A BEGINNING PHOTOGRAPHER ASKS: Am I an amateur photographer? The questioner also asks if the quality of his work shows that he is an amateur.
Well, in answering questions of this type, it helps to first define the terms. Usually, we distinguish between amateurs and professionals: some photographers are definitely amateurs, and others are certainly professionals.
The vast number of photographs are taken by ordinary people who have no particular connection with photography other than a desire to capture memories and images of loved ones, and so we can only call them photographers in the loosest sense. On the other hand, there are people who are most definitely photographers. What follows are distinct types of photographers and may not precisely correspond to individuals, rather, they are illustrations of largely mutually exclusive types which may be present in varying degrees in every photographer at any given time.
The Amateur
The English word ‘amateur’ comes from the Latin amator, meaning ‘lover.’ In the best sense, an amateur photographer is one who loves photography, and in older literature this basic aspect of loving the art form is quite clear. If the questioner loves photography, then he is most likely an amateur.
An amateur will spend countless hours learning and refining photographic techniques, often by taking numerous photos of the same subject, even brick walls, and he often spends more time reading about photography and visiting camera stores than actually photographing. The amateur photographer constantly reads camera reviews, is uncertain if his camera is good enough, and thinks that some upgrade or gadget will be the magic bullet that improves his photography. When shooting a scene, the amateur agonizes over his camera settings, and fumbles with the controls, often keeping his human subjects impatiently waiting. While the amateur may reluctantly volunteer to take some important pictures for friends and family, these pictures can end up being disappointments because of the amateur's uncertainty and fear.
But the amateur loves every bit of time he spends on his hobby, even to the point that he pines away in pain when he is not doing it. He may nearly drool over camera reviews on the Internet, and his heart palpitates as he unboxes his new, finely shaped, and aesthetically pleasing camera — for which he paid far too much money. As most lovers know, pursuing the object of love can be seemingly irrational, obsessive, all-consuming, expensive, and even heart-breaking.
I see no reason why an amateur photographer should be expected to produce good photographs, because perhaps the amateur loves photography — the art itself — instead of the final photographs, which are the works of that art. It is a subtle, but significant distinction, enjoying the technique and tools of photography over the fruit of these. But as children are sometimes unexpectedly produced by young lovers, an amateur photographer may occasionally produce a good image.
The Professional
The English word ‘profession’ comes from the Latin professio, where it means, among other things, ‘a business or profession which one publicly avows,’ and this is the main current sense of the word. So a professional photographer is a photographer who does his work for the public instead of just for himself.
The business of photography is mainly the art of selling and delivering photography and photographic services to the public. There are many professional photographers who consistently deliver the goods in a timely manner at a good price. These seek out clients, and give them what they pay for with no excuses or delays. They tell everyone they meet that they are a professional, and offer a wide variety of services, usually agreeing to give the customer what the customer wants. Working with them tends to be straight-forward or even pleasant. The majority of the professional's time is likely not spent doing photography, but rather doing those things that all businesses do, including marketing and sales.
I see no reason why a professional photographer should necessarily be expected to produce outstanding photographs, for their main job is selling photography. They simply need to produce good enough work at a proportionally reasonably price, and do so in a manner that is convenient and pleasant for the client. As most business is repeat business, or comes from word-of-mouth referrals, social skills tend to be more important than technical skills. A digital image sitting on a computer, no matter how good, won't sell itself, but good marketing can sell a mediocre image. The professional, who may struggle to support himself by working long hours, needs to work quickly and efficiently, and needs tools that are reliable. One way that the professional speeds along his work is by using standard light setups, camera settings, and having a “house style”; these may not be optimal, but they work most of time, and most importantly, they lead to consistency. The professional simply does not have the time to fiddle with his equipment or processing as does the amateur.
The Artist
Neither of the above definitions directly brings up the idea of image quality, since all we can be sure of is that the amateur loves photography, and the professional sells photography, and I've seen good and bad photos from amateurs and professionals. Instead, let us introduce a third kind of photographer, the photographic artist, who can be relied on to consistently deliver high quality photographs.
With some innate talent perhaps, and by an understanding of theory and lots of practice — and maybe inspiration — the artist has internalized the art and has made it a part of himself. To the artist, making something good is a joy to himself and he greatly fears making junk. When you observe an artist making art, it appears to be effortless on his part, for the artist makes good art as a matter of habit. The artist intimately knows how his gear works: the camera almost seems to be an extension of his body.
But note that the artist may not be pleasant to work with, may be demanding, may not charge reasonable prices for his art, may not show up at the shooting location on time, and might be grouchy and irritable during the shoot. The artist may be a terrible businessman, but he cares far less about the business relationship than about the quality of the final product. He might show up on location, spend at most a few minutes doing his work, and then abruptly leave to everyone's astonishment, or he might put the crew through hours of misery because he expects perfection, but in either case the final product will be outstanding.
Unlike the professional, for whom time is money, the artist may spend an extensive amount of time analyzing the scene, taking measurements, and setting things up carefully — or not. Unlike the amateur, the artist knows how his gear works and what it can deliver under a wide variety of conditions, and so there is very little guesswork or trial-and-error involved. The artist might be highly concerned about his equipment, like the amateur, but will not be devoured by it like the amateur, knowing very well that “all that glisters is not gold.” He likely will make the best of whatever equipment he has at hand.
By analogy, we could say that the artist is not like an awkward young lover, but rather more like an old happily married man who loves his spouse but does not obsess over her, and rather sees her as the better half of himself. The fruit of this union is quality works of art.
One More
I ought to add dilettante to this list, someone who pursues a subject out of curiosity, or for being a well-rounded individual, or even to socially project the appearance of being an expert. A dilettante doesn't do photography for the love of the art, nor to make money doing it, nor for the purpose of making excellent final photographs, but for some other satisfaction. Being a dilettante can be perfectly harmless, or merely a half-hearted hobby. It can also slide into snobbery, which is highly undesirable.
Conclusion
As I mentioned earlier, these are more archetypes than they are stereotypes, more like models that distill the essence of human motivation, and so actual human beings are likely to be a mixture of these, or slide from one to the other over time. An amateur may eventually become an artist — and very many artists started out first as lovers of the art.
A professional might start out as an amateur and may be an artist, but also consider that many people choose professions due to social pressure, or family, or because they appear to be a desirable career, having nothing to do with art or the love of an art. If the professional takes time out from business to really work on their photography, they too may become an artist. Or perhaps, if an artist takes time out from his work to develop business skills, he too might become a decent professional.
I am sure there are many photographers out there who combine the best of all three: they have a love of the art, they are good at business, and they produce exceptional photographs as a matter of course. That is a good target to aim for!
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2013
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
“I bought it for the frame”
DO YOU THINK that your photography is good? Do other people — people that aren't your friends or family — think that it is good? How would you feel if one of your photographs found its way into a junk shop or a flea market, and someone purchased it only because of its frame?
Ultimately, we must be humble enough to realize that no matter how much artistic vision and effort we put into something, a buyer simply might like our photograph only because it is nicely framed.
When I did a Google search for the phrase “I bought it for the frame,” I got over ten million search results, with many people telling of some print or painting they found at a junk shop, but which they discarded, simply because they liked the frame. Now we mustn't jump to the conclusion that the frame-buyers are ignorant, tasteless philistines. Perhaps your photograph isn't all that good. Perhaps the frame is really good. [NOTICE: I must admit to having a bit of anxiety whenever I go to a book fair or used book store, thinking that I might find one of my own books being sold cheap.]
Apparently, according to the same Google search, lots of people also buy bicycles only for their frame. They plan to strip the frame of all the seemingly more critically important stuff that actually makes the bicycle work, such as the wheels, gears, and chain. Certainly these working components are more important than the frame? Doesn't the frame just sit there? The answer is that in many respects these components are more important, and the components that just happen to be attached to the frame may not be all that good or fitting for the purchaser. The brakes and tires on a bicycle become gradually worn with use and slowly become less effective over time, and a bicycle rider can choose to replace them whenever it is convenient. But a bicycle frame must be perfectly durable, and it must not ever fail during use, for it cannot be repaired in the field: a frame does not slowly lose its functionality over time, for the welded joints on a frame are either rigid or are broken with no significant intermediate state. A frame, of course, can be repainted as needed.
So what kind of framed photograph would be more valuable to most any given person: an excellent portrait of someone else's child, or a cheap snapshot of their own child? We ought to realize that prints and paintings are more important than a frame, but they tend to be more personally important. If someone buys a framed print at a flea market and then discards the original print, that is because their print is more important than the original. Likewise, someone may purchase a used bicycle, but they might replace the seat for one that is more comfortable for them; they might replace the brakes because they are worn, but if the frame isn't good, they won't buy the bicycle.
