The Way of PhotographyWriten by Pavitrata Taylor
Is there a Way of photography?
Photography is amorphous; it is all things to all people. For me, photography is a celebration of life. Some would say, That guy has too much time on his hands. However, you can only start with yourself, and reveal your own hopes and aspirations through your art. If there is such a thing as a Way in photography, I would say it is defined in the phrase: To be a pilgrim through the visual world. That is how my good friend Uranta puts it. I like that, I like it a lot. It implies an integrity of outlook, a dignity and depth of purpose that I believe should always be invested in ones creative perceptions. I also like it because it goes beyond photography; you dont have to know anything about cameras to be that pilgrim. However, photography can certainly help in focusing ones awareness, to develop an inner eye through which the beauty of the seen world is transposed and revealed.
Photography is at once practical and mysterious. See something that interests you. Click. Take the picture. It can be as simple and perfectly workable as that. However, if you aspire to remain in a visually perceptive consciousness, things happen on another level; you start to understand Henri Cartier-Bressons evocative quote: Every circumstance has its defining moment; the good photographer will be aware of it before it happens. It sounds strange - pretentious even - but good photographs do seem to quietly present themselves. In certain situations one can just feel there is a fine photograph nearby. Sometimes the backdrop is there, but an element is missing - you dont know what it is yet, but often if you simply wait, something will happen that will complete your untaken photo. Eyes need a distance, but they also need a place to rest, a touchstone that draws the photo together or complements the whole; perhaps someone moving through an otherwise still place, or a small and bright object in a vast space, or maybe a point of stillness in a busy scene.
On the other hand the heart will have its way - the concept of the well-composed photo may be confounded by our feelings about people, places, and events. We would all rather have an ordinary photo of someone or something special to us than an amazing photo of something or someone we have no feeling for. My Scottish gran was an exceptional person with rare qualities. My favorite photo of her is a small, faded, tattered snapshot I took when I was sixteen - it has no artistic merit whatsoever but remains one of my favorite photos.
Which is better- digital or film?
For convenience, editing, speed, control, web, email etc, the answer has to be digital. For quality, color and presence, then I would say film. In my experience, a good negative scanner and a well-exposed negative, with careful post-processing, will give better results than digital. Its not all about resolution; its also about quality of color and subtleties of tone. Digital images often seem to have an inherent flat feeling to them. The best quality of all is from a projected slide, it really is the closest you can get to the original view. However, the original view may not be what you want.
The other problem with digital photography relates to some of the points mentioned in the answer to the first question. Rather than honing ones visual and technical skills to the point where the photo is realized at its most perfect moment, with hundreds of images now available on modern memory cards, there is a tendency to just take lots of photos. We all do it, and it doesnt make us better photographers, it just tends to make us more obtrusive and intrusive. At grand events we go into overdrive, snapping and chimping - even taking photos just to check the exposure level! I am the worst culprit here, and fess up to the fact. The only plea I have in my defense is that I refuse to put any camera into drive mode, whereby one holds the shutter and it just keeps taking pictures continuously. I salvage a little dignity by at least taking each photo individually! Its surprising how much more careful and considered our digital photographs become when we only have a few possible images left on the memory card! Then we frantically start chimping to see what we can delete to make more space so we can just go into digital overdrive again! What a game! Digiots, arent we just? Digital idiots! You have every right to laugh at us! Until you get your first digital camera that is, and you become a chimper yourself!
On the plus side, digital cameras do make the process more sociable - the joy of sharing with others the photo just taken. It may be also be that people are relying on you to take a good photo of an unrepeatable event, and in that case the digital aspect helps in ensuring you dont let people down. The control aspect is important. Anyone who has had their negatives lost or damaged by a lab will appreciate the relative security of the digital image. The other great thing about digital images is that they can be copied without loss of quality. You could, on the other hand, see this as a curse: the uniqueness of a single negative or slide is lost, and that which was once totally original has become endlessly duplicated, each replication identical to the first.
What makes a great photographer great?
I read something today that made me chuckle. A great photographer is someone who doesnt show you their dud photos. There is truth in that. Photography, being so easy and accessible, is very enchanting. But after a few years you look back on your previous output and wince. A while ago I went through photos from my first few years with a camera. While patiently looking through several thousand slides, prints and negatives, deludedly thinking, Ah, let me once again peruse these pearls,' I came up with only thirty competent photos, of which just five were good enough to print! In the end only one of these got enlarged, which is the picture of a clown waiting for a bus. I do even have some issues with that one picture, but itll have to do, as they say.
My photography got a lot better once I started working in black and white. I took far fewer photos, knowing each one required darkroom time - but the ones I did take had a considered and thoughtful feeling about them, helped by the fact that I was able to work on them in the darkroom to get what I wanted. I dont actually think you have to go through all this bupkas to produce great photographs as though it is some arcane art form for which you have to suffer! I just try and make up, with patience and determination, what I lack in talent!
I would say it is difficult to produce consistently good photographs without a thorough technical knowledge of your camera. You also need an ongoing awareness of composition, tone, form, and the way light works. To get the photo you want time after time, you need to be able to visualize the way youd like it to ultimately look before you press the shutter. The photo you really want may be very different to what is actually there. It is that ability to take what you see and change it into what you can imagine that defines the photographer as an artist: the sum of experience condensed into a heartbeat. For all that, whatever you do to the image afterwards will not turn a poor photo into a good one.
For any serious photographer then, I would say that the original image from the camera is just the starting point. The darkroom or the editing program then become the tools whereby you actually begin to resolve this image with your original vision for the photograph. Whatever way you work, in the end your picture is just a set of shapes and colors on paper or screen. First of all these have to work together as an abstract arrangement. Underneath the illusion of the subject matter of great photographs or paintings you will invariably find a coherent balance where all the elements of form, tone, and light come together in harmony. I guess its a classic idea of visual aesthetics, and if you aspire to it your photos can only improve.
For all that, there are photographs that are haphazard - where the subject matter is so powerful in its immediacy that it renders irrelevant all the rules about what is or isnt a good photo. One of the reasons that I like Henri-Cartier-Bresson so much is that he had the rare ability to combine both aspects; to capture a seemingly ordinary and random event in an exquisitely balanced and resolved way. His work shows a real mastery of visual synchronicity. It also reveals that in some way perfection can be found in the simple events of everyday life, if you know how to see them. To see like that you really have to be fully alive in each moment. That is the exhilaration, the joy of photography - and for me that is where photography and spirituality meet.
Pavitrata Taylor works as a teacher in a London primary school and in his spare time is a keen photographer. He occassionaly writes but usually prefers to let his pictures do the talking. This article was originally written for Inspiration Letters at Sri Chinmoy Centre