The Photographer as Artist – Creative Vocabulary

The Photographer as Artist – Creative Vocabulary

In this third article we continue our exploration of photography from the perspective of other artistic disciplines.  The first article was The Photographer as Artist – Introduction.  We introduced the idea that art stands on the Tripod of Artistry, three principles that are common to all arts.  The first leg of the tripod, the expressive capabilities of the medium, were explored in The Photographer as Artist – Expressive Spectrum.  In this article we will look at the second leg – the Creative Vocabulary.

Creative Vocabulary

We all know that to be an effective writer it helps to have a large vocabulary.  It just stands to reason that the larger the writer’s vocabulary, the more effectively he or she can communicate.  Poets probably have the greatest mastery of the language as that is the most condensed form of communication.  This reaches its absolute zenith in haiku, that wonderful form of Japanese poetry that paints the most beautiful images in three lines of 5-7-5 syllables.  Probably the most famous is this exquisite poem from the haiku master, Basho (1644 – 1694).

Furuike ya

Kawazu tobikomu

Mizu no oto

 

Roughly translated…

 

Old pond

A frog jumps

The sound of water

You need to close your eyes when reading haiku.

Poets have other forms as well -sonnet, limerick, ballads, couplets, blank verse and more.  Then there are short stories, novellas, and novels for other writers.

The same ideas apply to other art forms.  We agree that art is communication and the medium plays a major role in setting the bounds of what the artist can say – the Expressive Spectrum.  But a medium capable of a vast Expressive Spectrum does not in any way make the artist expressive.  Beginning artists, artists who have not yet fully developed their voices, will be able to utilize but a small portion of the medium’s Expressive Spectrum.  Artists who have mastered their medium probe the outer reaches of the medium.

How does the artist master the medium?  There’s more to it than the answer to the question, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice.”  Artists spend their artistic lives learning and mastering their tools and techniques.

Tools and Technique

How many ways does a painter have of applying oil paint to a canvas?  In fact, how many tools does a painter use?  There are a wide assortment of brushes and pallet knives that vary not just by width and shape but other properties as well.  Brushes can have different degrees of suppleness.  Pallet knives vary in their stiffness.  With each of these tools a variety of techniques are possible.  The combination of tools and techniques yields a enormous array of expressive possibilities.

To take a closer at the differences that technique can produce let’s look at an oft painted subject, the Madonna and Child.  (Each one of these examples will open in a separate browser window so you can compare them side by side.)  We can start with thirteenth century Italian, Byzantine influenced painting – Early Italian Madonna and Child.  Next, take a look at the same subject by the Italian master Leonardo da Vinci – The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.  As with the early Italian Madonna and Child, this was painted on wood but the differences resulting from techniques are striking.  Compare these to a fifteenth century painting by Cima de Conegliano, also painted on wood – Madonna and Child in a Landscape.  If we leap forward to the present, technique creates an even more striking difference.  See the Irish Madonna and Child painting of E. Thor Carlson.  These four examples illustrate a wide variety of techniques which lead to quite different results.  As a side note, it’s very interesting that the techniques reflect the styles and tastes of their times.

A musician’s instrument is his tool.  The instrument I studied as a child is the piano and there are an amazing number of techniques to learn and master.  To perform at the concert level requires a lifetime of constant learning.  For an incredible example of technique in the realm of music, just listen to Winton Marsalis perform Flight of the Bumblebee.  Listen to it before reading on and see if you can identify the technique he uses. 

Besides playing the piece incredibly fast he also plays long passages without taking a breath.  The technique is called ‘circular breathing;’ that is, breathing in through the nose while at the same time blowing out through the mouth.

What do we call artists like Marsalis who have mastered their tools and the associated techniques and take the art to new levels?  We call them virtuosos.  All art forms have their virtuosos, including photography.

Photographic Tools and Techniques

As photographers we have a large array of tools and techniques.  We can break them down into two broad categories – those for the field and those for the darkroom.

Tools and Techniques in the Field

In the field first we have our cameras, lenses, tripods and the rest of the gear that goes with them.  For many of us this appeals to our geeky side.  We enjoy endless chit-chat about mega pixels, highlight tone recovery, pixel depth, white balance, live view, image stabilization and on and on it goes.  Our tools become increasingly sophisticated with each new generation of bodies, lenses, tripods, ball heads and such.  The bad news is that the increased sophistication brings along with it increased complexity.  But the good news is that the increased complexity allows increased expression – as long as we develop the necessary techniques.

