Abstract Raindrops, Skrova
Despite the title, these are not raindrops. This image was, indeed, made on the Norwegian island of Skrova, but its abstract nature masks its reality.
Abstract Raindrops, Skrova
Despite the title, these are not raindrops. This image was, indeed, made on the Norwegian island of Skrova, but its abstract nature masks its reality.
Finding Inspiration for Realism or Abstraction
INSPIRATION CAN BE FOUND EVERYWHERE; it largely depends on you and your openness to things around you, often things that you can easily overlook. Some people get ideas from the most mundane things. Others find inspiration in remote areas that only they work with or have access to. You simply have to pay attention to the things around you, things in your daily life, from your background, or even in your thoughts and dreams. In previous chapters I have discussed how my lifelong interest and academic background in mathematics and physics helped me find a deeper meaning in the slit canyons of northern Arizona and southern Utah, and also in the cathedrals of England. Both of these examples reflect a wonderful statement that Minor White made, “We photograph something for what it is, and for what else it is.”
I photographed the cathedrals in 1980 and 1981, and considered the project finished at that point. I began photographing the slit canyons in 1980, and will consider that project finished when I no longer have the strength and stamina to hike into such canyons. However, my work in Antelope Canyon ended in 1998, when I became too depressed by the overriding commercialization of these magnificent places to continue visiting them. These places felt truly sacred to me, but, in an ironic twist, seem to not be sacred to the Navajo upon whose land many of them are located.
Since 2000, I’ve been photographing the sand dunes at Stove Pipe Wells in Death Valley, where I made my first true abstract photograph way back in 1976 (figure 1–5). I returned to this area to start a workshop with my co-instructors Jay Dusard and Jack Dykinga, and quickly reestablished my interest in the dunes. I find them to be among the most peaceful places I’ve ever encountered. I’ve also found that it’s impossible to be in a single spot on the dunes more than once because the wind changes the sand patterns constantly; the lighting is always different based on the time of year and time of day; and it’s hard to simply locate the same place on the dunes twice. I recognized the endlessness of the photographic possibilities quite quickly when walking over the dunes. I didn’t need a lot of time to gather my thoughts and turn them into photographs.
Photographed the morning after a rainstorm (yes, Death Valley gets rain at times) the dunes took on the texture of stucco, with just a tiny bit of typical sand rippling. I was drawn to the interlocked, softly curved triangles coming in from the left and right, all apparently balanced on the fulcrum of a sunlit, broken piece of dried sage near the bottom center.
I still show the 1976 image as an integral part of my sand dune study, but now I have a whole portfolio of dune images to go along with that pioneering photograph. I think my evolution in seeing over the years influenced my renewed interest in the dunes, particularly my growing recognition of the importance of relationships of line and form, and the overwhelming importance of light. I have found that the dunes present opportunities for the purest study of light and form imaginable. I think I was self-influenced in my new passion for photographing the dunes a quarter-century after I first encountered them.
The difference between my work on the dunes and my work in the slit canyons is that the canyon photography opened up a whole new photographic field that had never been explored previously. Creativity virtually came with the imagery. But it was also the interpretation of the canyons as force fields, rather than an attempt to portray them as simply extremely narrow canyons, that contributed to my creative effort. Sand dunes, on the other hand, have been photographed by numerous photographers for well over a century; there was nothing new about the subject matter. The challenge, therefore, has been to produce imagery that is both good and different from the many who preceded me. I leave it to the viewer to decide if I’ve been successful. I cannot reproduce a complete portfolio in this book, but figures 4–1 through 4–3 and 7–10 through 7–12 show a sampling of what I’ve been up to.
These are some of my stories. Hopefully within them are some bits of information or inspiration that are of value to you. But let’s turn the focus directly to you. How and where can you find inspiration for your photographs? This is the key question that I’m always asked at workshops, via emails, and in many other ways. In chapter 2 I suggested trying a variety of photographic genres and subjects—landscapes, cityscapes, portraits, street photography, family and friends—to see which ones draw you in again and again, and which ones prove uninteresting. I also recommended that you look to the work of your favorite photographers to provide further clues as to what interests you. Now let’s look in some other directions and try to uncover some of your interests.
