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Q. Ethics - Black And White Photography - TAKE II
Asked by Girish Menon
(K=1384) on 11/3/2004
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Roger Waters from the Pink Floyd once said "Its just a matter of using the tools that are available when they are available. And now a days there are all sorts of electronic goodies available for people like us to use." This was quoted in the 1960s and he of course was talking about sound synthesisers.
My previous question brought out some very interesting replies. But let me rephrase the question here. Look, my life is all about documentary photography. It being a vast subject, to me its all about one particular style that I want to be known for, which in my case is Black and White. Now this again is a very specialized aspect, plenty of theory none more important than the concept of zones. I strive to achieve the perfect zone IV, V every single shot, working together with the guys at the lab to ensure that the mid tones are to the tone that I am now set with. Consistent tonality is very important to me.
Now then, I haven't personally met too many people who understand or recogdnise the concept of tones, depth etc. Of course I cannot survive shooting b&w only, I use a Canon 300D for editorial and documentaries. But if never gives me satisfaction although there is nothing much wrong with those shots. I take the trouble to visit the location a few days prior to the shoot, study the light at various times of the day etc.
But my problem is the way people here use black and white. Mostly underexposed, out of focus shots lacking depth are very well appreciated by the general public and even photo editors. I personally cannot see a b&w image coming out of a 'printer'. And studio b&w's suck big time, in my opinion anyway.
Anyway, at this stage in life, my opinions are extremely tunnelled, some time later in life maybe I could think laterally. But some of the sentences you?ve posted on my previous board certainly helped lateral thoughts, and realize one or two things. Thought I must enlist them:
"I am sorry that we have to discard old traditions, even in photography. Its moving ahead of times."
"I can't speak for any others, but my purpose in taking any photograph is to share the world as I see it with others. It may be a smile of a lovely lady, a race car at the brink of disaster or the grandure of a sunset. I like this world and hope I give someone else a bit of it."
"I just checked out your portfolio, you have some good images, and some not so good, as do we all if we are honest with ourselves, all in colour of course, but it seems to me that colour is not actually a strong element of your style, your style seems to be not unlike mine, in that you concentrate on the subject and minimise elements that do not add to the subject, this, to me, is good photography, not exactly minimalism (however that may be defined) but more an emphasis on what you, the artist perceive as the quintessence of the subject and the very reason for the images existence."
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Rajnish Duara
(K=1142) - Comment Date 11/3/2004
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Thanx Girish,
Thats pretty interesting, especially the Pink Flloyd one. Again I must empasize that art is vibrant, dynamic. Static and dogmatic thinking cannot be termed art. Even when science borders on the ultimate there is a convergence of the pure sciences. It metamorphises into something philosohical, remember Stephen Hawkin's " A brief history of time". For example (sorry, I am a cardiac surgeon and I am treading into something different) , the heart muscle is made of proteins and there are certain gates in the muscle cells which allow certain electrolytes like sodium, potassium and calcium and a lot others to go in and out. The relative difference of these to the outer environment makes it electrically charged, and the change to a positive potential triggers chemical reactions which contracts the muscle, which in turns as a whole acts like a pump to propel blood to the whole body!!! Thus u can see that biology, chemistry, physics, mechanics are all united for a singular function! whatever media we use , the ultimate goal of any "art" is to reach out to a DIFFERENT REALM OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, a higher faculty which had taken centuries to progress and evolve, the ancient Mayan and Incan paintings, Vedic poetry, the cave paintings, the Nazca lines in Peru, even the origin of a language script, all have evolved due to the creative nature of man. Art is still evolving and we can't even comprehend the way it might manifest centuries later.
I myself is a hardcore. I want to compartmentalise digital art forms from pure photography. U can do wonders with photoshop, u can see one image of mine called "Lovedance I", its digitally altered, and is posted in www.photo.net. The original was a bit bland, I made the background red and darkened the subjects to create a much stronger subject. I shall also post the original without any alteration. U can see that it has helped the image, it made it much stronger. It got 25 ratings and 1745 views within 24 hrs which would have been not possible for a unaltered image. The question is , IS IT WORTHWHILE TO ALTER STILL? R we doing the show for ourselves or for accolades?