But there are other tools and techniques we bring with us to the field – well, maybe more technique than tool.  Composition is one of these.  Some artists will claim there are no rules of compositions (those wouldn’t have been the ancient Greeks by the way).  But it’s easy enough to find books, blogs, courses, articles and thousands of examples of various ways to compose an image.  Just a few are – rule of thirds, leading lines, S-curves, near-far, golden rule, diagonal lines, symmetry.  You get the idea.

Another technique for the field is design principles.  This includes the design elements of line, shape, form, texture, pattern and color.  There’s so much to think about.  But that’s not all.

As photographers we’re keenly interested in the light.  Landscape photographers go to great lengths and tremendous effort to be in a location when the light will be its best.   But while great light can come from a variety of circumstances, we tend to crave the wonderful horizontal, warm light of sunrise and sunset.  But there are other kinds of light – direct, indirect, diffuse, bounce, and fill to name a few more.

But technique in the field does not stop here because as photographers we need to concern ourselves with exposure.  This goes way beyond getting the correct number of photons to strike your sensor or film.  We also have the variables of depth of field and shutter speed to consider.  If we’re photographing a waterfall we may want to use a long shutter speed which leads to yet another technique… filters.

In the days of film be it black and white or color, the photographer had many filters for all sorts of occasions.  In digital landscape photography we only need to buy a few -polarizer, neutral density and graduated neutral density.

These are the tools and techniques we bring to bear in the field.  That’s quite a list.  With so many things to think of it’s a wonder we get as many good images as we do.  But that’s just the start

Tools and Techniques in the Darkroom

Probably most of us who have been shooting for any length of time or have taken photography classes in high school or college have the experience of being in a dark room with the yellow light glowing as a black and white image magically appears in the developer bath.  And there are certainly a large number of techniques that can be learned in the chemical darkroom.  But let’s talk instead about the tools and techniques in the digital darkroom.

Tools – boy, we have plenty.  In fact the number of tools available can break the budget of all but the independently wealthy.  We of course start with our computers, external hard drives (it’s a good thing that terabyte drives are relatively inexpensive now), monitors, printers and more.

Next comes the software.  Of course the first software tool we think of is PhotoShop.  That’s not the only tool but probably the most commonly used.  We have a number of good raw converter software packages to choose from.  Add to that the host of plug-ins that do everything from the opposite twins of sharpening and noise reduction to making your image look like anything but a photograph.

But let’s get back to the notion that acquiring more techniques makes it possible to express yourself more fully, that it, increases your Creative Vocabulary.  PhotoShop provides an excellent example.

Most of us use PhotoShop at some point in our workflow.  And of all the people that use PhotoShop, most use layers.  Of those that use layers, a smaller percentage use Curves.  And of those that use Curves, a lesser number use masking.  And of those that use both Curves and masking, even fewer use blending options.  This is just one example out of hundreds of possible examples.

There are some photographers that use all of these and more.  These are the artists with the richer Creative Vocabulary.  These are the ones that are not limited by their vocabulary in saying what they want to say, that are less limited in following where their imaginations and inspiration lead them.

Practice, Practice, Practice

So building our Creative Vocabulary is the process of mastering the tools of our passion, both in the field and in the darkroom.  We approach mastery by learning and becoming proficient with more and more of the techniques associated with each tool.  We cannot possible master them all, especially given the certainty that new tools are being developed all the time.  And for that matter we don’t need to master them all.  But we do need to master enough to give us a sufficiently rich vocabulary with which to express ourselves.

And how best can we master the tools and techniques we choose to put in our creative toolbox?  This is where, “Practice, practice, practice” comes into play.  One does not develop an eye for composition by reading about leading lines and foreground, middle ground, back ground or by looking at the photographs of the masters.  One develops an eye for composition by putting a camera up to one’s eye and shooting, lots of shooting.  Then critically evaluating the results.  You get good at what you do.  You get very good at what you do a lot.  Some photographers try to shoot something every day.

Composition is just one example.  For our cameras to become second nature to us, we need to shoot every day – well, maybe not every day, maybe that’s not practical.  But we need to shoot as often as we can.  The back yard will do just fine.

And here’s the fun part.  There is so much to discover and learn that this is a path we can follow our entire lives.  And as our Creative Vocabulary grows we expand our ability to more fully make the most of the Expressive Spectrum of our wonderful art – photography.

In the next article we will look at the third leg of the Tripod of Artistry – Interpretive Decisions.

Read the first two articles:

The Photographer as Artist – Introduction

The Photographer as Artist – Expressive Spectrum

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