I found these magnificent forms at the close of a morning workshop field session on the sand dunes. I set up my 4×5 camera with a wide angle lens and made an exposure. Then I stepped forward about a step and a half, which had no effect on the distant top of the image but a profound effect on the wonderful nearby shapes, and exposed a second negative. Again I stepped forward, this time hardly six inches, which once again had a striking effect on the foreground curves, and exposed my third negative. I have shown the print from the third and final negative since then.
Figure 4–3: Serpentine Ridge, Sunset
This image was made at the close of an afternoon workshop field session, just as the sun was about to set. After finding the serpentine ridge, I worked as fast as I could to set up my tripod and 4×5 camera, focus quickly, make a fast light meter reading, and insert the film holder to expose the negative. Within a minute of the exposure the sun went below the horizon, and the brilliance of the serpentine ridge and the fascinating hollows adjacent to it disappeared. Sometimes, even with a large format camera, speed is necessary. And sometimes you can do it in time.
Have you ever thought of finding photographic inspiration and valid subject matter in the place where you spend much of your day? Is there any aspect of your daily work that is of visual interest to you? Do you work with others in an office, store, laboratory, or some other place where you may have the opportunity to photograph those working with you? I know of medical doctors who have asked their patients if they would be willing to be photographed. In many cases, the patients are not only willing to pose, but are actually thrilled that their doctor has taken such deep interest in them.
Can you photograph in your workplace? Sometimes it takes a little tenacity to get past the barrier of a boss saying no, but maybe in time he’d give it a second thought and allow some photography. Perhaps your work takes you outdoors, where you may be able to do some photography along with your activities. Whether you work indoors or outdoors, look at the whole scene as well as the details. There may be a lot of wonderful photographic possibilities hidden within them. Consider whether there are aspects of your work that could inspire your interpretation of things you see when you’re away from the workplace, just as my math and science background inspired my interpretation of the slit canyons.
Several years ago a medical doctor attended one of my workshops. He is a Vietnam War veteran who returns to the country each year to volunteer free medical work. At one of the print review sessions he put up a set of nicely mounted landscape images, and on the counter beneath them he laid down several unmounted portraits of patients he worked with in Vietnam. I suggested to the group that we first discuss the mounted landscape work. I purposely asked to review those images first, for reasons soon to become clear.
After we reviewed the landscape work I turned to him directly and asked, “Why didn’t you mount the portraits? They mean so much more to you.” He immediately broke into tears.
Perhaps he thought that as a landscape photographer, I would be primarily—or even exclusively—interested in seeing landscapes. Perhaps he felt his hospital patient portraits would be viewed as uninteresting, extraneous images. That’s not my approach in my workshops. I try to look at all of the images that students present with an eye toward helping them improve their own vision, their own interpretation, their own goals. I’m not trying to produce clones of the type of work that I do. (First and foremost, of course, I don’t want or need the competition.)
We discussed this student’s portrait work for the next 45 minutes, during which he broke into tears several more times. Those photographs were, indeed, far more important to him. That was clear to me as he put his work up, and that’s why I suggested reviewing the landscapes first, recognizing that if we talked about the portraits first, we’d never get to the landscapes.
I recommended that he temporarily put the landscape work aside and concentrate on the patient portraits, placing them virtually on par with his medical services during his subsequent visits to Vietnam. Deep inside I suspect he knew that, but he had to hear that suggestion. So his inspiration was right in front of him in his line of work. Yours may be, too. I recommend you look into it. And if you already have but you dismissed it, look again, and look deeper.
Have you looked carefully around your home? Have you looked not only within your home, but at the entire structure itself, or at the neighborhood in which it’s located? Again, have you looked not only at the broad scene, but at the details within it? You may walk around your home or neighborhood without ever noticing its photographic potential, but it’s worth giving it some thought. After all, you spend a lot of time there, and it may prove to be a treasure trove of opportunities.
