LensWork - Photography and the Creative Process

Here's a Thought… #2778 with Brooks Jensen

Photographs Themselves Are Symbols

Yesterday I was talking about how we think and feel in symbols. Of course the important topic I left out was the fact that photographs themselves are symbols. When we are waiting in the doctor's office and see that beautiful landscape hanging on the wall in the waiting room, we're not actually looking at the landscape but rather at a symbol that represents the landscape. That symbol has an intended purpose, to make us feel better and less stressful about our doctor appointment. All photographs are symbols. If so, wouldn't it make sense that we should study how symbols are made and used?

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Here's a Thought… #2777 with Brooks Jensen

Everything Is Symbolic

One of the things that separates humans from animals is that we think in terms of symbols, culturally defined associations, and abstracts. There is a school of thought from mid-20th century photography that emphasizes photographing "the thing itself." I understand the intent, but it's never made sense to me because it fights the nature of human thinking and emotion. A better approach, I believe, is understanding the importance of symbolism and its role in image making. Maybe we should all read Joseph Campbell again.

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Here's a Thought… #2776 with Brooks Jensen

Cluster Mode Photography

I interviewed David Hurn (MAGNUM) when we published him in LensWork and was fascinated by his description of Magnum photography. I'll abbreviate his technique: 95% of being out photographing is not photographing. The way he described it was that Magnum photographers spend almost all of their time just looking, observing, being there and being aware. Then, when something of interest happens, out comes the camera for a series of clustered images shot with rapidity before the camera is retired, awaiting the next opportunity. For years I've applied his approach even to landscapes and I believe he had it right

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Here's a Thought… #2775 with Brooks Jensen

A Timed Event

At the suggestion of a friend years ago, I experimented with photography as a timed event. I was driving through Eastern Oregon and the challenge was to stop every hour on the hour without fail. Wherever I was, I had to get out of the car and make a photograph within 15 minutes. Instead of picking and choosing my photographic locations based on aesthetics or having seen something interesting, I only photographed when the alarm went off telling me the time was now. It turned out to be a fascinating experiment because no matter where I stopped I found an interesting photograph.

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Here's a Thought… #2774 with Brooks Jensen

Plein-air Photoshop

You're familiar with plein air painting, that open air approach to painting at the scene, in the environment, outside the four walls of the painters studio. Why can't we do that? How different would our pictures be if we were to process them at the scene, in Photoshop, with the subject still before us? Normal photo processing takes place elsewhere, from our memory, using the camera's capture which might be years or decades ago. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has actually done plein air Photoshop, but I've never heard of a photographer who did. The closest similarity I can think of might be shooting Polaroids in the field, but I'm wondering about Photoshop, on a laptop, where you can still see the scene before your eyes.


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