Seeing - Resources For Better Vision

I'm frequently told 'you have a good eye', whatever that means. That I hear if fairly often in almost exactly the same words does I think imply that I can spot interesting things when not expected, that I can compose fairly competently and that I present things in a way that is interesting.

So, if, after looking at my images; you agree (and there are lots of people who glance at my images and walk on so this is definitely not a given and is a critical question), then how did I get here and is there anything to be learned from the experience which you might find useful.

I didn't start attending workshops till I was already quite experienced so I don't think that was the answer for me. It wasn't having shows and getting feedback as most of my images have hidden in print boxes most of my life. I don't live in New York and have access to photo shows every weekend.

What I do have had though over the years is a number of bookstores which stocked the usual classic books. For a time I joined Aperture - till they got too weird, and Friends Of Photography. Through those two organizations I acquired a number of the important photographic books.

I started with the big names - Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Minor White, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Caponigro, and "Brett Weston. I poured over these images time and again. I picked my favourites. I consciously decided why I didn't like some (knowing others did).

By this time I had a pretty good appreciation for the classic landscape, but about almost nothing else.

I took a photographic appreciation course. We spent an hour looking at a single image by Stieglitz, a picture of a porch - nothing else, boring photograph - I left the weekend course frustrated and disappointed. It hadn't been anything like what I had expected.

But, within six months I was looking at photographs in a completely different way. Hubert Hohn had taught me to look at a lot more than whether it was a pretty picture. He had us look at the edges, he pointed out coincidences - not the random kind, the kind where the photographer very carefully put things next to each other, or in the corner or opposite each other. He had us look at the shadows and their interesting shapes. He pointed out that when something was in front of something else, there was generally an excellent reason for it - not just dumb luck.

This experience of being given new information and thinking it total crap has happened a few times in my life, only to find months later that it has soaked in and changed me forever. Don't you hate people like that, and don't you wish that could happen to you more often?

Along the road, I found 'Zone VI Workshop' a very small book with some radical ideas about shooting, processing and printing which not only simplified my life, it dramatically improved the qualities of my prints. Fred was an extremely opinionated bastard and not occasionally contradicted himself over time, denigrating both his former and future opinions without ever recognizing or admitting to either. That said, he had some very good ideas. He was a great proponent of the KISS system - 'keep it simple, stupid', and was a great advocate of not taking anyone's opinion as gospel, his included - you had to test and find out for yourself - how far can you stop down - don't look up tables, don't look at formulae, definitely don't ask anyone else - find out for yourself.

With my Canon 1Ds2, stopping down beyond f16 results in absolutely no more sharpness in the out of focus areas and blurs the sharp ones - I tested it and found out for myself. Your results might be different - don't believe me!

Fred was not the easiest person to get along with and as such I think his photography has been under appreciated - his images tend to be rather quiet and take some time to appreciate, but were well worth looking at. His newsletter published for several years had a lot of interesting ideas and some of them were even useful - and the ones that weren't were entertaining to read. He had learned composition from the likes of Paul Strand and had some good things to say about framing and composing.

Other photographers I lucked into - on the remaindered pile I found a paperback book of images by David Plowden - I found myself identifying with his images even more than those of many better known photographers.

Over the years the usual collection of photo mags would occasionally publish images by masters and that would lead to a search for books of images from that photographer. In the early days and on a very limited budget the library was of some use.

A local photo gallery brought in someone called Bruce Barnbaum for a workshop and at the same time had a show of his work - 'wow', this man could PRINT. He had some lovely images.

The advent of the internet has been a real boon - there are a huge number of images on the net worth checking out. I found the work of Michael Kenna, Kerik Kouklis, Roman Loranc, William Neill

Somewhere along the way I discovered 'Lenswork' magazine - good photography and superb printing, three photographers per issue - a great resource for black and white photography. 'Black and White Photography' from Britain is another excellent resource especially for wet darkroom printers and with good photography in every issue. 'B&W' has become an invaluable resource and their recent Portfolio Annual (which just happened to feature my photographs first (joys of being at the beginning of the alphabet) was particularly well printed. A new magazine is 'Focus' which has been similar to 'B&W' but now features some colour in each issue (and also has four of my colour images in it this month).

I have to say though that the first time I saw a real Ansel Adams image, I was blown away with the quality - reproductions didn't do justice to the superb prints. Mind you, book printing has come a long way since. Screens have gone from 150 up to 600 line, dots are sometimes stochastic (random, instead of in neat rows - which show in skies and other smooth areas). Multiple inks are used for really good blacks. Even paper quality has improved. The gap is narrowing and a lot can be learned from the printed image - but I'd still grab every chance you can to see real images. If you can get a chance to see the prints bare, not behind glass, even better.

Many years ago, Fred Picker offered a set of four 'fine images' to use as examples of good quality printing. They weren't great images but they were certainly printed well and were a good start. There are a lot of photographers offering images on the internet often at quite reasonable prices and should they have a good reputation for their prints, you might well find it worthwhile to purchase a few images just to have as a target at which to aim.

Brooks Jensen (Lenswork Editor and photographer in his own right) recently offered one of his images for $20, shipping included - how could you possibly go wrong? Brooks, by the way, has some interesting and thoughtful insights into photography. He photographs, publishes, talks to the greats, and knows a lot about the industry of fine art photography (not all of it very encouraging - but it doesn't hurt to have a reality check).

Brooks makes comments like, "How can photographers expect people to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for photographs when they themselves have never ever paid that kind of money for any art work?"

Well, hope these are some ideas for broadening your own perspective. If nothing else it should show you that not ALL landscape images have to be shot with a 17 mm. lens with an extreme near far composition and the horizon an inch from the top of the image - come on guys, you can do better than that.