Ruth Bernhard, a fabulous photographer who died in her late 90s and is primarily known for her nude studies, once said, “You have to learn to take pictures within 15 feet of your bed.” Have you ever thought of doing that? Have you thought of taking pictures within 15 feet of your dining room table, kitchen counter, or living room? I encouraged many of my workshop students to attend one of Ruth’s workshops before she grew too old to do them anymore, and many did. One such student, who was fully involved in landscape photography, heard her comment and immediately said, “I can’t do that!” Ruth asked why not. He answered, “My bed is too heavy to carry out there!”
Most people don’t do too much photography until they travel. Often, they’ll be drawn to the people they see on the street in foreign countries. But how often are they drawn to people on the street in their own country, their own city, the nearby shopping center, or their own neighborhood? Based on what I’ve seen in 40 years of looking at student work in my workshops, it seems the answer is that people “over there” are interesting, but people “right here” are not.
Really? Maybe the answer is that they feel a bit scared about aiming their camera at folks on their home turf, but there’s some type of safety in doing so abroad. I’ve seen some awfully fascinating looking people wherever I’ve gone, so it seems to me that the opportunity lies equally here and there.
Too many people take walks around their location regularly but only take out their camera when they travel to somewhere like Yellowstone. I once heard a good photographer wryly comment that most people have a photographic button in their butt, and it has to be jiggled by at least 500 miles of travel before it turns on. I think there’s some truth to that observation.
It’s worth trying to overcome the need to travel in order to photograph. In general, you have no more than three or four weeks of vacation travel each year, leaving you about 48 weeks of non-travel. Don’t put your camera away during those lengthy times at home. Look around you and open yourself up to the countless possibilities within reach.
If you are reading this book, I’ll assume you read regularly... or could. You may find great inspiration from literature, poetry, histories, or any other reading material. I have found tremendous inspiration in Japanese Haiku poetry. I don’t read or understand Japanese; I read translations of the Japanese poems or poetry written in English that conforms to the basic rules of Haiku. Haiku poems are just three lines long and, in their purest form, have just 17 syllables. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five. In such a short poem, very little can be said, so the writing relies on allusions to vivid imagery to supply the meaning, such as in the following example:
A bitter morning:
Sparrows sitting together
Without any necks.
—J.W. Hackett
If you’re like me you immediately conjure up a picture in your mind. What do you see? Do you see two or three sparrows, or a whole flock? Do you picture a backyard, an open natural meadow, an urban sidewalk, or perhaps sparrows lined up on the branch of a snow-covered tree? Do you see any colors, structures, or other trees? Everyone sees a different picture. But the fact remains that you conjured up the picture; nothing in the Haiku directed your specific picture. It’s quite remarkable. Sometimes your picture is extremely complex, with elements not even alluded to in the Haiku itself.
If this example whets your appetite, I’d recommend searching for Haiku poetry in bookstores, libraries, or online. These short poems are delightful to read, and they may prove to be inspirational for your photography.
Haiku has made me wonder if I could conjure up thoughts or allusions to things that do not actually appear in my photographs via my photographs, perhaps thoughts that I never even had when making the photographs. It’s encouraged me to simplify my photographs to emulate the elegant simplicity of Haiku, while still communicating a message.
Haiku is just one form of poetic literature. Poetry of all types can provide visual inspiration, as can prose. Novels, historical novels, and non-fiction of all types often serve as starting points for visual inspiration. If the books you are reading stimulate anything visual for you, it’s worth trying to translate the imagery to your own photographic imagery. Haiku didn’t push me to photograph sparrows in the snow, but it made me think about simplicity as a means of photographic expression. Maybe the same thoughts could have been inspired by Shaker furniture, which is simple and sparse, yet elegantly designed. The inspiration that I got from Haiku could easily have come from going into the right furniture store. The key is trying to keep your mind open to new ideas, and translating those ideas to your photographic goals.
We all know that music has a profound effect on us. It varies widely from rap to hard rock to jazz to country to classical, and that’s only a few types of music regularly performed in the United States. The music of China, the Arab world, India, central Africa, and many other parts of the world may seem utterly discordant and irritating to American and Western sensibilities, yet have undeniable emotional effects on those who have lived with it all their lives. This shows the effects of culture on our thinking and emotional states.
