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Editor’s Comments

Looking at Images

So you want to be a photographer — lots to learn! — shutter speeds and f/stops, software and computers, darkroom techniques, and how to use a thousand different accessories. All this is fun, but it fails to address an even more important part of a necessary (but often ignored) education.

It wasn’t until my photographic career reached its third decade that I became truly aware of what I had been unknowingly learning in all those workshops, lectures, seminars, and books. I was learning how to see with more finely tuned eyes; learning ways to think about what I was seeing, and ways to speak about photographs; to express how and why they impressed me. It’s not the mechanics of creation, but the subtleties of comprehension that are the great challenge. Photographs — like all artwork — are made with tools that must be mastered, but made from our heart and soul which must be felt and understood. Seeing/feel-ing/thinking is the true center of our process. From that center comes our ability to verbalize. It’s a package deal and when part of this suite is absent, the others often are, too.

Of course, one can make good photographs without the ability to speak about them, but not if that silence is a cover for fuzzy thinking or a numb creative engagement. I’ve known great photographers who couldn’t speak a whit about their work — but they are the exception. More frequently, when I find someone who

can’t speak about their work with any degree of understanding or passion, it’s usually because those qualities are missing from the work, too.

I was recently made aware (once again) of how important it is to be able to think and commu-nicate about our work. Many years ago I made cassette tape recordings of the early work-shops and lectures I attended. More recently I’ve been converting some of those from the original cassettes into MP3 files for archiving and sharing at LensWork Online. I shared one of these recordings with a friend who had attended a workshop with me in 1984. We had both selected the workshop in order to learn something about the mechanics of the Zone System; but the lessons we learned outside that technical curriculum have turned out to be so much more valuable. We were listening to accomplished photographers talk about our work, and in doing so we were starting to learn how to see our work with objective eyes, think about it clearly, and speak about it when neces-sary. In listening to himself in that 30-year-old recording my friend noticed how much he was fumbling to say something coherent about his work. He simply did not have the verbal tools or practice to express himself when asked by the workshop leader. Today, he says he could speak with ease because his ability to think and verbalize about his photography has matured so much over the years, partly from what we learned in that early workshop.

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These communication skills are among those that give me great concern about today’s begin-ning photographers. While my generation was forced to spend years developing our craft, we were unknowingly, simultaneously learn-ing to see, feel, understand, think, and speak about photography and the creative challenge. Today’s youthful (or beginning) photographers who can learn the fundamental technologies in days or weeks — or perhaps even hours! — are not afforded that same buffer of time with the opportunity to mature artistically or verbally the way we did — slowly, while we matured, thinking we were only developing our techni-cal abilities. Worse, today’s beginners may be equally oblivious to the importance of that process, just as we were in our generation. They may never develop those abilities. Technical skill in an artistic vacuum is not very likely to result in artwork of value or consequence.

In retrospect — but only in retrospect — have I learned the importance of that non-technical education. By happenstance in my youth, I stumbled across some wonderful books that helped — Nathan Lyons’ collection of articles by great photographers, Photographers on Photography; John Szarkowski’s Looking at Photographs; and that great series of books by Lustrum Press, to name a few. Technical manuals (Adams, Picker, etc.) and philosophi-cal tomes (Sontag, Coleman, et al) overflow the bookstore shelves, but the idea that looking at photographs or speaking/writing about them is a skill that requires some background is rarely met within the literature. George Barr’s Why Photographs Work is a rare exception in contemporary publications.

Partly to address the need for such discussions, partly to amuse myself, partly to simply share

my thoughts about images we’ve published in LensWork or LensWork Extended, I started writing about individual images and posting these thoughts on our Internet blogs some four or five years ago. We call the series Looking at Images. We are delighted to announce that we are publishing these images and commentar-ies in book format for the first time. Looking at Images, Volume 1 is now available for pre-order and will be shipping in April (2014).

