Yesterday’s blog may have confused some people, but to me, that is sometimes a good thing as it leads to a discussion. For me, there are three general categories of photography; fine art photography, representational photography, and commercial.
Fine art photography is created in line with the vision of the photographer as an artist to convey a message, emotion, or idea. Representational photography is to create a visual account of a subject or event representing objective reality. Commercial photography is to sell products or services.
I strive to practice fine art photography the vast majority of the time. Yes, I can occasionally delve into representational photography or even commercial photography, but my goal and intentions are to create fine art. That is my passion. That is why I don’t take hundreds or thousands of photographs per month. I wish to convey a message, emotion, or idea with my photography. I become bored with just taking a photograph to objectively represent a subject or scene.
I am a photographic artist, practicing fine art photography. For me, it is more of a challenge to engage your audience than merely being representational. Set a challenge for yourself. Follow your path.
Labels and titles, we all love them and hate them. Many love putting those inititials behind or in front their name, PhD, CEO, DC, VP, PA, the list just keeps growing. We also like to get creative with job names, Chief Sanitation Engineer. We go to the coffee shop and order a coffee from a barista, literally a “barman/barmaid”, but barista sounds so much better, to us. So why do I refer to myself as a photographic artist?
I use the term photographic artist a lot. I refer to you all, my audience, as photographic artists, I call myself a photographic artist. Why not just say photographer? For me, there is a difference. Both take photographs but in my way of thinking for different reasons.
When I have told people I am a photographer one of the first things they ask, “do you do weddings?”. Often the first thing many non-photography people think of when they hear photographer is you’re a wedding photographer. No, I don’t do weddings.
I adopted the term photographic artist because I work towards creating art with my photography not a Xerox copy of a scene or subject. For me, the term photographer describes one who takes photograph that may or may not be art, portraits, commerical, product, architecture, journalistic, or artistically. I use photographic artist just as a person uses photojournalist. The term photographic artist narrows down my range a bit to define my intent to create something artistic, even a portrait.
My goal is to get more photographers to join me in the creation of art through the use of photography. Follow along with me and become the photographic artist you want to become.
Photography is the only art form where some people require the artwork to represent reality. People don’t worry about reality in a painting. The artist can paint a scene as they imagine it or perceive it. The same goes for drawing or sculpture.
There are some forms of photography that must be as close to reality as is possible. Forensic and photojournalism, even though journalism as a whole has taken a hit due to both perceived and real bias or alteration of facts, but anything else, especially, fine art photography it should be left to the freedom of the artist.
Let’s take a look at the image above and put it to the reality test. First, the vast majority of the world’s human population does not see in black and white. So immediately the image above fails the reality test. Okay, you say we can give that a pass. Below is what the scene looked like in actual reality.
This photograph was taken on the east side of a building at 1:40 PM in mid October. This was an alleyway in downtown Kansas City, on a bright sunny day. Off to the camera left is an assistant holding a large reflector. to light the subject. This is what the scene looked like in reality. Not nearly as interesting as the final image. With a little bit of creative light metering and the use of post-processing I was able to get the image below.
So, if this was my intent for a fine art photograph is this okay? Most people would agree it is fine, we’re “allowed” to do this level of manipulation.
How about the next image?
When we look at a scene like this we don’t see the smooth flowing water, but again we call that permissible.
The image above has the sky replaced, a “ghost” added, lots of dodging and burning. Now some would say we’re going too far that “we’ve altered reality”.
The image above versus the original below.
Now we have really gone too far for some. The final image is totally altered reality.
As a photographic artist to hell with reality and what the purists say. My goal is to create art as I wish. If you like it fine, if you don’t not my problem. Don’t let others stop you from creating your art. Don’t worry about altering reality. Make your art, that is where the real freedom comes as an artist.
I’ve discussed this topic in the past but I believe it needs to be revisited from time to time. Photography is one of the few art forms where we have a divide in mindsets over the process of creating a photograph. The divide is between post-processing and no post-processing, the anti-Photoshop snobs. (Note: I use the term Photoshop noun for Adobe Photoshop or any program that is similar.)
Why anti-Photoshop photographers are snobs
This may be a question you ask when I choose to call the anti-Photoshop photographers snobs, so I’ll explain my choice of words. Dictionary.com defines a snob as; 2. a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field:
If the discussion comes up between the pro-Photoshop photographer and the anti-Photoshop photographer we often get to the “I get it right in the camera” comment. This is just another way imply that the pro-Photoshop photograper is always just “fixing” an image because they got it wrong. To me, the photographer that says this clearly doesn’t understand photography, film or digital. These people never really worked a darkroom with dodging, burning, pushing/pulloing film, or any of the other advanced darkroom techniques.