But staying with the type of music you understand and enjoy, you know that it can be tremendously moving, whether its martial music that gets you excited; popular love songs or operatic arias; orchestral or solo instrumental music that brings tears to your eyes; or upbeat music that makes you smile, tap your feet, and spontaneously start to dance.
But how can you translate musical ideas and emotions directly to photography? It would be impossible to outline an exact formula for this; nobody can tell you how to translate one to the other. But just as you may be able to find and transfer inspiration from your workplace, home environment, educational background, or other visual art forms to your photography, you can transfer inspiration from music to your photography. Perhaps you can draw upon your emotional response to a particular piece of music to inspire your composition or your choice of subject matter. Or you may be able to apply your thoughts about the ways in which music is performed or the creative processes of musicians to your photographic process.
I know with certainty that music has inspired my thinking in several very clear and understandable ways. I am drawn to classical music, particularly chamber music, and I enjoy everything from solo performances to groups of up to 10 musicians, where I can generally pick out the individual instruments throughout the piece. I attend concerts and I have rather extensive vinyl record and CD collections. Within those collections are recordings by different ensembles of the same musical score, each with a different interpretation.
These variations in the way music can be performed has opened up my thinking about the many possible variations in the way any scene can be exposed and then printed. As noted in chapter 2, Ansel Adams has said of traditional black-and-white photographic processes, “The negative is the score; the print is the performance.” Translated to digital imagery, this could be: the RAW file is the score; the tiff is the performance. I realize that with a negative in my enlarger, there is a wide range of ways to print it that could be valid, but the way I choose to do so probably comes down to a very specific set of tonalities and the final size of the image that most closely reflects my feelings about the scene I photographed. So I realize that I have to plumb the depths of my thoughts and feelings in order to determine how I want to present that image. Another photographer could print the same image with a very different set of tonalities, and could choose a different size print. And while their interpretation may be wonderful, it may not come close to the way I want to interpret the scene. There can be a huge difference between personal interpretations of equally competent photographers.
There’s a second way that music has influenced my photography. As I noted above, I have purchased several different recordings of particular compositions, such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations for piano, or Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14, known as Death and the Maiden, and many others. I am often drawn to a segment of one recording that I find particularly pleasing, but more drawn to a different segment from another recording. The thought occurred to me that one could create the “ideal” recording by combining my favorite parts from the various soloists or ensembles into a single recording. This would produce the finest of all possible recordings for my ears and my emotions.
With that thought in mind, it occurred to me that when I’m printing a negative or working digitally on a RAW file, I should be able to optimize each portion of the print to create the best of all possible images. I can lighten or darken certain areas of the image, increase or decrease the contrast level, enhance or subdue the color intensities, or make any other desirable alterations to achieve the effect I want in the final image. Of course, I must stay within the limits of logical light throughout the final image; for example, I can’t have sunlight coming in from the left in one area, and from the right in another area of the same landscape. In my evaluation of any new image that I produce in the darkroom or on my computer, I not only look at the complete image, but also at each portion of the image to see if I have optimized the separate component areas to the benefit of the complete image.
Please note that I’m talking about optimizing each section of a photograph to make the best possible image, not maximizing each section of the image. The distinction is important. I can increase the contrast or color saturation, or in some manner jazz up any area of a photograph if I wish to do so, but I have to consider the entire image. If I were to increase contrast or saturation everywhere, the viewer’s eye would jump around, attracted equally to each part of the picture. That defeats the composition and communicative purpose of the image. It’s important to direct the viewer’s eye in a measured manner to the areas of the image you want him to concentrate on the most. So you have to be subtle and subdued in some regions in order to make them subordinate to the whole, while helping to support the whole. This can be compared to the way in which some instruments in a string quartet or symphony are subdued but audible, while other instruments carry the main theme.
Figure 4–4: Urban Wildlife, Miami
A set of enormous buildings set the stage for this decidedly tongue-in-cheek comment on the barrenness of modern urban life. A couple of pigeons are the only visible life in the vast concrete scene. Yet, beyond the satiric nature of the scene is the interplay between the criss-cross geometries of the parking structure and the rectilinear geometries of the buildings, which to my eye had enough visual interest to draw the viewer into the deeper statement of the barenness of it all.