When a Book Is More Than a BookThere is so much to see and learn from every photograph. As part of the content of our Looking at Images series of blog posts, I’ve recorded an audio commentary that highlights a different set of ideas than those in the text. I’ve always been more comfortable speak-ing than writing (as is evident from our 800+ podcasts), so it was only natural to include this medium in the online version.

But how does one include audio in a book? Fortunately, today we have an easy solution. Each image discussed in the book includes a “QR code” which links that page of the book to an audio file on our website. The QR code can be scanned with your tablet or smartphone and the audio will play as you look at the image in the book — a true multi-media, paper-based book experience.

In the next several pages, we’re including sample pages from this new book including the QR codes for the additional audio com-ments. LensWork has always been about images (rather than technology) and Looking at Images in this new book brings a discussion about images to the forefront.

Sample pages from Looking at Images

Transit: Rail Travel in the Romanian Winter by Cosmin Bumbutz

Published in LensWork #50

CommentaryOne of my core strategies in photography has always been to try to introduce some form of non-visual sensation into my visual presentations. Photography is, of course, a visual medium but to limit it to only the visual is, I believe, to cripple it. Whenever we can expand the viewer’s experience to include more than what they see, it empowers what they do see in ways that are simply not pos-sible with visual elements only.

Can’t you just feel the cold in this photograph? To the extent you can, the photograph is enhanced. That sense of cold comes through in the white, in the lonely figure seen against the stark landscape, in that person’s dark coat against the white of the snow, in the attitude and gestures that protect her hands and face against cold, in the misty air, and in the steel of the rail line covered by the bitter cold of the snow. There is one more element that, I believe, makes the cold visceral — the slight shadow cast by the figure which tells us of the filtered sun that always makes such a landscape even colder.

All of these elements combine to create the sense of — well, rail travel in the Romanian winter. Because that was Bumbutz’ title, can we safely conclude that he accomplished his stated objec-tive — that is to say, he successfully photographed what he set out to photograph. How could one photograph rail travel in the Romanian winter without doing everything possible to make the viewer feel the cold? Wouldn’t that be, by defini-tion, a necessary part of the portfolio? Of course, and that he does so with images like this — and so many others — is why this photographic project succeeds so well.

Sample pages from Looking at Images

More Thoughts via Audio Commentary

Sample pages from Looking at Images

Convergence by Bill Lyons

Published in LensWork Extended #80

CommentaryMore fundamental than composition, more important than tonalities, the true core of photog-raphy is relationships. There is the relationship of the photographer to the subject; the relationship of the image to the viewer; the relationship of the photographer to the print or even the viewer; and, of course, the relationship of the objects photo-graphed themselves. All good photographs are about relationships. If you doubt me on that, test my theory for yourself. Examine the great photo-graphs from history or from your own personal archives. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that the ones that are most captivating are the ones that power-fully draw attention to a relationship — or even more than one relationship. In physics, e might well equal mc2, but in photography S (success) = R2 (relationships).

In this image from Convergence by Bill Lyons, there is the relationship of building to sky; the relationship of physical clouds to reflected clouds; and the relationship of cotton-ball shapes of nature to the Euclidean lines of the man-made structure. All this is wonderful and makes for an interesting photograph. But, in my opinion,

all these are secondary to an underlying physical sensation that may remain just outside the realm of conscious attention: the physical sensation of bending our heads backwards to look up. Now that I’ve mentioned it, can you feel it? There is almost a sense of vertigo we can feel when looking at this photograph.

Stare at the photograph for at least 10 seconds and tell me if you can’t sense the clouds moving. Furthermore, the clouds themselves might feel like they are moving right to left which would make the reflections of the clouds move left to right. That sense of swirling adds to the illusion of vertigo.

Thankfully, Lyons didn’t darken either the sky nor the building to bring more tonal separation into the composition. To do so would have diminished the meld between the elements. As it is, he’s given us a wonderful image with layers of interpreta-tion to explore.