A photograph or painting may be chosen because of a particular style of a room, or because of a particular mood expressed, or its use of particular coordinating colors. The subject matter may spark the imagination of the buyer, or the subject may invoke particular memories or devotions. An image may be discarded because it no longer fits the decor of the room, or it may invoke unpleasant memories: maybe it is faded or worn, or it is no longer interesting, or it is out of style.
Now, there are some artists, particularly in the past, who strove to make images that have a more universal, timeless character, that expressed objective beauty and the sublime. This is rare today because modernity rejects the eternal and universal in favor of that which is transitory and cheap. This means, perhaps, that contemporary works are more prone to being quickly discarded.
People may buy a print because of its frame, but the frame is not bought for its own sake, no matter how well it is made or decorated, but because it is ultimately intended to enclose a print or a painting. I know of no museum or gallery that is dedicated to the presentation of frames as objects of art (although this might be an exception), but there are vast numbers of merchants — including art galleries — that sell frames in a wide variety, and the cost of these frames may equal or exceed the cost of the image that is presented within it.
Frames are works of art in themselves (as is anything intentionally well-made by man's intellect), but their purpose is mainly in relationship to the fine art contained within them. The word ‘fine’ in ‘fine art’ is related to Aristotle's understanding of the “final cause” or ultimate purpose of a thing. The final cause of a frame is to support, display, protect, enhance, and delineate the work of art contained within it, as well as provide a visual transition between the work of art and its location. The buck stops at the image contained in the frame, as it is the final cause of the art: the job of art is complete and the viewer's job of looking at the image begins. But this does not mean that the frame is unimportant, for it has important functions, but it is subservient to those things, the images, which are greater. Even though we have differing opinions on what makes a good print or painting, we should not be surprised that most of us would largely agree on what what makes a good frame, for frames have a more definite purpose.
Getting a good understanding of composition is difficult, because it involves human psychology. The many proposed rules of composition seem to rest on shaky theoretical ground, and many of the supposed examples of the use of the rules are unconvincing. However, one element of composition is concrete and objective, that being the framing or the specific crop of the image. See the article Composition, Part 1 - the Frame for a more in-depth discussion of this. The objective framing of an image, due to a specific crop, can be be a powerful tool of composition if used well, and bad framing can certainly harm an image.
As the vast majority of images are rectangles, this suggests the good use of harmonic proportions between the length and width of the image with the proportions of the matting and size of the frame. The common standard print, matte, and frame sizes do express proportions that harmonize well with each other. Attempts at making custom frames and mattes for a non-standard print size will generally be expensive and error-prone. Custom sizes may also look awkward if the maker does not apply the mathematics of proportion ahead of time: for example, it may be possible to harmonize an image with a large aspect ratio within a frame with a smaller aspect ratio if the margins or matting are well-chosen, but if the ratios are not chosen well, the final object may look ridiculous, cheap, or inartistic.
For all these reasons, I think that it would be prudent if photographers give serious consideration to framing, since, after all, nearly every print that will be displayed on a wall needs a frame, and for the simple fact that a purchaser may buy your print because they like its frame.
Ultimately, we must be humble enough to realize that no matter how much artistic vision and effort we put into something, a buyer simply might like our photograph only because it is nicely framed.
When I did a Google search for the phrase “I bought it for the frame,” I got over ten million search results, with many people telling of some print or painting they found at a junk shop, but which they discarded, simply because they liked the frame. Now we mustn't jump to the conclusion that the frame-buyers are ignorant, tasteless philistines. Perhaps your photograph isn't all that good. Perhaps the frame is really good. [NOTICE: I must admit to having a bit of anxiety whenever I go to a book fair or used book store, thinking that I might find one of my own books being sold cheap.]
Apparently, according to the same Google search, lots of people also buy bicycles only for their frame. They plan to strip the frame of all the seemingly more critically important stuff that actually makes the bicycle work, such as the wheels, gears, and chain. Certainly these working components are more important than the frame? Doesn't the frame just sit there? The answer is that in many respects these components are more important, and the components that just happen to be attached to the frame may not be all that good or fitting for the purchaser. The brakes and tires on a bicycle become gradually worn with use and slowly become less effective over time, and a bicycle rider can choose to replace them whenever it is convenient. But a bicycle frame must be perfectly durable, and it must not ever fail during use, for it cannot be repaired in the field: a frame does not slowly lose its functionality over time, for the welded joints on a frame are either rigid or are broken with no significant intermediate state. A frame, of course, can be repainted as needed.
So what kind of framed photograph would be more valuable to most any given person: an excellent portrait of someone else's child, or a cheap snapshot of their own child? We ought to realize that prints and paintings are more important than a frame, but they tend to be more personally important. If someone buys a framed print at a flea market and then discards the original print, that is because their print is more important than the original. Likewise, someone may purchase a used bicycle, but they might replace the seat for one that is more comfortable for them; they might replace the brakes because they are worn, but if the frame isn't good, they won't buy the bicycle.
A photograph or painting may be chosen because of a particular style of a room, or because of a particular mood expressed, or its use of particular coordinating colors. The subject matter may spark the imagination of the buyer, or the subject may invoke particular memories or devotions. An image may be discarded because it no longer fits the decor of the room, or it may invoke unpleasant memories: maybe it is faded or worn, or it is no longer interesting, or it is out of style.
Now, there are some artists, particularly in the past, who strove to make images that have a more universal, timeless character, that expressed objective beauty and the sublime. This is rare today because modernity rejects the eternal and universal in favor of that which is transitory and cheap. This means, perhaps, that contemporary works are more prone to being quickly discarded.
People may buy a print because of its frame, but the frame is not bought for its own sake, no matter how well it is made or decorated, but because it is ultimately intended to enclose a print or a painting. I know of no museum or gallery that is dedicated to the presentation of frames as objects of art (although this might be an exception), but there are vast numbers of merchants — including art galleries — that sell frames in a wide variety, and the cost of these frames may equal or exceed the cost of the image that is presented within it.
Frames are works of art in themselves (as is anything intentionally well-made by man's intellect), but their purpose is mainly in relationship to the fine art contained within them. The word ‘fine’ in ‘fine art’ is related to Aristotle's understanding of the “final cause” or ultimate purpose of a thing. The final cause of a frame is to support, display, protect, enhance, and delineate the work of art contained within it, as well as provide a visual transition between the work of art and its location. The buck stops at the image contained in the frame, as it is the final cause of the art: the job of art is complete and the viewer's job of looking at the image begins. But this does not mean that the frame is unimportant, for it has important functions, but it is subservient to those things, the images, which are greater. Even though we have differing opinions on what makes a good print or painting, we should not be surprised that most of us would largely agree on what what makes a good frame, for frames have a more definite purpose.
Getting a good understanding of composition is difficult, because it involves human psychology. The many proposed rules of composition seem to rest on shaky theoretical ground, and many of the supposed examples of the use of the rules are unconvincing. However, one element of composition is concrete and objective, that being the framing or the specific crop of the image. See the article Composition, Part 1 - the Frame for a more in-depth discussion of this. The objective framing of an image, due to a specific crop, can be be a powerful tool of composition if used well, and bad framing can certainly harm an image.
As the vast majority of images are rectangles, this suggests the good use of harmonic proportions between the length and width of the image with the proportions of the matting and size of the frame. The common standard print, matte, and frame sizes do express proportions that harmonize well with each other. Attempts at making custom frames and mattes for a non-standard print size will generally be expensive and error-prone. Custom sizes may also look awkward if the maker does not apply the mathematics of proportion ahead of time: for example, it may be possible to harmonize an image with a large aspect ratio within a frame with a smaller aspect ratio if the margins or matting are well-chosen, but if the ratios are not chosen well, the final object may look ridiculous, cheap, or inartistic.
For all these reasons, I think that it would be prudent if photographers give serious consideration to framing, since, after all, nearly every print that will be displayed on a wall needs a frame, and for the simple fact that a purchaser may buy your print because they like its frame.
Friday, November 2, 2012
Ancient Wisdom about Photography
SOME PHILOSOPHY, often paradoxical, for your enjoyment…
A bad camera can be the best tool for making a good photographer.
The best photographers can make the best photographs with even poor cameras. For this reason, the best photographers use the best cameras.
A poor photographer blames his camera; a good photographer blames himself. For this reason, good photographers use cameras they cannot blame.