Music may also influence my photography in terms of the way I see my surroundings. I often see harmonies or rhythms within a scene that subliminally resonate with me. In my English cathedral studies, I saw the “frozen music” that Goethe spoke of in the march of columns, arches, and vaults. But these are manmade structures that were purposely designed to bring out such musical repetitions and make the parishioners feel that they were truly in the presence of God. What about a natural landscape, where there is no intentional design? In such settings I may set my camera down because I see and feel the same frozen music that reaches a pinnacle from a particular point of view. I know that I have often talked with those around me about the roll and flow of the land from some viewpoints, because that’s how I’ve seen it. I may or may not be consciously aware of this musical influence, but it may be there nonetheless. I have felt that in a very different way with my “urban geometrics.” In these studies of modern urban architectural interactions, I feel a more jazzy, staccato, herky-jerky rhythm when looking at the relationships within the scene (figure 4–4).
There is another aspect of music that fascinates me, but I have to approach it by backing my way into it. Over the years I have talked to people who are drawn to photographic abstraction and some who are completely turned off by abstract photographs. One of the things I have heard from those who dislike photographic abstraction is that abstraction carries no emotional content. Apparently they can be emotionally moved by a portrait, landscape, war photograph, or any number of other genres that portray subjects they can immediately identify, but they are not moved by abstraction, a term that usually connotes that the viewer will have difficulty quickly identifying the subject matter.
Yet these same people can be deeply moved by music. Now, when you break it down, music is really a set of tones, rhythms, and timbres that are about as abstract as anything can be. How can you identify a piece of music in the same way that you can identify a portrait, landscape, or any other “realistic” photographic subject? You can’t. Of course, you may be able to relate to the words in a rap, a rock song, a country western song, or an operatic aria, but what about the instrumental music or rhythmic beats alone? Separated from the lyrics, the music is still a decidedly abstract entity. Yet it can still have a remarkable emotional effect on the listener.
Since music has an undeniable emotional effect on all of us, with each of us responding to our own specific musical sensibilities, I strongly urge you to see if you can find inspiration for your own photography from the music that affects you most strongly. You may not be drawn to classical music, as I am, but that’s immaterial. You surely have your own corner of musical pleasure, and that’s where to turn for your potential inspiration.
I believe that photographic abstraction contains no less emotional power than a realistic photograph; it’s just that some people do not respond to visual abstraction. Recognizing that fact frees you, the photographer, from being negatively impacted by those who may not like your abstract imagery. During my first few years in photography, I was intimidated by those who reacted negatively to any abstraction that I put in front of them. As I’ve written, that all vanished in a flash when I saw Brett Weston’s images in 1979, just 4 1/2 months prior to walking into Antelope Canyon, where I produced the most abstract imagery I’ve ever created. Many viewers have been deeply moved by those images, while others have not. I’ve learned to accept that and not be intimidated or bothered by it.
To me, the idea that each viewer brings his own background into the image has become part of the attraction of abstraction. Let’s go back to my first photograph in Antelope Canyon, Circular Chimney (figure 1–6). One day I was delivering prints to the Stephen White Gallery to replace those that had sold. As I walked into Stephen’s office to give him the replacements, I found him sitting behind his desk speaking with a man who had his checkbook open and a pen in his hand. There was a mounted print of Circular Chimney on top of the desk leaning against the wall. It was obvious that a sale was about to be completed.
As I entered the room, Steve looked up at me, turned to the gentleman across the desk, and said, “Here’s the artist.” The man looked at me, confirmed that I had made the photograph, and said, “This is the best wood detail I’ve ever seen.”
I quietly chuckled, and he noticed my mirth. So he asked, “Isn’t this a wood detail?” I said, “No, it really isn’t.” And then I tried to describe what it actually was. He listened, shrugged his shoulders (obviously not comprehending my description of the canyon), filled out the check, and walked out with the photograph.
The interesting thing here is that he had defined what the photograph was, and after being told that his definition was incorrect, he still liked it enough to purchase it. Abstraction can do this. You can see something for what it is, or for what it isn’t, and still be drawn to it. I have heard a variety of interpretations of my slit canyon work from viewers whose backgrounds are radically different from mine. What they see is a product of their life history and interests, and it is quite different from my interpretation of the canyons as forces in nature, which I saw and felt as a result of my life history.
