Chapter 14 | Seeing
Chapter 14 | Seeing
Right up front I should probably make something very clear, so there can be no ambiguity concerning my belief in sharing what I saw and not what I imagine, I saw. You might ask, why is he even trying to combine purity of image with ‘seeing’?
I’ve long held the belief that Nature is amazing. It doesn’t need my help to somehow make it more beautiful. What you see in my images is truth, a fact stilled. It is what I saw with my naked eye and had you been standing right next to me you too could say ‘that is what we saw, it looked just like that.’
“Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better.” | Andre Gide
Perhaps the best way to help describe this point is to share the Op-Ed article I wrote and Popular Photography Published. So here it is…
Basically, if you want to tell people that is what you saw and not what you ‘experienced’, just be honest about it and tell me upfront. If you want to put a moon where a moon could never go, by all means that is your prerogative. Just don’t lie to me about it by saying things like “The lunar experience as I watched the moon come up over the horizon was unlike anything I’d ever experienced!”, especially when that ‘moon’ was shot in Alaska but implanted into a scene from Utah. Come On! The general public can’t be that naive, can they?
Be assured that I never do anything like that and never will. But if I did – I would say that I did.
So what does ‘seeing’ really mean to me? Beyond showing what was really there? There have been a number of elements, which I have, taught during workshops over the years. Most people think that there is a ‘formula’ and if they could just understand that formula then they too could master this art form. We could talk about the rule of thirds, Fibonaccii series, foreground to background perspective, relative object sizing, horizon, elements that draw ones eyes into a scene, etc. etc. etc.
I’m not sure if I can tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it’s not, it’s not about actually seeing.
Chapter 14 | Be Present
A while back, someone asked ‘how is it you have so much patience when it comes to getting an image?’ This question came right after I’d mentioned one of my pieces took 11 years to get right. The image is called ‘Avalanche Creek’ from Glacier National Park in Montana. One year the water level and flow was perfect, but nothing else. The next year the water wasn’t right at all, but the moss was amazing. The next time the water and moss were great, but the lighting was terrible. Mother nature does what mother nature wants to do and not what I want her to do. Eventually everything came together and I got, for me, a great image. It took eleven years to get right. Please don’t feel too bad for me because it meant going back to one of my most favorite places.
The most important piece of advice I could give anyone looking to do this type of work, would be to never give up – have patience. Once you are ‘there’ though, at the location wherever that might be, you need to dedicate yourself to being present.
By that I mean you cannot be thinking about where you want to be next, you must concentrate on where you are at that moment. This idea is fairly simple in it’s idealism, but very hard to do from a humanistic perspective. We, humanity, are easily distracted and especially so when we don’t feel like we’re going to get what ‘we want.’ Because of that we tend to move on to other things…like the ‘other spot I saw earlier’.
It has been my experience that the ‘grass’ is not usually greener on the other side of the fence. Stick to what you believe is the right thing, no matter what. It might take 11 years to get the image, but eventually you will get it, and it will be amazing.
To Learn More on the process of ‘seeing’ one must let go of the world they live in and learn to see the world as it is…check out this excerpt from the March 2008 Popular Photography Article called The Viewfinder Within; it takes a look into how I & Clyde Butcher look to express and teach our students to improve their own works.
Chapter 14 | Being a Photo Snob
This term of endearment comes from decades of teaching in-field workshops to literally hundreds of photographers. Watching as the light bulb goes on can be one of the most rewarding experiences any teacher can experience. I’ve been fortunate to see this happen every single time I’ve taught. That could explain why so many people came to take additional workshops time and again.
A Photo Snob is an honorary title bestowed by, well, me. It means that one has been able to take what was taught and apply it in the real world. They no longer look at what is ‘right’ with an image, but work diligently to look at what is ‘wrong’ with it and then do their best to remove it. We’re picky, true, endure to the end, non wavering, steadfast, and honest in our photography endeavors. We make masterpieces from what mother nature would call her own.
And we are many.