Many good photographs are due to luck. Good photographers are luckier than poor ones.
You must not care what master photographers think of your photography, for they are prone to envy. You achieve this by carefully following the advice of master photographers.
Any person with minimal aptitude can become a good photographer if they spend thousands of hours learning. Some people have a natural talent for photography; they develop this talent by spending thousands of hours learning.
If you desire to be creative above all else, then your photographs will have a boring sameness. Do what has been done thousands of times before, but strive to do it better, then you will find yourself to be creative.
A bird song may be pretty, but the song is not art. Find inspiration in the work of the masters, but strive to be a master in your own right.
The business of photography is not the art of photography, for the art of selling a photograph is different from the art of making a photograph.
You have mastered photography when it is graceful, effortless, and joyful. Your tools ought to appear to be a natural extension of yourself.
Cameras change and technologies change, but art never changes, for art is inside and flows from above.
Being a good photographer does not mean that you are a good person. It simply means that your photographs are good.
—
[Post-processing is the work done on digital images using a computer image processing program such as Photoshop; also, this will include traditional darkroom work for photographic film.]
All photographs are post-processed; one just has to understand the meaning of post-processing.
If you capture a good image in the camera, then that image needs no post-processing. In order to do good post-processing, you need to capture a good image in the camera.
To master photography, you must master post-processing. You have mastered post-processing when it appears as if you did not use post-processing.
You must master Photoshop by mastering its functions. You master Photoshop’s functions by never using most of them. Likewise, the worst Photoshop books are those that explain all of its functions, and the best are those that explain only a few.
In order to post-process a photograph of a subject, you must bring out the subjectness that the photograph failed to capture.
To sharpen a photograph in Photoshop, you should not use the Sharpen function, but rather use the Unsharp function.
To achieve utter freedom and creativity in post-processing, you must enslave yourself to the logic and mathematics underlying post-processing.
The sRGB color space is worst color space because it represents the narrowest range of colors of any standard RGB color space. For this reason, sRGB is the best color space to use in post processing.
Do not trust your eyes, for they deceive you, and so you must measure the color numbers to ensure that they are good. But you must trust your eyes, for if the image does not look good, then the color numbers must not be good.
You must spend thousands of hours post-processing images in order to post-process images quickly.
If you must ask if Photoshop is the right post processing software for you, then Photoshop is the wrong software for you.
A bad camera can be the best tool for making a good photographer.
The best photographers can make the best photographs with even poor cameras. For this reason, the best photographers use the best cameras.
A poor photographer blames his camera; a good photographer blames himself. For this reason, good photographers use cameras they cannot blame.
Many good photographs are due to luck. Good photographers are luckier than poor ones.
You must not care what master photographers think of your photography, for they are prone to envy. You achieve this by carefully following the advice of master photographers.
Any person with minimal aptitude can become a good photographer if they spend thousands of hours learning. Some people have a natural talent for photography; they develop this talent by spending thousands of hours learning.
If you desire to be creative above all else, then your photographs will have a boring sameness. Do what has been done thousands of times before, but strive to do it better, then you will find yourself to be creative.
A bird song may be pretty, but the song is not art. Find inspiration in the work of the masters, but strive to be a master in your own right.
The business of photography is not the art of photography, for the art of selling a photograph is different from the art of making a photograph.
You have mastered photography when it is graceful, effortless, and joyful. Your tools ought to appear to be a natural extension of yourself.
Cameras change and technologies change, but art never changes, for art is inside and flows from above.
Being a good photographer does not mean that you are a good person. It simply means that your photographs are good.
—
[Post-processing is the work done on digital images using a computer image processing program such as Photoshop; also, this will include traditional darkroom work for photographic film.]
All photographs are post-processed; one just has to understand the meaning of post-processing.
If you capture a good image in the camera, then that image needs no post-processing. In order to do good post-processing, you need to capture a good image in the camera.
To master photography, you must master post-processing. You have mastered post-processing when it appears as if you did not use post-processing.
You must master Photoshop by mastering its functions. You master Photoshop’s functions by never using most of them. Likewise, the worst Photoshop books are those that explain all of its functions, and the best are those that explain only a few.
In order to post-process a photograph of a subject, you must bring out the subjectness that the photograph failed to capture.
To sharpen a photograph in Photoshop, you should not use the Sharpen function, but rather use the Unsharp function.
To achieve utter freedom and creativity in post-processing, you must enslave yourself to the logic and mathematics underlying post-processing.
The sRGB color space is worst color space because it represents the narrowest range of colors of any standard RGB color space. For this reason, sRGB is the best color space to use in post processing.
Do not trust your eyes, for they deceive you, and so you must measure the color numbers to ensure that they are good. But you must trust your eyes, for if the image does not look good, then the color numbers must not be good.
You must spend thousands of hours post-processing images in order to post-process images quickly.
If you must ask if Photoshop is the right post processing software for you, then Photoshop is the wrong software for you.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
A Good Photograph
SOMEONE ASKS, “What makes a good photo?”
According to modern philosophies, if any answer to this question is given at all, it is usually convoluted, unsatisfactory, or it has nothing to do about photography. Instead, I will go back to ideas discovered by the philosophers of Greece and the Middle Ages, eras that produced great art that astonishes us still.
A good photograph will please the eye and give it rest. Nothing can be seen that ought to be removed, nor can the imagination perceive anything that ought to be added or changed.
A good photograph will cause the viewer to stand outside of himself for a brief moment. The viewer, in his imagination, is transported within the frame of the image.
A good photograph will reward a viewer every time he sees it. He can contemplate it many times for many years, and yet discover new things never before noticed. It does not grow stale or boring over time.
A good photograph will evoke immediate recognition within the viewer. The viewer will think that he has seen the photograph before; indeed, the photograph will seem to be a part of the viewer’s earliest memories.
A good photograph will become a part of the viewer. The viewer will use his memory of the photograph as a type and model for other things.
A good photograph will cause the viewer to see that this particular photograph is the most appropriate medium for expressing the subject.
A good photograph will have a sense of unity — each part will relate in some way to every other part.
A good photograph will have due proportion and symmetry, a formal structure that is harmonious and expressive of the subject matter.
A good photograph will have a clarity and vividness that expresses the photographer’s intention.
A good photograph will clearly show the truth, even if what is depicted is not factually true, but rather instead expresses a higher truth.
A good photograph will obviously show that the photographer has mastery over the medium.
A good photograph will elicit a lively positive response from all who view it, without regard to age, sex, race, nationality, education, class, party, or religion.
Now, this is a very high target to aim for, and very few photographs ever come close. But it helps to know what we are aiming for, even it we always shoot low. These ideas are also applicable to very many of the fine arts, and not just photography.
According to modern philosophies, if any answer to this question is given at all, it is usually convoluted, unsatisfactory, or it has nothing to do about photography. Instead, I will go back to ideas discovered by the philosophers of Greece and the Middle Ages, eras that produced great art that astonishes us still.
A good photograph will please the eye and give it rest. Nothing can be seen that ought to be removed, nor can the imagination perceive anything that ought to be added or changed.
A good photograph will cause the viewer to stand outside of himself for a brief moment. The viewer, in his imagination, is transported within the frame of the image.
A good photograph will reward a viewer every time he sees it. He can contemplate it many times for many years, and yet discover new things never before noticed. It does not grow stale or boring over time.
A good photograph will evoke immediate recognition within the viewer. The viewer will think that he has seen the photograph before; indeed, the photograph will seem to be a part of the viewer’s earliest memories.
A good photograph will become a part of the viewer. The viewer will use his memory of the photograph as a type and model for other things.
A good photograph will cause the viewer to see that this particular photograph is the most appropriate medium for expressing the subject.
A good photograph will have a sense of unity — each part will relate in some way to every other part.
A good photograph will have due proportion and symmetry, a formal structure that is harmonious and expressive of the subject matter.
A good photograph will have a clarity and vividness that expresses the photographer’s intention.
A good photograph will clearly show the truth, even if what is depicted is not factually true, but rather instead expresses a higher truth.
A good photograph will obviously show that the photographer has mastery over the medium.
A good photograph will elicit a lively positive response from all who view it, without regard to age, sex, race, nationality, education, class, party, or religion.
Now, this is a very high target to aim for, and very few photographs ever come close. But it helps to know what we are aiming for, even it we always shoot low. These ideas are also applicable to very many of the fine arts, and not just photography.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Staying Hip is a Full-Time Job
SEEN ON REDDIT:
A: Sometimes I feel like there are no contemporary art movements left but "Postmodernism."