Can you get this same effect from more realistic imagery? I think so. For example, one evening I was sitting at dinner with my wife, wondering aloud why Basin Mountain, Approaching Storm (figure 2–15) was so popular. I asked her what she saw when she looked at the image. She said that she first saw the peaceful meadow in the foreground. I almost gasped. The photograph is titled Basin Mountain, Approaching Storm because I see the mountain and surrounding clouds first, and the meadow is almost a backdrop to the real essence of the image, which is the approaching storm that is about to engulf the mountain. But the moment she uttered those words, the mystery of the image’s popularity was solved. For the first time I understood that two people can love the image for different reasons—one sees it as a pastoral scene with a stormy background, while the other sees it as a stormy scene with a pastoral foreground. In other words, the composition and the interpretation of the scene can be successful in two different ways. This dualism had never occurred to me.
Portraits can have multiple interpretations as well. Of course, the most famous is Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Mona Lisa, which has been the source of innumerable essays, discussions, and debates for centuries. Photographic portraits can also have divergent interpretations. Sometimes you may want that leeway; other times you may want to portray the subject as sweet and lovely, or sullen and removed, or aggressive and scary, or authoritarian, or shy, or any other type of characteristic you see in the person. It’s tricky to successfully translate your assessment of the person into a photograph that conveys that set of characteristics to a viewer who has never met the person. But that’s the genius of a great portraitist: the ability to convey the character of a person. Through the use of appropriate lighting, the right facial expression or body language, the right camera angle, or any number of other techniques that require intense study of human characteristics, you can do it.
Another issue that interfaces with issues of realism and abstraction in photography is the question of color rendition of an image as opposed to black- and-white rendition. Often, a color image is judged to be too saturated in color, whereas a black-and-white image rarely has the equivalent objection, except perhaps that it is too high in contrast. Today, digital techniques make it extremely easy to increase color intensity with a slider, and too many people are seduced by higher color saturation. They go over the line.
But where is the line? Obviously it varies for each of us. When a group of French painters in the late 1800s made paintings featuring intense colors, they were labeled “Fauvists,” meaning “wild beasts,” for their extreme use of color. Some people loved the paintings; most hated them. Today, they are a historic tidbit, with about the same percentage of us loving and hating the paintings today as when they first appeared on the scene.
One thing stands out for me in evaluating color saturation: the more realistic an image is, the more it must be confined to realistic colors. I feel that grass, sky, skin tones, and other such recognizable entities have to be kept in check or they simply look wrong. As subject matter becomes more abstract, color saturation becomes less confining, and when subject matter becomes totally abstract, it may not matter if the greens are pink or the yellows are purple. In other words, the more abstract a color photograph becomes, the less fragile the color or degree of color saturation is. Colors can hold up to wider departures from reality as abstraction increases.
The degree of color saturation has always been a concern in color photography. The advent of digital photography ramps it up greatly because it’s so easy to increase saturation and it’s so addictive. Nothing in digital photography forces this onslaught of overbearing color, but the vast number of options makes it too easy to engage in these abusive behaviors, and too many photographers get sucked into the vortex. It’s avoidable. It’s possible to show restraint and subtlety. If you want to produce realistic colors in your photographs it may be wise to review some of the great paintings in museums or in well-reproduced books to see how the great painters dealt with color—both color balance and color saturation. Compare them with the degree of saturation in your own digital imagery. The comparison will prove to be very instructive.
A black-and-white photograph is one step of abstraction away from a color photograph, and a further step away from reality. Hence, it affords greater flexibility. The black sky in Ansel Adams’s Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico is perfectly acceptable in black and white, but would look extremely awkward in color. Yet the image is considered a realistic photograph, not an abstract one. In general, I feel that black and white offers far more artistic interpretation than color because of its inherent abstract underpinnings.
