When does reason come in?

[35mmdelux]

philosophy, reasoning = intuition; gut instinct.

When I go to an art museum I do not ask to have the painting explained to me -- I want to "feel" it. Any attempt to shoot good photography must necessarily include the heart and the soul.

 

[Goldorak]

Photography is like Jazz. You don't play for a reason, you just play.

Jazz is a good example for street photography. But I think your logic is flawed.
Jazz is 100% improvisation. But what differentiates Jazz (good improvisation) from ****ty noise (bad improvisation) is the active listening between each musician to each other, be it a Duo, Trio, Quartet... Active listening is the key to Good Jazz. The same goes for good photography. Active thinking, active reasoning, in order to know where we as a photographer stand in a scene, will lead to seizing the moment at its peak. Just as with Jazz, where each musician takes the lead at an appropriate moment, all well calculated through an instinctive mechanism.

For me, I see what I see, I shot what I saw, and reasoning comes later... What do you guys think?

I think one shouldn't hit the shutter button without reasoning, first. It is the difference between mere snapshots or keepers.

 

[bmattock]

The last time I posted in this thread I said photography is like Jazz, you just play and there are no inherent reason as to why.

I think the answer is rooted in the concept of the demiurge. Most cultures have a creation myth, and most people profess to believe in creator deity or deities. We have a need to explain why we are here.

But we do not explain, to the best of my knowledge, why the demiurge felt the need to create the universe with us in it. We often ascribe motivations to why the Creator did this or that after having made the universe, but not the original motivation.

And so we create. Much of what we create serves a function, and so it can be easily explained. Growing food, building shelter, making clothes, these are all things that are needed to sustain life, society, and the cultures we have grown accustomed to. Art, not so directly.

Many have tried to explain the creative urge, and while I am sure many have touched on valid reasons, I have never read an explanation that I felt was complete. I suspect the true reasons are buried in the psychology of why we humans do anything, and may be different for different people.

One reason which I have often felt had a ring of truth to it is the belief that we create art for the same reason we procreate - to cheat death.

Procreation is perpetuation of the species, and some might consider that an instinct, as it certainly appears to be in lower animals. But humans appear to regard procreation as something more personal than simply making sure that humanity continues - we see it very much more personally than that. It seems to have a lot less to do with instinct and a lot more to do with choice, in many cases.

We do not want to die. We will all die. We daub pigments on cave walls so that if we must die, something we made may survive us. Our one shot at immortality.

Why else do we talk about things like preservation of film, digital images, and the archival qualities of various substances?

Sometimes I wonder if the demiurge had the same motivation.

 

[bmattock]

I think one shouldn't hit the shutter button without reasoning, first. It is the difference between mere snapshots or keepers.

Vernacular photography is a valid school. 'Mere' is not a word often used to describe it.

It might also be said that 'reasoning' as you describe it, may occur without conscious intervention - so who is to say that reasoning does not happen, even when the conscious mind does not know what that reason might be?

And as always, one must consider the result is the result. A photograph is examined by viewers with regard to what it brings, not what the photographer meant or did not mean when the photograph was taken.

 

[DougFord]

Active participation in the ‘gift of life’ is why I photograph.
For me, photography is a celebration of life, not an escape from life/existence/condition.
Made in the image of the creator, I create.
Riffing off the creators chord structure is the definition of photography to me.
Dissonance, atonality, long silent rests or a simple repetitive melody are all equitable.