B: Didn’t you get the memo? Postmodernism is over and done with. Don't ask where we are now.
A: does that mean painting is cool again?
B: Now it gets confusing. Post rock means you can use accoustic gitars again, and hispsters play vinyl records and use analogue cameras. Ergo: Post-Hip Post-modernism means you can paint again.
A: Sometimes I feel like there are no contemporary art movements left but "Postmodernism."
B: Didn’t you get the memo? Postmodernism is over and done with. Don't ask where we are now.
A: does that mean painting is cool again?
B: Now it gets confusing. Post rock means you can use accoustic gitars again, and hispsters play vinyl records and use analogue cameras. Ergo: Post-Hip Post-modernism means you can paint again.
Monday, November 28, 2011
"photographs very rarely turn out good likenesses"
The first thing that caught my attention was a portrait of mother that hung over the writing table; a photograph in a magnificent carved frame of rare wood, obviously taken abroad and judging from its size a very expensive one. I had never heard of this portrait and knew nothing of it before, and what struck me most of all was the likeness which was remarkable in a photograph, the spiritual truth of it, so to say ; in fact it looked more like a real portrait by the hand of an artist than a mere mechanical print. When I went in I could not help stopping before it at once.—from A Raw Youth, by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), translated by Constance Garnett
"Isn't it, isn't it?" Versilov repeated behind me, meaning, "Isn't it like?" I glanced at him and was struck by the expression of his face. He was rather pale, but there was a glowing and intense look in his eyes which seemed shining with happiness and strength. I had never seen such an expression on his face.
"I did not know that you loved mother so much !" I blurted out, suddenly delighted.
He smiled blissfully, though in his smile there was a suggestion of something like a martyr's anguish, or rather something humane and lofty ... I don't know how to express it; but highly developed people, I fancy, can never have triumphantly and complacently happy faces. He did not answer, but taking the portrait from the rings with both hands brought it close to him, kissed it, and gently hung it back on the wall.
"Observe," he said; "photographs very rarely turn out good likenesses, and that one can easily understand: the originals, that is all of us, are very rarely like ourselves. Only on rare occasions does a man's face express his leading quality, his most characteristic thought. The artist studies the face and divines its characteristic meaning, though at the actual moment when he's painting, it may not be in the face at all. Photography takes a man as he is, and it is extremely possible that at moments Napoleon would have turned out stupid, and Bismarck tender. Here, in this portrait, by good luck the sun caught Sonia in her characteristic moment of modest gentle love and rather wild shrinking chastity….
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Zillions and Jillions
PLEASE CONSIDER the absolutely most minimalist camera possible. This camera will have precisely one pixel or light sensor location, and it will generate a photograph that has a bit depth of exactly one binary digit: black or white. This camera can produce precisely two images:
This maximally minimalistic digital camera is actually useful. These are incorporated into proximity switches; devices that answer the question is something there? You might find them on conveyor lines in factories, or on automatic door openers.
Instead of just one pixel, let's consider a camera with four. Here are all possible images taken with this sort of camera:
With just a 2 by 2 pixel array, at one bit depth, we are able to take 16 different photographs.
We can easily calculate the total number of individual photographs that can be possibly taken by a digital camera capable of displaying only black or white:
Total images possible =
Suppose you have an entire universe of particles, and then you give every particle its own universe of the same size, and in each of those universes, you assign a similarly sized universe for each elementary particle inside them, and repeat the process nearly a thousand times. That's how many unique photographs you can take with your cruddy 500x500 pixel 1-bit depth digital camera.
We can get large numbers when we examine matter, but information is another class of being in itself, vastly larger than mere matter. It is for this reason that philosophers have posited that information resides in a realm above, beyond, or outside that of mere matter.
The following ought to convince you that an image 500 pixels on a side with 1 bit pixels can be quite rich:
My fellow Saint Louisians ought to recognize this scene. 1-bit images are generally quite useful, and have been used for decades in copying machines.
Even a 1 bit depth digital camera can produce an astounding number of different images. But suppose we add color — the number of possible images becomes even more staggering. Take my lowly Nikon D40 camera; it has about 6 million sensors, and if I shoot JPEG, I get 256 possible values per sensor. The camera has about 3 million green sensors, and 1.5 million sensors each of red and blue; full color is mathematically estimated for each pixel location.
So for each pixel location, we multiply by 256. The total number of images = 2566016000 which is approximately equal to a 1 followed by 14,487,972 zeroes. This is a mere pittance compared to the Seitz D3 digital scan back, which can capture 500 megapixel images with 48 bit color per pixel:
But this vast potentiality of photography ought not get us puffed up with pride in our creativity. Alas, the vast, overwhelming majority of these theoretically unique photographs look like this:
Uniform random noise. A trillion monkeys, each generating a trillion random images per second for a trillion years, will likely never once produce anything that looks like a photograph. You could call this an ‘image’, but only in the most general terms. At best, images like this are only an exercise in conceptual art, and then only for the first photographer who does it. And I just did it.
[Note: to generate a random noise image such as this in Photoshop, be sure to start with a 50% gray image. If your starting point is a white image, then half of your final pixels will be white, and if you start with a black image, then half your pixels will still be black. Using the Filter->Noise->Add Noise... function, add 50% Uniform noise. Be sure to turn off ‘Monochromatic’. I find I get better results if I do this for each color channel independently.]
We call an image like this ‘random’ because it doesn't look like anything in particular. Perhaps a supremely intelligent being can look at this and be able to immediately discern the specific algorithm used by Photoshop to generate this. But we can't; we are finite creatures, and so the perception of noise is very much a human phenomenon. Perhaps we can imagine some figure in this noise, but that is tenuous at best. Actually, the entire concept of randomness is problematic: see my article here.
But we are good at perceiving some image if the noise isn't too great, especially if we are familiar with the subject:
Clearly, high ISO images, and heavily manipulated images, can have very high relative amounts of noise, much more than I suspected.
A 1:4 signal-to-noise ratio is roughly the limit I'm able to handle, while surprisingly a 1:1 ratio isn't horribly bad for some purposes. But please note that noise found in actual digital images is not uniform; rather it lurks most of all in the shadows, or rather, the signal-to-noise ratio is smallest there, for highlights have a large absolute amount of noise, even though it is small relative to the signal.
Suppose we are willing to accept a 4:1 signal-to-noise ratio, which means that 1/5 of our bits are just noise. For this image, which is 500 pixels on an edge, with 48 bits of color, that means that about 10 bits are noise. We can calculate:
For our 500 x 500 pixel full-color image, I estimate that there are approximately 4 trillion largely undetectable variations for every reference image. For larger images, the number goes up to values never heard of even in government economics.
OK, so I assert that of all theoretically possible images, the relative number which would be recognized as photographs is vanishingly small. Fortunately, since we are dealing with almost unimaginably large numbers, this isn't an issue. Roughly estimating the number of photographic images possible ought to be doable.
Patterns make an image. Either there are significantly large adjacent patches of pixels that are very similar, or there are similarities between pixels even though they are widely separated. Or, we can find a pattern that repeats on various scales.
Look at this image:
It is pretty obvious that we have symmetry of the left and right halves, as well as the top and bottom halves. Recall that the total number of possible variations of a 500x500 pixel, 1 pixel depth image is represented by a 3 followed by 75,257 zeros. Because we have mirror symmetry, we basically repeat a 250x250 pixel image four times:
Total number of images:
With this 1 bit depth image, I find that I can only detect symmetry when I have greater than a 1:1 signal to noise ratio. We also should be able to detect other variations, such as changing the location and orientation of the axes of symmetry — all we have to do is ensure that our axis of symmetry is not too close to the boundary of the image.
The eye can detect global patterns such as seen above, and also local patterns, where there is some correlation between adjacent pixels:
Within a 500 x 500 pixel image, we can produce a total of 400 x 400 = 160,000 different images of a black 100x100 pixel square; our numbers go up if we can accept slight variations in the color and size of the square and its orientation. But if we are willing to accept some noise, as we see here, we can get zillons of possible images.
No two photographs are alike, and even if you take multiple shots with an ordinary camera under controlled conditions, there is no chance in your life that your resulting images will be exactly the same. This can be helpful: if you take multiple shots, you can blend them together to greatly reduce the amount of noise visible in the final image. Super-resolution techniques can also use multiple images to construct a higher-resolution final image, and can even remove diffraction artifacts.