Sometimes a photographer has an idea of what he wants to accomplish, but he doesn’t really know how to achieve that goal. Mapping out that pathway can be the most difficult part of the process. Prior to that, figuring out exactly what you want to say about your subject matter—whether it’s the character of a person you want to bring out in a portrait, the forces in nature found in the sandstone walls of a slit canyon, or anything else—can also be challenging. This is where the combination of drawing upon your deepest interests and fully understanding the technical aspects of photography—digital or traditional—gives you the tools you need to accomplish your goals.
Allow me to return once again to my initial image from Antelope Canyon (figure 1–6). As I explained in chapter 1, the canyon walls instantly reminded me of force fields in nature. It was so compelling to me that I wanted to use the canyon to convey those forces I felt so strongly rather than simply show the canyon.
With this as my overriding objective, I made a number of decisions when composing and printing the image in order to convey my intended meaning. Most notably I didn’t place a person or any recognizable object that would give a sense of scale in the frame. Forces exist at the subatomic scale and at the cosmic scale, and since I saw the canyon as representative of those forces, I wanted to remove any visible sense of scale. I didn’t show the floor or the walls on either side that indicate how narrow the canyon is because, again, I wasn’t interested in showing the canyon or how narrow it is; I was interested in using the canyon to depict forces in nature. I aimed the camera straight up, thereby eliminating anything recognizable in the image. It’s virtually impossible to tell which direction the camera is pointing (straight ahead, downward, or upward), which is what I wanted because forces have no inherent direction.
So I wanted to eliminate any sense of scale or direction. I wanted to make the image as abstract and evocative as possible. In printing the image, I burn in (i.e., darken) the large central black area, which contains discernible detail in the negative but not in the print, to allude to a center of intense forces around which an entire galaxy or a cloud of electrons is swirling—perhaps the black hole at the center of many galaxies, or the dense core of protons and neutrons forming an atom’s nucleus.
In exposing the negative of Circular Chimney and then printing it, I was lucky that I knew my goals and had the technical knowledge to carry them out. Specifically, I knew that my goal was depicting forces, not the canyon itself. The sweeping lines marking the walls of the canyon provided the means to that end with an impact more powerful than any I had ever experienced previously. I was able to draw upon my technical knowledge of exposing the full range of the negative and dramatically lowering contrast to achieve that goal. Most people feel that I have increased contrast to achieve the image. To the contrary, I greatly decreased it.
So while I feel it’s foolish to separate the technical aspects from the expressive, I also feel that you have to first know what you want to express to properly employ the necessary technical options. In this image—and so many subsequent images made in the narrow slit canyons—my expressive goals were the driver and I employed my technical skills to achieve my goals. In other imagery, the technical aspects may be simple, requiring nothing new, different, or heroic, but the expressive goals have to first be determined for you to make a meaningful statement.
As your technical skills increase, you’ll see more ways in which you can use them to make additional visual statements. I certainly needed them to produce Circular Chimney. But however great or small your technical skills may be, it is the expressive goals that will drive your creativity, whether the goals veer toward realism or toward abstraction. Along the way, you do the best you can with whatever knowledge you have, and as you expand your knowledge base, you will surely enlarge your opportunities and accomplish more.
Your seeing will change—and likely expand—along with your technical skills. It has been my observation that each of us seems to start out hard wired, perhaps programmed, to find similar line structure, shapes, patterns, or color relationships in widely divergent subject matter. Each of us seems to have been attracted to certain personal preferences early in life, and those things seem to remain attractive to us through adulthood. Either that, or each of us tends to look for repetitions of visual patterns in widely divergent subjects. Or, perhaps, each of us simply finds repetitions that please us in different things. From that base of early visual attractants, you may be able to expand into other pleasing lines, shapes, patterns, color relationships, etc., as your seeing becomes more mature and refined.
Let’s delve into the idea of seeing similar things repeatedly. Look at figure 4–5, which shows a cottonwood root I found in Silver Falls Canyon in 2012, and then compare its composition to that of figure 1–6, which I made in Antelope Canyon in 1980. Note how the massive dark form pushing into the center of the Antelope Canyon image from the right side is virtually the same shape as the lighter wood form pushing into the center of the cottonwood image from the right edge, and at almost precisely the same angle. I was amazed to see the similarity in design in these two different images made 32 years apart.