Further discussion will be highly enjoyable, which in fact is an alternative art form;-)
Regards,
Dr.Rajnish Duara
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Girish Menon
(K=1384) - Comment Date 11/3/2004
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Let me give you one more quote. This by Dave Gilmour, again Pink Floyd. He said ?Its an extension of what?s coming out of our heads. You got to remember you got to have it inside your head to be able to get it out anyway. And the equipment isn?t actually thinking of what to do any of the time. It cannot control itself?, both Roger and Dave were talking about sound synthesizers whist recording ?Live at Pompeii?
Now then, lets focus on ?the equipment isn?t actually thinking of what to do any of the time. It cannot control itself? ? Dr.Rajnish, did you have a near about image of the altered picture in your head before you let computer software take over it? Or did you just let the filters go loose and take control of your image? You see the problem I have is that very few of us visualize the image as it would look after computer modifications simply because these ?filters?, they just have a mind of their own don?t they?
Conventional concepts like dodging, burning, cropping, colour corrections etc are perfectly acceptable because here it is the person behind the computer doing all the thinking. BUT OTHERWISE WE MIGHT BE LETTING TECHNOLOGY TAKE OVER OUR OWN CREATIVE POTENTIAL.
I majored in Physics myself so I could understand a bit of that heart talk you gave us. Where are you from, Dr.Rajnish?
Girish
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Mike George
(K=3429) - Comment Date 11/3/2004
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I think I understand your views a bit better now. So if you don't mind a few more random thoughts from me I'll proceed.
I see your point, the tonal qualities and exacting of the images as you want them to be. This IS a very ADMIRABLE quality. It is this desire to make things as you see them and want others to see them that you wish others to see. I see nothing wrong at all with that. It is the wanting to be remembered for is the part I find interesting.
I have often wondered about Monet, Van Goah, Frank Lloyd Wright (wasn't he the architect) and Leonardo DiVinci (sorry of my spelling is bad on these names). Did they do things the way they did because they wanted to be known for this or was it the challenge of doing it that way or the way they saw things? Were they doing it for posterity or because it was the way they liked it?
Interestingly you and the fine Dr. are actually quite similiar. You both wanted to show an image to the world. Both of you use different mediums to achieve this goal. You demand exact tonality and in B&W. The Dr. saw that his image needed more, it wasn't what he wanted to say or share with the world. So he used more modern technology and color.
The interesting twist to this is a rhetorical question. Do those of who look at your photos (both you and the Doc in this case) really care how you got there? Does it matter to them that you have such exacting standards for B&W and subject matter? Does it matter to them the Doc digitally altered his shot? I think the important point for being remembered is that some folks enjoyed the work and it struck a cord within them and they remembered the shot and who made it.
Allow me to digress with my own limited abilities. If I am taking a portrait of someone, I am probably trying to capture the personality of them. It might be for them or their family or collegues. I must try to decide what that look is and try an capture it. So I end up taking some shots that I really like and sometimes the ones that I think are just ok are the ones they go nuts over. What I might find "the shot" they may not.
If I'm taking shots of the Grand Canyon, was I able to catch the colors, the light, the shadows the detail I wanted. What I see and what the person next to me sees looking at the same thing might be much different.
A final thought, what scares me isn't what I was remembered for. It is that my work or myself was unnoticed by the world. Perhaps, if I am fortunate enough, I or my work might have inspired or had an impact on someone. I have rather simple outlook in life. If I was to leave a positive impact on but one person, I will have considered it worth the effort, regardless of whether it was me or my photography. How I did so is unimportant to me. For those whom I have commented on your work, I would like you to know that (based on my simple view of life) you have impacted at least one person for the better......
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Stefan Engström
(K=24473) - Comment Date 11/3/2004
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Starting with your "Take II" I appreciated that you called for the creation of good (as you define it) b/w as something worthwhile, but did not specify that it depends on using film. Reading your other post I realize that you are a strict traditionalist, but I think you have to consider that the main thing that prevents somebody from creating a beautiful (to you) b/w photograph by using a digital camera and conversion from color etc, is not a difference in the scene before the camera, but the technique used, and that not matching the ideal is not necessarily because it is impossible but more likely because the photographer is not aware of, or does not share, your ideal. Underexposure is a bad thing in b/w and digital photography, same thing for "bad" light. That studio b/w is worthless seems like a strange notion - it certainly cannot have much to do with the technique of capturing the photo.
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Rajnish Duara
(K=1142) - Comment Date 11/3/2004
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Thanx Girish for the impropmptu reply.