The sharpness of lenses is a major limiting factor for producing unique photographs. The blurring found in some optics means that adjacent pixels are often strongly correlated, even if they are supposed to capture a high-contrast edge. Chromatic aberration and the mysterious purple fringing also lead to greater correlation between pixels, reducing the originality of photographs. Same goes with noise reduction software. Extreme, high quality bokeh, found in excellent portrait lenses, can reduce the out-of-focus background detail to a nearly uniform blur; this lack of detail leads us to focus our attention on the subject of the photograph. With extreme blurring and the use of the Photoshop Threshold tool, we can even reduce our images to match the 1-bit camera demonstrated at the top of this article.
Despite, or rather because of, the huge variation of possible photographs, it is relatively easy to detect unauthorized duplicates of images. Forensic analysts can detect duplicates with overwhelmingly high certainty, even if the original image was severely altered. Likewise, the use of the Clone tool in Photoshop — this copies one part of an image to another part — is easily detected if a large enough area is cloned, even if it is visually blended well, because these kinds of correlations within an image can not be practically attributed to chance. Never in a jillon years can we expect something like that to happen on its own.
If two photographers with two different cameras each take a photograph of the same scene, they will be different from each other in a huge number of minor (or even major) ways, so much so that we can be absolutely certain that the two images are in fact different. On the contrary, with a reasonably complex scene and good image quality, it seems that we ought to be highly confident that these two photographs were in fact photographed at the same time, and we also ought to be able to detect if the scene was artificially recreated at a later time, or was adjusted in Photoshop.
I think this discussion of seemingly impossibly large numbers tells us that photography, and digital art in general, is an incredibly rich and humanly inexhaustible medium.
[Click here for a discussion of names for long numbers. As it so happens, practically the only time these names for long numbers are actually used are in lists of names of long numbers. The word ‘zillion’, even though it is almost meaningless, is a good enough name for the quantities we are discussing here.]
This maximally minimalistic digital camera is actually useful. These are incorporated into proximity switches; devices that answer the question is something there? You might find them on conveyor lines in factories, or on automatic door openers.
Instead of just one pixel, let's consider a camera with four. Here are all possible images taken with this sort of camera:
With just a 2 by 2 pixel array, at one bit depth, we are able to take 16 different photographs.
We can easily calculate the total number of individual photographs that can be possibly taken by a digital camera capable of displaying only black or white:
- 1 bit camera = 2 photos
- 2 bit camera = 4 photos
- 3 bit camera = 8 photos
- 4 bit camera = 16 photos
Total images possible =
- 2 x 2 x 2 x ..... (multiply a total of 249,999 times)
- = 2250000
- = 3 followed by 75,257 zeros, plus a bit more.
Suppose you have an entire universe of particles, and then you give every particle its own universe of the same size, and in each of those universes, you assign a similarly sized universe for each elementary particle inside them, and repeat the process nearly a thousand times. That's how many unique photographs you can take with your cruddy 500x500 pixel 1-bit depth digital camera.
We can get large numbers when we examine matter, but information is another class of being in itself, vastly larger than mere matter. It is for this reason that philosophers have posited that information resides in a realm above, beyond, or outside that of mere matter.
The following ought to convince you that an image 500 pixels on a side with 1 bit pixels can be quite rich:
My fellow Saint Louisians ought to recognize this scene. 1-bit images are generally quite useful, and have been used for decades in copying machines.
Even a 1 bit depth digital camera can produce an astounding number of different images. But suppose we add color — the number of possible images becomes even more staggering. Take my lowly Nikon D40 camera; it has about 6 million sensors, and if I shoot JPEG, I get 256 possible values per sensor. The camera has about 3 million green sensors, and 1.5 million sensors each of red and blue; full color is mathematically estimated for each pixel location.
So for each pixel location, we multiply by 256. The total number of images = 2566016000 which is approximately equal to a 1 followed by 14,487,972 zeroes. This is a mere pittance compared to the Seitz D3 digital scan back, which can capture 500 megapixel images with 48 bit color per pixel:
- Total = (248)500000000 = 1 followed by 7,224,719,896 zeros.
But this vast potentiality of photography ought not get us puffed up with pride in our creativity. Alas, the vast, overwhelming majority of these theoretically unique photographs look like this:
Uniform random noise. A trillion monkeys, each generating a trillion random images per second for a trillion years, will likely never once produce anything that looks like a photograph. You could call this an ‘image’, but only in the most general terms. At best, images like this are only an exercise in conceptual art, and then only for the first photographer who does it. And I just did it.
[Note: to generate a random noise image such as this in Photoshop, be sure to start with a 50% gray image. If your starting point is a white image, then half of your final pixels will be white, and if you start with a black image, then half your pixels will still be black. Using the Filter->Noise->Add Noise... function, add 50% Uniform noise. Be sure to turn off ‘Monochromatic’. I find I get better results if I do this for each color channel independently.]
We call an image like this ‘random’ because it doesn't look like anything in particular. Perhaps a supremely intelligent being can look at this and be able to immediately discern the specific algorithm used by Photoshop to generate this. But we can't; we are finite creatures, and so the perception of noise is very much a human phenomenon. Perhaps we can imagine some figure in this noise, but that is tenuous at best. Actually, the entire concept of randomness is problematic: see my article here.
But we are good at perceiving some image if the noise isn't too great, especially if we are familiar with the subject:
That is an image with a 1:10 signal/noise ratio. Can you guess the subject? What does your gut say?
I've never before attempted to estimate signal to noise ratios for digital images. Here, I've created a series of images with varying relative amounts of noise:
I've never before attempted to estimate signal to noise ratios for digital images. Here, I've created a series of images with varying relative amounts of noise:
Clearly, high ISO images, and heavily manipulated images, can have very high relative amounts of noise, much more than I suspected.
A 1:4 signal-to-noise ratio is roughly the limit I'm able to handle, while surprisingly a 1:1 ratio isn't horribly bad for some purposes. But please note that noise found in actual digital images is not uniform; rather it lurks most of all in the shadows, or rather, the signal-to-noise ratio is smallest there, for highlights have a large absolute amount of noise, even though it is small relative to the signal.
Suppose we are willing to accept a 4:1 signal-to-noise ratio, which means that 1/5 of our bits are just noise. For this image, which is 500 pixels on an edge, with 48 bits of color, that means that about 10 bits are noise. We can calculate:
- Number of acceptably noisy images equivalent to a reference image = (210)250000 = a 1 followed by 752,576 zeros.
For our 500 x 500 pixel full-color image, I estimate that there are approximately 4 trillion largely undetectable variations for every reference image. For larger images, the number goes up to values never heard of even in government economics.
OK, so I assert that of all theoretically possible images, the relative number which would be recognized as photographs is vanishingly small. Fortunately, since we are dealing with almost unimaginably large numbers, this isn't an issue. Roughly estimating the number of photographic images possible ought to be doable.
Patterns make an image. Either there are significantly large adjacent patches of pixels that are very similar, or there are similarities between pixels even though they are widely separated. Or, we can find a pattern that repeats on various scales.
Look at this image:
It is pretty obvious that we have symmetry of the left and right halves, as well as the top and bottom halves. Recall that the total number of possible variations of a 500x500 pixel, 1 pixel depth image is represented by a 3 followed by 75,257 zeros. Because we have mirror symmetry, we basically repeat a 250x250 pixel image four times:
Total number of images:
- = 2250 x 250 = 2 62500
- = about 1 followed by 18184 zeros
With this 1 bit depth image, I find that I can only detect symmetry when I have greater than a 1:1 signal to noise ratio. We also should be able to detect other variations, such as changing the location and orientation of the axes of symmetry — all we have to do is ensure that our axis of symmetry is not too close to the boundary of the image.
The eye can detect global patterns such as seen above, and also local patterns, where there is some correlation between adjacent pixels:
Within a 500 x 500 pixel image, we can produce a total of 400 x 400 = 160,000 different images of a black 100x100 pixel square; our numbers go up if we can accept slight variations in the color and size of the square and its orientation. But if we are willing to accept some noise, as we see here, we can get zillons of possible images.
No two photographs are alike, and even if you take multiple shots with an ordinary camera under controlled conditions, there is no chance in your life that your resulting images will be exactly the same. This can be helpful: if you take multiple shots, you can blend them together to greatly reduce the amount of noise visible in the final image. Super-resolution techniques can also use multiple images to construct a higher-resolution final image, and can even remove diffraction artifacts.