Sample pages from Looking at Images

More Thoughts via Audio Commentary

Sample pages from Looking at Images

CommentaryWhat is it about this image from Vladimir Kabe-lik that is so haunting? All of us photographers look at thousands of photographs, the vast major-ity of which make but a fleeting impression in our memory. Occasionally, however, an image resonates with greater intensity and becomes a more prominent part of our visual literacy and memory. This is such an image for me — and what is so puzzling is that, it is so for reasons I cannot quite determine. Is it the decay? Is it that the horse is pointed into the corner, a direction of pointless futility? Is it the cloudlike structure in the crumbling wall that presents us with the symbolic dichotomy of cement versus cloud? Is it the dark grime? Is it the absence of people? Is it the tension between the child’s toy and the place no child belongs? Is it the direct overhead light that seems to emphasize the cavernous alley? Is it the total absence of any sign of life of any kind, but yet the echo of this man-made, normally joyful object found in this man-made desolation? Perhaps it is all of this — perhaps it is something more deeply buried in my subconscious. Whatever the reasons, this image haunts me and has done so from the moment I first saw it.

One of the subtle aspects of this image escaped me until just recently. Notice the angle of the line of sight from which we view this rocking horse. We don’t see it from the height of the child, but rather from the height of an adult. This element

of the photographic composition is, I believe, the single most important factor in interpreting this image. We see this child’s toy from the perspective of an adult; as a child we might have seen a shiny and new rocking horse, but now we see it as a tat-tered remains of our youth. What was a moment of fanciful fun, we now see, in our adulthood, as something lost, abandoned, tainted by age and the decay of life. All of this is a result of the downward angle with which we view this scene.

It’s worth noting that the title of Kabelik’s portfo-lio is Remembering Prague. This title encourages us to view this image from the point of “looking back.” So much of today’s photography tends to express memory as some fuzzy, out of focus, blurry-edged, indistinct thing. Kabelik’s way of remembering is the opposite: sharply focused, clearly illuminated, distinctly seen from edge to edge and corner to corner. There is a reality to his memory that is emphasized by his use of technique. There is a grittiness that removes it from the comfortable and distant dream/fantasy of the edges of memory. Perhaps that, too, is part of the reason this image is so haunting.

Remembering Prague by Vladimir Kabelik

Published in LensWork and LensWork Extended #59

More Thoughts via Audio Commentary

Sample pages from Looking at Images

Sample pages from Looking at Images

CommentaryHere is another wonderful example of my theory of three aspects. For those of you new to this idea, the short version is that the best photographs have three aspects that are simultaneously in play in the visual composition. By this, I don’t mean three objects, but rather three aspects.

To be specific, I don’t mean the bird, the leaf, and the page as compositional objects, but rather the bird/leaf/page (the objects), the mirror (reflec-tion), and the projected text seen most prevalently in the upper corner above the leaf. It would have been incredibly easy for Julie Meridian to simply photograph the specimen objects in a flat, rather two-dimensional composition. By adding the mirror and the projected text/light, she brings this rather two-dimensional composition to life — no pun intended.

Meridian has avoided one of the common mis-takes we often see in lifeless photographs: when the artist forgets they are making a two-dimen-sional object and works diligently to overcome that limitation. We photographers live in the three-dimensional world and most often our photographs depict the three-dimensional world.

It’s easy, therefore, to assume that the viewers have an experience that could be characterized as look-ing through the paper at the three-dimensional world — that business about the viewer’s ability to stand in our shoes and see through our eyes. Sometimes this kind of assumption and com-position can create an interesting photograph. More often, it creates an emotionally shallow and visually uninteresting reproduction of the world — often referred to as “camera as Xerox machine.”