First let me answer your last question. I am presently residing in Kerala but originally hail from Assam. I will be here for another year.
Anyway, It seems that u are a Malayalee!!
The concept of Man Vs Machine is not contemporary, although Hollywood had made great bucks recently with "I, Robot" and "Android". I agree entirely on the fact that the machine can't think but can only follow orders. But it can be programmed. It can pick up via sensors the nuances of nature and mainipulate them. I have heard pathbreaking research is on regarding synapses between computer chips and brain neurons!! Are we on the twilight of a new dawn?
R we onto the realm of superconsciousness!!
I don't know. Technology and arts have fully intermingled. People have become artists overnight with their laptops. Its "all in the mind" as some great one has said.
Mind bears everything, it can move faster than light, it can reach where physical matter can't delve.
"The refinement of art is the evolution of mind itself".
Regarding your question whether I controlled the image or let the machine take over, dear friend it was on my mind all the time how to take the photograph but u can't capture what u always want especially when shooting at unpredictable Kerala skies. U may not get the color stats to your liking. I had the concept in my mind before shooting it, and I missed by a whisker and I photoshopped it to get exactly what I wanted, the tones, the silhouettes.
So u see it was in my mind all the time , I only used photoshoppe as a slave to do its duty which the photograph badly wanted;-)
The mind can't visualise which u don't know.
I think that gives u an idea of my thinking.
Now the question is, sometimes it gives u options which u have not fathomed. U may feel that by using some other modification it would do justice to the pix, which may be entirely different from your original concept, but ultimately its the way u look at it. Its your perspective all the time.
The "mind" has the last word!!
What do you do as a profession, Girish?
Are u into photography seriously? We all are but I mean do you earn by it?
Regards to all of u who are following the thread,
Dr. Rajnish Duara.
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Richard Dakin
(K=12915) - Comment Date 11/4/2004
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With all this deep talk about the "ethics" of B+W, it's a wonder to me that you can motivate yourselves to pick up a camera.
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Girish Menon
(K=1384) - Comment Date 11/4/2004
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There are quite a few things that have come out of these posts. I shall reply further, but later. In the mean time, just to tell Richard Dakin that forums like these exist to broaden the horizon of our minds, get more lateral views from our mates. They get a lot many people thinking about stuff you know. Nothing wrong in discussing the "ethics", it's all about sharing views and learing from those of others.
Dr, I've always been in Bombay. I am a documentary photographer, I primarily shoot in rural areas documenting cultures and traditions which in a few years from now would no longer exist.
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Siddharth Siva
(K=3327) - Comment Date 11/4/2004
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B&W photography is by its nature an abstraction of reality. By taking out the colour from the world that the eye sees, is to place it in an abstract realm where one sees differently. The photographer then has the freedom to enable and direct the viewer to really LOOK at what the photographer/artist wants him/her to look at. Certainly, the feeling of reality that comes through in black and white documentary photography is more influenced by history and tradition than anything else. If black and white film is one way of removing colour from a scene, it is fully acceptable to click on 'desaturate' to do the same. Still, tradition is tradition and i fully appreciate the joy that looking at a finely printed black and white print can generate. But to say that " Mostly underexposed, out of focus shots lacking depth are very well appreciated by the general public and even photo editors" is unfair, because you say it in a negative sense. Images are meant to evoke reaction..and if an image does that on way or another, it is still successful. Take the difference between H.C. Bresson and say, Ansel Adams. Bresson, didnt often print his own work. In fact quite often he didnt care if the image was blurred if it communicated exactly what he wanted it to communicate or if it was an honest representation of the scene. Ansel Adams, as all know, is the father of the Zone System, and much like Ed Weston and other of Group f64, advocated and practised the production of fine b/w prints to exacting standards. It would not be fair to say that a HCB's work is any less successful than ansel adams' or ed weston's? Each have their place in the world. Every generation of photographers and artists have redefined and reinvented 'good art'.
I also have spent many nights in the darkroom printing myslef and sitting with the lab printer supervising my exhibition fibre prints. So its not as though I dont understand the discipline. But all rules need to be broken at some point, for a new way to evolve, for a new point of view to come forth. This is what photography is all about.
I dont think the music of the Sex Pistols (lo tech, 3 riff 2.5 minute tracks) is any less successful in communication as a 12 minute finely produced Pink Floyd track!
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Rajnish Duara
(K=1142) - Comment Date 11/4/2004
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Girish,
The world has different hues, Dakin also represents a part of it.