The sharpness of lenses is a major limiting factor for producing unique photographs. The blurring found in some optics means that adjacent pixels are often strongly correlated, even if they are supposed to capture a high-contrast edge. Chromatic aberration and the mysterious purple fringing also lead to greater correlation between pixels, reducing the originality of photographs. Same goes with noise reduction software. Extreme, high quality bokeh, found in excellent portrait lenses, can reduce the out-of-focus background detail to a nearly uniform blur; this lack of detail leads us to focus our attention on the subject of the photograph. With extreme blurring and the use of the Photoshop Threshold tool, we can even reduce our images to match the 1-bit camera demonstrated at the top of this article.
Despite, or rather because of, the huge variation of possible photographs, it is relatively easy to detect unauthorized duplicates of images. Forensic analysts can detect duplicates with overwhelmingly high certainty, even if the original image was severely altered. Likewise, the use of the Clone tool in Photoshop — this copies one part of an image to another part — is easily detected if a large enough area is cloned, even if it is visually blended well, because these kinds of correlations within an image can not be practically attributed to chance. Never in a jillon years can we expect something like that to happen on its own.
If two photographers with two different cameras each take a photograph of the same scene, they will be different from each other in a huge number of minor (or even major) ways, so much so that we can be absolutely certain that the two images are in fact different. On the contrary, with a reasonably complex scene and good image quality, it seems that we ought to be highly confident that these two photographs were in fact photographed at the same time, and we also ought to be able to detect if the scene was artificially recreated at a later time, or was adjusted in Photoshop.
I think this discussion of seemingly impossibly large numbers tells us that photography, and digital art in general, is an incredibly rich and humanly inexhaustible medium.
[Click here for a discussion of names for long numbers. As it so happens, practically the only time these names for long numbers are actually used are in lists of names of long numbers. The word ‘zillion’, even though it is almost meaningless, is a good enough name for the quantities we are discussing here.]
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Photography as an Art
THE GREATEST OBSTACLE the modern photographer encounters is his adherence to an idea that the camera "holds a mirror up to nature," that it is "true to nature." If that were so, photography would be for all times contained among the sciences and debarred from art. For nature is never art, nor does nature as a whole ever affect us as art. In art we are dealing strictly with the mental and emotional faculties more or less developed in each individual. These faculties respond when, on a flat surface such as paper, we find certain emotional and intellectual records of things we have seen or experienced in nature. And it is the manner in which these records are made that affects us as art. Every stroke, touch, spot, and patch of light and dark governed by the mind and hand of the artist interprets first an emotion, second a meaning. In this lies the province of art. The "mirror of nature," as expressed by photography, is a cold, impersonal, undesirable tracing of certain facts reproduced by pure science — heartless, uninteresting. Its value is wholly scientific, and it deals with only one kind of truth. There is nothing impressionable or impressive about it. Pictorial art is strongly emotional. It exists to give pleasure and at the same time knowledge; not such knowledge as the dissecting sciences impart, but the kind inherent in music, poetry, literature, religion.— Art principles in portrait photography (1907), by Walter Beck, p. 18-19
Nature in itself has nothing to do with art; it is only the quarry, the reservoir out of which material for art can be taken. It is plain, then, that "true to nature" cannot refer to the comprehensive truth, but that of necessity selection of truths must be resorted to in any event. This being so, the phrase "holding a mirror up to nature" is evidently meaningless from the standpoint of art, and "true to nature" must be understood as referring to a phase of nature of which we have become conscious.
Monday, July 19, 2010
One Easy Rule for Quality Images
MANY PHOTO hobbyists, if they take pictures with one of the very many consumer compact cameras, soon ask for advice on how to improve their picture quality.
Admittedly, many photo faults are hard to describe, unless you know what to look for — certainly I know that from experience. But I constantly hear complaints that photos are fuzzy and grainy.
Initially, there seems to be a belief that something is wrong — either with the photographer himself or perhaps the camera isn't working right. Well, yes, maybe. Simple problems like camera shake are easily overcome, and learning how to set the camera properly will improve image quality. But even excellent technique still ultimately gives poor quality results: the images have a certain irreducible amount of fuzz and grain. Our eager beginner realizes that the problem is with the camera, and seeks to upgrade.
Then comes the agonizing part. Should I get Canon, or Nikon, or Sony, or Olympus, or Pentax? Something else? Ought I save my money to get a Leica? Then what lenses should I get? Is is true that prime lenses are better than zooms? Should I get a 35mm or 50mm lens? Is f/1.4 maximum aperture better than f/1.8? What are the sharpest lenses? How many megapixels should I get? Are off-brand lenses as sharp as manufacturer's brands? Which camera model should I get? Should I buy new or used? Should I wait until the new models come out? What will give me the best image quality?
Some photographers assert that the camera does not matter, that any camera, used properly, will produce good results. The important things, they claim, are composition and subject matter. This is undoubtably true — but the camera acts as an intermediary between artistic vision and the material world as photographed. The medium used has a great effect on how the viewer perceives the final artwork; the medium used can be so jarring as to even overwhelm the purported final purpose of composition and subject. We see this in Lomography, where the photographer intentionally uses poor-quality cameras and ignores camera technique to achieve a very specific low-fidelity look. But does that ‘look’ serve the higher purpose, or is it an end in itself?
(Note: much contemporary emphasis on studying the media itself rather than the content of media, is due to the pioneering studies of Marshall McLuhan; although this study is worthy in itself, in my opinion, we need to re-emphaize content while not discounting the medium. A photographer who spends too much time contemplating the meaning of photography at the expense of higher things may have images that suffer in quality.)
But consider the fact that a single fuzzy, grainy photograph of a dear loved one is of vastly greater importance — to the lover — than a gallery of even the most finely crafted art photographs. As Chesterton wrote, “if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.” But some subjects, out of worthiness and justice, ought to be portrayed in a better way, although a poor image will suffice.
Inexpensive compact digital cameras have a low signal-to-noise ratio, that is, much of the image as delivered consists of artifacts that are not present in the scene photographed. We perceive this noise as fuzziness and grain. We may see a certain blocky quality of the pixels if we view the image close up: this is due to high lossy JPEG compression often found in compact cameras. Also, consider that many low-end cameras include aggressive noise reduction — this invariably results in the destruction of detail.
It is understandable that photographers would want to get rid of this extraneous noise and deliver a clearer final image, a picture that is more faithful to the subject of the photo, a picture that looks sharper and cleaner.
There is basically just one easy rule for quality photography: a bigger sensor means better quality.
Many factors go into making a quality image, but the overwhelming quality advantage goes to the larger sensor. Many problems simply fall away when the sensor size is larger. First and foremost, optical quality becomes less of a concern when the sensor is big: you just don't need that good of a lens when it delivers an image over a larger surface area. Sharpness is a given when you use a large sensor. The problem of packing too many pixels in a small area leads to the problem of noise, and a large sensor with big pixels will have very low noise.
Within the market of inexpensive consumer cameras, we see sensor sizes ranging from less than 2 square millimeters to over 360 square millimeters. We can expect image quality to be roughly proportional to surface area.
Original image source and attribution: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlaid_inside.svg
Good image quality is easy to find and is low in cost, as long as you are willing to use a larger camera. Any DSLR-class camera will deliver far better image quality than a typical compact camera, since they all have much larger sensors, as well as inherently better lenses and other incidentals.
Well, some photographers insist that they want to improve their image quality, but only in a compact camera. That is tough. There are some new cameras that do offer larger sensors in a compact case — but these are often at extreme cost. Good quality can be found in slightly larger, and much more economical cameras. You just have to be humble and accept the compromise of having a slightly larger camera.
By sensor I also mean film. Chemical photographic technology is nearly two centuries old, and is very highly refined. The image quality that can be delivered by a used 35mm film camera is quite impressive, and there is no comparison when you use medium or large format film. Film cameras are inexpensive, but are less convenient than digital. Large format cameras are extremely inconvenient, but also deliver unmatched results.
Film cameras are inconvenient, but can deliver superior results. We can likewise capture extreme quality images with even cheap digital cameras if are willing to be inconvenienced. By taking multiple overlapping photos of an object — but only a static object, unfortunately — we can simulate an arbitrarily large camera sensor by fusing the images together on the computer.
Admittedly, many photo faults are hard to describe, unless you know what to look for — certainly I know that from experience. But I constantly hear complaints that photos are fuzzy and grainy.
Initially, there seems to be a belief that something is wrong — either with the photographer himself or perhaps the camera isn't working right. Well, yes, maybe. Simple problems like camera shake are easily overcome, and learning how to set the camera properly will improve image quality. But even excellent technique still ultimately gives poor quality results: the images have a certain irreducible amount of fuzz and grain. Our eager beginner realizes that the problem is with the camera, and seeks to upgrade.