The great master, Ansel Adams wrote a three book series, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print. Two of the three books are solely dedicated acheiving the final printed image, or 2/3s of the process of creating an image. Two thirds!
The goal isn’t to “get it right in the camera”
The anti-Photoshop crowd that argues they “get it right in the camera” don’t realize the goal isn’t to “get it right” because what is right? Who decides what is “right”?
Film and digital photography both have limits on the dynamic range they can record. Our eyes have a dynamic range of 21 stops of light. Typically, the best our cameras can do is about 15 stops of light, so I have to make a decision on what is “right” and with knowledge can split the difference if I want and bring back those stops I’ve lost.
Another issue. We see selectively. Have you ever taken a photograph and when you looked at the image later on see something you didn’t see at the time? I have. The best example I can remember was a nighttime photograph of a train station. I setup my tripod, camera, cable release, composed the composition, took the shot. When I got home and began to go through the evenings images, I realized the photograph I just knew was going to be the perfect photograph of the train station at night, I see something on one of the stations window frames. I zoom in, it’s a soda cup. I didn’t see it before when I took the shot.
I have seen very few, and I mean very few “straight out of the camera”, “I got it right in camera” images that I would say are fantastic.
The real reason for anti-post-processing
I can’t help but believe the real reason why these anti-post-processing people are sometimes so adamant about their hatred for Photoshop is it is a self-defense mechanism. They don’t know how to do it, they don’t want to admit they don’t understand something, so it is wrong and I am better because I don’t have to do it.
The bottom line
If you are like me and do post-processing using Photshop/Lightroom/or anything similar don’t worry abou the haters. They’re just envious of our ability to perform tasks they cannot perform or understand. Do your thing. Take your photographs and process away, we are the true photographic artists.
In September 2021 I went on a photography trip with a friend. The goal was to get a photograph of the Milky Way in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The featured photograph is from that trip. The entire trip was set up to take a photograph of the Milky Way, but we drove past a lot of scenes that were very photographic.
We were driving to a location, a secondary site, when we saw an old one room school house. We stopped and I got these two shots.
The photograph above was near a location we decided to visit. I was walking down the street looking for something worthy, in my mind, and saw this old fence at the back of a building.
How many of you have, like me, been heading to your destination of a photographic trip and drove past something and thought “someday I’ll stop here” or saw a scene that caught your eye but kept on going.
As Wayne Gretzy said, “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”. Don’t wait to stop and get the shot, because as I have found sometimes that shot disappears forever.
Why did you get interested in photography? I wasn’t ever really interested in art in my youth. I really didn’t have any hobbies. I took art class in school because it was a requirment to graduate.
For me, I was given a camera as a gift by mother in my mid twenties. I can’t even remember why she decided to give me a camera, a Canon AE-1. (I still have that camera by the way). After getting the camera which I knew nothing about I began to learn a bit. I even got to the point of developing my own black and white film. I somewhere along the line I lost interest in photography until 2005 when I bought a Nikon D50. By this time I was 47 years old. I had a somewhat stressful job and needed something to get away and relax.
Once I got my shiny new digital SLR camera my whole view of photography changed. I studied everything I could find. I eventually even went to school and got a photography education.
For me, photography is a bit about expressing my view of the world around me. It is about self-expression, even though I’m often reluctant to express my true self to others. I guess that is a bit of a concern that others may not like my work or think I’m weird. As I write this, I’m truly considering exploring that possibilty. Maybe art is more about expression of ourselves rather than what we think others want to see.
I don’t live where I think “if I had only done things different”. The past is gone and it can’t be changed. I live saying, “I’m moving forward and see where this takes me”. I’m going to share my journey with the world, as best as I can, and express myself and my views in an honest way. For me that is why photography. Photography allows me the creative venue I have learned to use through cameras, lenses, lighting, and Photoshop manipulation. My challenge to you, is let’s do this together. Maybe we can start to change the world for the better, one image at a time.
I forget this often, make art for yourself. This is my new mantra. Back in the beginning of my photographic journey that was what I did, made art for myself. Then, I started to follow the words of others and would make art to please the review of others. I found that it wasn’t as much fun as making photographs and processing them to my satisfaction but rather what others thought to be good.