As I say, Meridian avoids this by remembering that her art product (photograph) is a flat, two-dimensional object that needs extraordinary visual punch so that it is not seen as a flat, two-dimensional object. By introducing the additional aspects of the mirror and the projected text/light, her composition engages both our eyes and our imagination. How boring this project could have been if she had merely photographed the specimens. How exciting and visually interesting the project is because she had the wisdom and foresight to think beyond the use of the camera as merely a recording device.

Specimens by Julie Meridian

Published in LensWork and LensWork Extended #82

Sample pages from Looking at Images

More Thoughts via Audio Commentary

Sample pages from Looking at Images

CommentaryIn this image from Kristin Satzman, we have an example of a classic composition technique known as “layering.” For reasons I cannot fathom, this is a technique I almost never see discussed in books on photographic composition. The so-called “Rule of Thirds,” yes; the ideas of near/far, yes; depth of field, yes; perspective, edge burning, leading lines, chiaroscuro — all yes. Why layering is ignored is beyond me simply because it is such an incredibly successful compositional tool to add three dimensionality to an inherently two-dimensional medium.

Perhaps it is because successful layering is so dif-ficult to pull off without adding visual confusion. In this image, Satzman takes advantage of two characteristics of the foreground tree that help avoid confusion: the dark trunk against the white mist in the middle of the image; and the strange underside illumination of the tree trunks in the foreground. Where does this light come from? We don’t know, but we can see that it adds an interest-ing visual separation to the darker background behind it. What an unusual combination!

It’s worth noting, also, that the foreground tree’s farthest branches do begin to tonally merge with the background near the right side of the

photograph. This helps hold our eye in the image as we are naturally pulled back to the center where the contrast creates the main focus of the composition. Marvelous!

It is easy to see how unsuccessful this image could be if the foreground tree trunk tonalities were reversed. If the upper branches were light, they would visually meld into the mist; if the lower parts of the trunk were dark, they would visually meld into the undergrowth. The magic of this photograph is in the fact that neither of these unfortunate tonal merges occur and instead we have this wonderful layered composition.

One other small component of this image catches my eye. In the lower left of the image, behind the tree, there appears to be a lighter area of the ground that could be a trail in the woods that curves back into the composition about half way up the left side. I’m not certain this is a trail, but it is easy to interpret it as one. With this inter-pretation, however, there is a draw to my eye that sweeps left to right, paralleling the foreground tree trunk itself. This doubling of the composi-tional movement helps make this an especially powerful image.

Sanctuary by Kristin Satzman

Published in LensWork and LensWork Extended #57

Sample pages from Looking at Images

More Thoughts via Audio Commentary

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Since 2010, our Looking at Images blog has touched a wide audience by closely examining some 300 images previously published in LensWork or LensWork Extended. Brooks Jensen’s in-depth commentaries are not critiques, but instead discuss aspects of photogaphy through image content, context, and com-position. Looking at Images is a study aid — an engaging look at images as a platform to think about photography and the creative process. The intent is to provide photographers with tools to help them think about their own creative work. For the fi rst time, these commentaries are available in book form!

X Commentary by Brooks Jensen, editor of LensWork, writer, podcaster, workshop instructor, and photographer

X Short, thought-provoking reads discussing aspects of image con-tent, context, and composition (examples in this issue on pages 10-19)

X Improve your photography and deepen your aesthetic eye by learning to see, feel, understand, think, and speak about images.

X A great teaching tool and study aid

X State-of-the-art, museum-book quality duotone printing

X Includes color images as well as black-and-white!

X 9” tall x 8” wide, larger than LensWork

X 240 pages and 113 images by 113 photographers previously published in LensWork or LensWork Extended

X Additional audio commentary accessible through QR codes which link that page of the book to an audio file on our website. The QR code can be scanned with your tablet or smartphone and the audio will play as you look at the image in the book — a true multi-media, paper-based book experience!

Order at http://shop.lenswork.com or by calling 800-659-2130

Regular price is $34.95* less a $10 discount to subscribers of LensWork, LensWork Extended, or LensWork Online!

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New book shipping in April!