Then comes the agonizing part. Should I get Canon, or Nikon, or Sony, or Olympus, or Pentax? Something else? Ought I save my money to get a Leica? Then what lenses should I get? Is is true that prime lenses are better than zooms? Should I get a 35mm or 50mm lens? Is f/1.4 maximum aperture better than f/1.8? What are the sharpest lenses? How many megapixels should I get? Are off-brand lenses as sharp as manufacturer's brands? Which camera model should I get? Should I buy new or used? Should I wait until the new models come out? What will give me the best image quality?
Some photographers assert that the camera does not matter, that any camera, used properly, will produce good results. The important things, they claim, are composition and subject matter. This is undoubtably true — but the camera acts as an intermediary between artistic vision and the material world as photographed. The medium used has a great effect on how the viewer perceives the final artwork; the medium used can be so jarring as to even overwhelm the purported final purpose of composition and subject. We see this in Lomography, where the photographer intentionally uses poor-quality cameras and ignores camera technique to achieve a very specific low-fidelity look. But does that ‘look’ serve the higher purpose, or is it an end in itself?
(Note: much contemporary emphasis on studying the media itself rather than the content of media, is due to the pioneering studies of Marshall McLuhan; although this study is worthy in itself, in my opinion, we need to re-emphaize content while not discounting the medium. A photographer who spends too much time contemplating the meaning of photography at the expense of higher things may have images that suffer in quality.)
But consider the fact that a single fuzzy, grainy photograph of a dear loved one is of vastly greater importance — to the lover — than a gallery of even the most finely crafted art photographs. As Chesterton wrote, “if a thing is worth doing it is worth doing badly.” But some subjects, out of worthiness and justice, ought to be portrayed in a better way, although a poor image will suffice.
Inexpensive compact digital cameras have a low signal-to-noise ratio, that is, much of the image as delivered consists of artifacts that are not present in the scene photographed. We perceive this noise as fuzziness and grain. We may see a certain blocky quality of the pixels if we view the image close up: this is due to high lossy JPEG compression often found in compact cameras. Also, consider that many low-end cameras include aggressive noise reduction — this invariably results in the destruction of detail.
It is understandable that photographers would want to get rid of this extraneous noise and deliver a clearer final image, a picture that is more faithful to the subject of the photo, a picture that looks sharper and cleaner.
There is basically just one easy rule for quality photography: a bigger sensor means better quality.
Many factors go into making a quality image, but the overwhelming quality advantage goes to the larger sensor. Many problems simply fall away when the sensor size is larger. First and foremost, optical quality becomes less of a concern when the sensor is big: you just don't need that good of a lens when it delivers an image over a larger surface area. Sharpness is a given when you use a large sensor. The problem of packing too many pixels in a small area leads to the problem of noise, and a large sensor with big pixels will have very low noise.
Within the market of inexpensive consumer cameras, we see sensor sizes ranging from less than 2 square millimeters to over 360 square millimeters. We can expect image quality to be roughly proportional to surface area.
Original image source and attribution: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sensor_sizes_overlaid_inside.svg
Good image quality is easy to find and is low in cost, as long as you are willing to use a larger camera. Any DSLR-class camera will deliver far better image quality than a typical compact camera, since they all have much larger sensors, as well as inherently better lenses and other incidentals.
Well, some photographers insist that they want to improve their image quality, but only in a compact camera. That is tough. There are some new cameras that do offer larger sensors in a compact case — but these are often at extreme cost. Good quality can be found in slightly larger, and much more economical cameras. You just have to be humble and accept the compromise of having a slightly larger camera.
By sensor I also mean film. Chemical photographic technology is nearly two centuries old, and is very highly refined. The image quality that can be delivered by a used 35mm film camera is quite impressive, and there is no comparison when you use medium or large format film. Film cameras are inexpensive, but are less convenient than digital. Large format cameras are extremely inconvenient, but also deliver unmatched results.
Film cameras are inconvenient, but can deliver superior results. We can likewise capture extreme quality images with even cheap digital cameras if are willing to be inconvenienced. By taking multiple overlapping photos of an object — but only a static object, unfortunately — we can simulate an arbitrarily large camera sensor by fusing the images together on the computer.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
The Virtues of Art and Science
THIS IS “A website about the Art and Science of Photography”, so I thought that I would begin by explaining some terms.
To many in the arts establishment, photography was not a legitimate art form until perhaps the 1960s; to me this appears to be wrong, especially in retrospect, considering the many fine photographs produced earlier in history. In my opinion, photography is and always has been an art, although it has been continuously under refinement (with some hiccups).
I am often amused with the Wikipedia entry on Art because it changes so frequently. As the current edition of that article may or may not show, there are many definitions of art, and most of them are excessively restrictive in my opinion. But I will use a very old, and quite broad definition, in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas:
Art isn't just about making paintings or sculptures that are to be viewed in an art gallery; rather anything can be art, if it is artfully done. For example, cooking isn't normally considered an art, but a master chef is often called an artist, as is only fair. Some automobiles are so well designed that they are called moving sculptures, and rightfully so.
Art is a property of a person, the artist. The artist is therefore the subject of art, while the things the artist makes are the objects of art. A good photograph may or may not be an ‘object of art’ by this definition: does the photographer habitually make good photographs or not?
Art is a virtue, and according to the ancients a virtue is a good habit of a person. It is habitual, that is, it becomes a part of the person and their ordinary behavior. According to the philosophers, virtues are obtained through innate ability, knowledge, practice, and inspiration.
The example of a musician may be helpful. To play a piano well, you need the innate ability to play it: your fingers have to be of a certain minimum size, and you need to have a good ear for tones; some people are tone-deaf for whatever reason, and that is not a good sign for them ever being able to play the piano well. Some people are famed for overcoming obstacles even though they are not well-predisposed to doing something: but this is a shift from having the virtue of art to having some other virtue, like courage or perseverance — so these people become even more admirable.
Getting a good theoretical knowledge of music is very helpful to gaining the virtue of being a musician: although someone may play the piano just through practice, their art would be quite limited. For example, the inability to read music or transpose keys would perhaps prevent them from being hired to play in an orchestra. Likewise, a theoretical knowledge of photography is important for being a professional: perhaps someone, merely by practice, will eventually learn the relationship between aperture and depth of field, but knowing the theory behind it will allow the photographer to set the camera precisely the first time.
Practice is the most important part of gaining a virtue. A neophyte musician must constantly practice, no matter how bad the music sounds at first. Feedback from others, especially an established musician, is certainly required. A neophyte photographer should expect to take plenty of bad photos, but with feedback from an experienced photographer, this is extremely helpful and not a waste of time. A very helpful method to improve technique is completing assignments: taking photos of specific subjects with prescribed techniques. The Daily Shoot website can help build this discipline.
Eventually, with ability, knowledge, and practice, the musician gains the virtue of art. They remain a musician even when they are not making music, for music has become a part of them. Music in the abstract has been instantiated or incarnated in the musician. The Zen advice, sometimes comically seen in the phrase “Be one with the ball!” is not exclusively Eastern but also has a traditional Western philosophical counterpoint.
There are two marks of a virtuous person: they enjoy practicing their virtue, and they make the performance of the virtue look effortless and graceful. Anyone seeing a virtuous artist at work ought to think “that looks easy!” And it is easy for the artist, but only after much sweat, disappointment, and lots of bad artwork. We ought to also consider that many people choose professions based on the income or status that the profession confers; they may be good at performing the tasks of that profession, but they hate every minute of it — this is not then the virtue of art; although it may be another virtue, it is not art and the the final objects of art may suffer.
I think a critical part of having the virtue of art is the ability to preconceive an object of art, and then be able to reliably make it. A photographer should be able to know ahead of time what he or she wants as a final image, and then be able to reliably and repeatably do what it takes to get the desired results. Now I often use the shotgun approach towards photography, and certainly some of that is required for journalists, sports photographers, and anyone who uses a live model, but artistic virtue would tend to greatly minimize excess ill-advised shutter clicks. It is a delightful problem having to choose only one photo from one hundred good ones, rather having to salvage one mediocre image from a hundred bad ones.
Artists can also be inspired. The subject of inspiration is problematical, and is rather outside the scope of this website. Click here for some of my thoughts on the matter. However, we can take heart in the theory put forth by Plato in the Ion: by imitating inspired works, that inspiration flows through to us. Only when you don't care about creativity can you be truly creative, for mere novelty does not always lead to goodness in objects of art.
So from all this we can be confident that photography is an art, and has been an art since the very beginning.