I get it, if you’re in business to sell the art you have to produce art that sells, but isn’t it likely that if you make what you like you can find others who like it. We may have to market to a different audience but there is an audience for it. For me, if something sells fine, if it doesn’t sell that is also fine.
As artists we need to express ourselves as we are and give the world a glimpse inside our minds eye. Let the world see the subjects of your art through your eye. Make art for yourself. Enjoy your art.
We often see articles on upgrading photogrpahically. We see loads of reviews on gear, We engage in conversations about new gear and upgrading gear. Each of these things is nice. We all love new stuff, but the absolute greatest upgrade you can make to your photography isn’t gear. The greatest upgrade to better photography is better knowledge and skill development!
A bit of a story to help explain. I recently read a post on social media where a photographer experienced some issues while taking photographs. The post started something like this, “I’ve been a photographer for 45 years and I went to take photographs as an indoor basketball game. All the photographs have a color cast”. It went on to talk about a few things he had attempted, mostly by adjusting the white balance setting on the camera. The resulting comments were even more telling, so far as one suggestion was to just convert the images to black and white. My whole point is this, in all of the 45 years, this photographer hadn’t ever ran into a color cast before? Or any of those who were commenting? Yes, color casts can be difficult, but the photographer that made the post included photographs from the very venue that gave him the problems and none had a color cast.
Some photogrpahers spend so much more time concerned about the technology and new gear than they do about learning and enhancing their skills. It has never been easier to learn. We can literally carry internet connected devices in our pockets that can access countless resources for learning. We have access in our pockets to both text based and audible books. There are countless tutorial, both video and text, on virtually any method/program to post-process our photographs. There is a multitude of schools teaching photographic techniques both remotely and in-person.
Don’t just sit back and believe you can’t learn something new, refresh your knowledge, or enhance your skills. Take advantage of the availability of resources to learn and enhance your skills. Spend a bit of your photographic budget on learning. You’ll be surprised at the value of that upgrade.
Photographers are a tough crowd when it comes to viewing photographs, yet that is the group we cater to when we display our photographs. Photographers are seemingly always ready to give an opinion on the art piece with a “I would have”, even if it is silently thought. So why is it that are target audience is a group of other photographers, at least for the most part? Is it that we seek acceptance amongst our peers?
I never really considerted this thought before yesterday, the one where we set our target audience to other photographers, but as I think about it, even the big deal photographers target other photographers.
Maybe we should consider how to and where to market our works towards the general population. I know it would take a bit of work, finding a location to display the work, or setting up a website with good SEO to make it easily discovered by the general population, or do we just set up a Pintrest or Instagram account. How about Facebook but instead of posting our work to photography groups we post on our own page for everyone to find. Some things for me to consider, expanding my audience.
What makes a photographer good? Does making a good photograph from a beautiful subject make a photographer good or making a good photograph from a subject that is not beautiful?
I spent the morning I wrote this looking at a popular photography website. The photographs listed as “popular” as voted by the visitors almost entirely consisted of landscapes at sunrise/sunset, beautiful women in various stages of dress and undress, exotic locations, and wildlife closeups. There were very rarely photographs of mundane everyday things.
Years ago a person said to me, “Anyone can take a good photograph of a flower. It’s hard to make a flower look bad.” At the time I thought, “that’s not true” but think about it. You have to really work at making a flower look bad. Go and look at a bunch of landscape photographs and you will see lots and lots of photographs of landscaped at sunrise/sunset or otherwise great lighting. You will see oceans, moutains, lakes, waterfalls.
Here is what you won’t see, or won’t see a lot of. You won’t see wide open spaces at midday. The photograph above I shot at 1:50 PM on a bright sunny day. Standing there looking at this scene in person I was in awe. I felt like I could see forever. Wide open country.
A search of the keyword “plains” on this photography website brought about a very interesting return. Many of the photographs tagged as plains were not of plains. There were mountains, forests, and the desert. The images that were of the plains were African plains with elephans, lions, zebras, and other wildlife. There were truly only a handful of images I’d classify as plains.
Yes, all the photographs I saw today were awesome but just like the person told me years ago about the flowers, you would have to really try to muck up the photographs of beautiful landscapes and beautiful people.
Is it too hard to take good photographs of ordinary things and places? Do we just want to do what’s easy? My challenge to myself and hopefully others is to take make ordinary things and places look good. Let’s face it, so many of us live in ordinary places and are surrounded by ordinary things.
Photographer Clay 