Why don't u try to come down to Kerala for an exhillirating experience on scenic Kerala, the backwaters, etc.
I hipe the documentarian in u would be highly motivated.
Till then,
RD.
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Richard Dakin
(K=12915) - Comment Date 11/4/2004
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"Lateral thinking?????" Perhaps if you wish to promote thinking outside the box, you might try putting your thoughts in the form of a question or shall we say "an invitation" for others to share their ideas on. Your original "B+W is Sacred" diatrab reminded me far too much of the "Born Again" Christians I met studying world religions in university. They always claimed they were open to discussion, but in fact had minds closed to any opinion but their own. They too used clever quotes to back up their claims. By the way I too am a proponent of B+W photography. I just think that qualities or as I say the magic of B+W, is able to stand on it's own based on the power of the B+W image to impact the viewer. Because I use a lightroom instead of a darkroom for post-capture work are my images to be scorned.
I am relatively new to the world of artists whom I expected to be more open minded than the norm. Sadly thus far I have not seen them to differ much from the "Ford versus Chevy versus Dodge" mentality of the NASCAR crowd.
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Roger Williams
(K=86139) - Comment Date 11/6/2004
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I found this, your second topic thread, helpful in understanding your first post, which seems to be less deliberately provocative than I had thought. I love and appreciate full tonal ranges in my B&W photographs, and take care to achieve them, so I find myself on the same side as you (although on a very much lower level, of course). I don't always like the kind of B&W that comes from a digital camera, which is one of the reasons I stick with film. But I really fail to see what you can have against colour photography. It's surely not a case of either or; we can have both and be grateful for it. Your own personal choice may be B&W, which is fine. But why decry the undeniable beauties of colour photography? That seems unacceptably restrictive.
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svend videbak
(K=7376) - Comment Date 1/16/2005
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I took the initial statement of this thread to be pure silliness, but as I read along, some sense was made. One commentator wrote: " it's a modern artform using different instruments, but in essence digital, film, daguerrotypes, calotypes, heliographs, paintings, drawings, whatever... are all the same; to manifest in an image, the creator's perspective of the world around him". On usefilm and elsewhere when the subject is photography, I'm often struck by how many photographers seek to isolate their profession/craft from other visual arts which seek to create the illusion of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface (drawing and painting to make things simple). But the truth is that a photograph is a picture like any other, which should be judged and understood like any other picture, be it painted, drawn, whatever.
Henri Cartier-Bresson took his drawing far more seriously than his photography, believing that drawing was the real skill. Because he had some skill as a draughtsman, he was able to become a sublime photographer. I agree with him. I think drawing is the skill that really underlies photography, the same skill that underlies painting. The great photographs are photographs that are extremely well drawn, if we put aside the subject matter and the creative idea for a moment. Drawing is the essential skill, and although one can certainly draw in colour, it is generally carried out in "monotone": charcoal, graphite, etc.
Michaelangelo executed perhaps thousands of preparatory drawings for the Sistine chapel ceiling in "monotone" in order to fully comprehend and explore his artistic vision before setting to work in "colour" with paint on the ceiling. But the important thing to understand is that he did not see his "black and white" drawings as being somehow the opposite of colour. To Michaelangelo, black was a colour, grey was a colour, white was a colour like red or blue or green. Each and every subtly different shade of grey was a colour. Michaelangelo restricted the infinite range of colours at his disposal to black, white, and all the greys in between in order to focus his artistic attention as sharply as possible on his subject matter as he moved towards a complete understanding of the story that he was developing with form and line and colour. Once he had his vision under control with "monotone", he adopted a wider palette of colours in order to bring the ceiling to completion.
In exactly the same way, black and white photography is not somehow "the opposite" of colour photography. A black and white photograph is a photograph which contains a restricted range of colours: black being a colour, white being a colour, the infinite range of greys all being colours. Like Michaelangelo, any photographer who aspires to artistry will use "monotone" photography in order to focus his attention on his subject matter and ideas by restricting the infinite range of colours at his disposal. At other times, he will expand his colour palette by using colour film (or digital, yes!). To me, black and white photography is like drawing whereas colour photography is like painting. The one informs the other and drawing underlies it all.
I know the above sounds like it?s set in stone ? it?s just the way I write when I try to set down my thoughts clearly, don't get upset.
Rgds
Svend
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