Often it is said that the arts deals with aesthetics, a meaning that is not found in my definition above. A problem then becomes defining aesthetics, of which there seems to be no good definition. But consider its opposite, anesthetic; a person under anesthesia has little or even no feeling whatsoever, and may even be unconscious. This makes it clear that everything has an aesthetic dimension, and that it may be impossible to cut off aesthetics from the rest of experienced reality. Certainly the practical split between aesthetics and utility found in our world today is quite ugly, as I've mentioned elsewhere. This problem of the scope and meaning of aesthetics is an unresolved problem in my mind.
Let's consider science. The ancient definition is:
By the ancient definition, science is not technology, nor is it a profession, nor is it a method, nor is it a set of results; rather it is a habitual state of mind. A good scientist habitually asks questions such as: what actually exists? how do certain things work? why do certain things happen? when and where are certain things likely to occur? who knows more about this subject than I do? A scientific photographer would not be content with merely following formulae or memorizing rules of thumb about photography, and certainly not rely on the “shotgun approach” of taking photos, but rather would ask why certain things work the way they do. Ansel Adams, who was no doubt a photographic artist, was also certainly a photographic scientist, as was demonstrated by his Zone System.
According to this ancient model, art and science are not opposed to each other as they are in the more modern philosophies of Romanticism and Enlightenment Rationalism, but rather both virtues are closely related and harmonize with each other. Ideally, a good photographer would have both virtues, but no one is perfect: however, this should not be an excuse, but rather should be a challenge to improve yourself.
So, the art of photography is found in an artist, who reliably and repeatedly makes good photographs according to plan. Likewise, a photographic scientist is a person who distinguishes what is true about photography, and what is merely opinion.
The ancients distinguished between the intellectuals virtues of art and science and the moral virtues of justice, prudence, courage, and temperance. The moral virtues are what make you a good person, while the intellectual virtues merely make good things. While being a good artist or scientist is laudable, this does not make you a good in the moral sense.
To many in the arts establishment, photography was not a legitimate art form until perhaps the 1960s; to me this appears to be wrong, especially in retrospect, considering the many fine photographs produced earlier in history. In my opinion, photography is and always has been an art, although it has been continuously under refinement (with some hiccups).
I am often amused with the Wikipedia entry on Art because it changes so frequently. As the current edition of that article may or may not show, there are many definitions of art, and most of them are excessively restrictive in my opinion. But I will use a very old, and quite broad definition, in the tradition of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas:
Art is the virtue of making things well.What does this mean?
Art isn't just about making paintings or sculptures that are to be viewed in an art gallery; rather anything can be art, if it is artfully done. For example, cooking isn't normally considered an art, but a master chef is often called an artist, as is only fair. Some automobiles are so well designed that they are called moving sculptures, and rightfully so.
Art is a property of a person, the artist. The artist is therefore the subject of art, while the things the artist makes are the objects of art. A good photograph may or may not be an ‘object of art’ by this definition: does the photographer habitually make good photographs or not?
Art is a virtue, and according to the ancients a virtue is a good habit of a person. It is habitual, that is, it becomes a part of the person and their ordinary behavior. According to the philosophers, virtues are obtained through innate ability, knowledge, practice, and inspiration.
The example of a musician may be helpful. To play a piano well, you need the innate ability to play it: your fingers have to be of a certain minimum size, and you need to have a good ear for tones; some people are tone-deaf for whatever reason, and that is not a good sign for them ever being able to play the piano well. Some people are famed for overcoming obstacles even though they are not well-predisposed to doing something: but this is a shift from having the virtue of art to having some other virtue, like courage or perseverance — so these people become even more admirable.
Getting a good theoretical knowledge of music is very helpful to gaining the virtue of being a musician: although someone may play the piano just through practice, their art would be quite limited. For example, the inability to read music or transpose keys would perhaps prevent them from being hired to play in an orchestra. Likewise, a theoretical knowledge of photography is important for being a professional: perhaps someone, merely by practice, will eventually learn the relationship between aperture and depth of field, but knowing the theory behind it will allow the photographer to set the camera precisely the first time.
Practice is the most important part of gaining a virtue. A neophyte musician must constantly practice, no matter how bad the music sounds at first. Feedback from others, especially an established musician, is certainly required. A neophyte photographer should expect to take plenty of bad photos, but with feedback from an experienced photographer, this is extremely helpful and not a waste of time. A very helpful method to improve technique is completing assignments: taking photos of specific subjects with prescribed techniques. The Daily Shoot website can help build this discipline.
Eventually, with ability, knowledge, and practice, the musician gains the virtue of art. They remain a musician even when they are not making music, for music has become a part of them. Music in the abstract has been instantiated or incarnated in the musician. The Zen advice, sometimes comically seen in the phrase “Be one with the ball!” is not exclusively Eastern but also has a traditional Western philosophical counterpoint.
There are two marks of a virtuous person: they enjoy practicing their virtue, and they make the performance of the virtue look effortless and graceful. Anyone seeing a virtuous artist at work ought to think “that looks easy!” And it is easy for the artist, but only after much sweat, disappointment, and lots of bad artwork. We ought to also consider that many people choose professions based on the income or status that the profession confers; they may be good at performing the tasks of that profession, but they hate every minute of it — this is not then the virtue of art; although it may be another virtue, it is not art and the the final objects of art may suffer.
I think a critical part of having the virtue of art is the ability to preconceive an object of art, and then be able to reliably make it. A photographer should be able to know ahead of time what he or she wants as a final image, and then be able to reliably and repeatably do what it takes to get the desired results. Now I often use the shotgun approach towards photography, and certainly some of that is required for journalists, sports photographers, and anyone who uses a live model, but artistic virtue would tend to greatly minimize excess ill-advised shutter clicks. It is a delightful problem having to choose only one photo from one hundred good ones, rather having to salvage one mediocre image from a hundred bad ones.
Artists can also be inspired. The subject of inspiration is problematical, and is rather outside the scope of this website. Click here for some of my thoughts on the matter. However, we can take heart in the theory put forth by Plato in the Ion: by imitating inspired works, that inspiration flows through to us. Only when you don't care about creativity can you be truly creative, for mere novelty does not always lead to goodness in objects of art.
So from all this we can be confident that photography is an art, and has been an art since the very beginning.
Often it is said that the arts deals with aesthetics, a meaning that is not found in my definition above. A problem then becomes defining aesthetics, of which there seems to be no good definition. But consider its opposite, anesthetic; a person under anesthesia has little or even no feeling whatsoever, and may even be unconscious. This makes it clear that everything has an aesthetic dimension, and that it may be impossible to cut off aesthetics from the rest of experienced reality. Certainly the practical split between aesthetics and utility found in our world today is quite ugly, as I've mentioned elsewhere. This problem of the scope and meaning of aesthetics is an unresolved problem in my mind.
Let's consider science. The ancient definition is:
Science is the virtue of conforming the intellect to reality.This again is a very broad definition. Science is not a virtue for making or doing anything, but rather is a virtue of changing yourself. A virtuous scientist conforms his mind to what is real, not to what he feels, or what he wants to do. Now of course feelings are real and must always be taken into account; being cold and heartless is definitely not a virtue. The ancients valued reason over emotion — but reason includes the heart, which has its own reasons, as Pascal noted.
By the ancient definition, science is not technology, nor is it a profession, nor is it a method, nor is it a set of results; rather it is a habitual state of mind. A good scientist habitually asks questions such as: what actually exists? how do certain things work? why do certain things happen? when and where are certain things likely to occur? who knows more about this subject than I do? A scientific photographer would not be content with merely following formulae or memorizing rules of thumb about photography, and certainly not rely on the “shotgun approach” of taking photos, but rather would ask why certain things work the way they do. Ansel Adams, who was no doubt a photographic artist, was also certainly a photographic scientist, as was demonstrated by his Zone System.
According to this ancient model, art and science are not opposed to each other as they are in the more modern philosophies of Romanticism and Enlightenment Rationalism, but rather both virtues are closely related and harmonize with each other. Ideally, a good photographer would have both virtues, but no one is perfect: however, this should not be an excuse, but rather should be a challenge to improve yourself.
So, the art of photography is found in an artist, who reliably and repeatedly makes good photographs according to plan. Likewise, a photographic scientist is a person who distinguishes what is true about photography, and what is merely opinion.
The ancients distinguished between the intellectuals virtues of art and science and the moral virtues of justice, prudence, courage, and temperance. The moral virtues are what make you a good person, while the intellectual virtues merely make good things. While being a good artist or scientist is laudable, this does not make you a good in the moral sense.
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