at home.
 
Most important thing? Learn about love and be amenable to it.

If I have to be conventional:

1) Purpose: Why am I doing this and what does it mean to me?. This has a huge bearing on where we place ourselves, what is seen and what we choose to do about it (photographically). This, to me, is the key stage. Seeing pictures comes later and, while difficult, can be a lot easier than resolving this one to any level of depth.

2) Technique: as Winogrand suggested by extension, one has to have some sort of 'approach' to picture taking when you know where you want to be, when and why: organised application of experimental ideas, or experimental application of less exotic ideas? This encompasses your patter, gear, aesthetic vision etc. Its just the execution phase that follows 'purpose.' In some respects its a toolbox and without resolution of point 1, the best one can hope for is to come up with a 'new tool' i.e. chase novelty. I actually think Winogrand said a lot more about point 1 in the above quotes than he did about technique as such.

3) What Pickett Wilson said: comfortable shoes.
 
maddoc said:
... having interest into the subject to be photographed.
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I think this is absolutely correct, I see so many boring photos which I find difficult to believe the photographer found interesting, more likely, is the photographer thought, "In black and White, that will look like art."

MT
 
wgerrard said:
Assertion: The most important thing in photography, overwhelming everything else, is the ability to see a good picture before you press the shutter.

Assignment: Is this true? If so, explain. What do you do after you see the opportunity for that picture?
Click to expand...


No. The most important thing in photography is various important things:

1) a means to record a photograph (i.e. a camera): you can see all you want, but it's useless if you can't record it.

2) the vision to record a photograph (i.e. "eye"/knowledge/sensitivity --and in some markets, none of the above...or below): you can see all you want, but if your vision does not match your equipment, it can go down the drain.

3) the means to process the record of the photograph: you can have the best equipment and vision in the world, but if you don't know how to process it, what good is all that goodness?

4) a means for others to see it: you can have the bestest of the bestest equipment, vision and process, but what good is it if others can't see it?


"Photography" as generally accepted is a process, not magic emanating from the ether (although I'm sure somebody has a blog out there showing exactly that).
 
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