But that’s not the first time I’ve found compositional similarity in my work that reflects a similarity of seeing, looking, or finding that may have been ingrained and repetitive from childhood. One of the commercial architectural photographs I made in November of 1972 in the Los Cerritos Mall highlights the curved ceiling within the mall corridor (figure 4–6). One year later, in November of 1973, I made a photograph of the Sierra Wave Cloud from the Alabama Hills, immediately east of the crest of the Sierra Nevada (figure 4–7). It is uncanny how the two images are almost identical in composition, with the same overall forms and proportions. Without ever realizing it, I had photographed two completely different things capitalizing on virtually the same compositional elements. Apparently they appealed to my eye, and I photographed them without realizing until years later that I had, indeed, repeated myself.
Figure 4–5: Cottonwood Root, Silver Falls Canyon
A small, scraggly cottonwood tree somehow remains alive in the streambed of Silver Falls Canyon, surviving both long periods of drought and periodic flash floods. At its base, bark has been torn away revealing a marvelous wood grain pattern. I first saw and photographed this wood pattern in 1992, and then surprisingly came upon it again in 2012, photographing it quite differently. This is the 2012 version.
A comparison of this composition with that of Circular Chimney, Antelope Canyon (figure 1–6) is surprising, for they share many compositional similarities. Then compare the next two images (figures 4–6 and 4–7) for an even more startling comparison of similarities. Perhaps these comparisons indicate that what pleases a person’s eye may remain unchanged throughout their lives.
I still enjoy the compositions of both images. Perhaps those shapes and proportions, and even some of the tonal similarities, are ingrained in my seeing. Perhaps I was hard wired to find these particular shapes and proportions pleasing from birth or early childhood. I suspect you’ll find that your eye is similarly attracted to your own visual cues repeatedly. You will seek out those attractants, or you’ll find them by chance, either as the full composition, or as a major element within the composition. When you do find them, you’ll jump at them. But beware: if those same shapes or proportions or tonalities or colors or contrasts resonate with your audience, your photographs will be well received; if they don’t, you’re in trouble. Then you have a decision to make. Do you try to abandon this strong visual attractant of yours or do you steadfastly stick with it? Are you as stubborn as the impressionist painters waiting for the critics and the public to catch up, or do you capitulate in recognition of the idea that your way of seeing is confusing, skewed, or irritating?
I don’t think there’s an easy answer to this question. Looking back at the history of French Impressionism, we can confidently say today that Monet and Renoir and Cézanne were brilliant and correct. But if Impressionism had never caught on, we would find their names in the dustbin of art history and proclaim them to be a bunch of foolish whackos.
Whatever attracts your eye initially, you may be able to expand your seeing to other attractants, in time. Perhaps it will come naturally, without effort on your part. Perhaps you’ll actively work at looking for, and finding, other linear structures (both straight or curved), other shapes, other patterns, other color relationships or combinations that start to attract you as much as your tried and true lifetime attractants. This is all part of personal growth, and all of it feeds into expanding your creative process.
Figure 4–6: Los Cerritos Mall Corridor
This is one of many shopping mall images I made for my most important commercial architectural client (Burke, Kober, Nikolai and Archuleta; later Charles Kober Associates) in 1972. I was attracted to the graceful curve in the ceiling of the mall corridor with its recessed lighting.
The day after I photographed Basin Mountain, Approaching Storm (figure 2–15) from the town of Bishop, California, before the start of a weekend Sierra Club workshop, we had to leave town because of blowing rain and snow. Sixty miles south in the Alabama Hills we were treated to lenticular clouds undulating overhead, east of the highest peaks of the range. I made three successive photographs, stopping after the third because the shape was so pleasing to me.
Several years later I realized that I had effectively duplicated the composition I made a year earlier in the Los Cerritos Mall—one of a man-made subject, the other drawn entirely from nature. Those forms still strike me as pleasing. Perhaps it’s part of my DNA. Perhaps we’re all drawn to similar forms time after time. To this day, the cloud in this image remains the most awesome one I’ve ever seen, closely followed by the one in figure 6–2, Lenticular Cloud Over Duck Lake.
