Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => Discussing Photographic Styles => Topic started by: Graham Clark on March 03, 2013, 03:01:58 pm
-
The concept of previsualization in photography is where the photographer can see the final print before the image has been captured. Ansel Adams dedicates the beginning of his first book to previsualization, and is often quoted as saying "Visualization is the single most important factor in photography". Understanding then the significance of this approach is of high value for photographers of all kinds, as it has the potential to unlock greater creative vision, and give greater control (and predictability) over the print process.
Although I'm still just a beginner, I have consolidated some of my thoughts on this here (http://grahamclarkphoto.com/how-to-pre-visualize-a-photograph-like-ansel-adams/). Hopefully others can find it useful!
Graham
(http://www.grahamclarkphoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Ansel_Adams_Denali.jpg)
-
Furthermore, Ansel should have been a bit more specific and confined his comments to landscape and similar static photography where it's possible to pre-visualize. In street photography, which to me is a lot more significant branch of photography than landscape, the kind of pre-visualization Ansel was pushing is impossible. You visualize a street photograph as the scene unfolds. Now! If you have some preconception of what you're after you're going you miss the shot.
-
I hate to be a grammar nanny, but why "pre" visualize? Adams himself said "visualize," and when you are visualizing a print before taking the photo, the "pre" part is implicit. Sloppy!
Anyway, back to the topic - for me, visualization is inherent in the process. If I do not visualize the final print - not in every detail, but in broad outline - I do not take the photo. Recognizing a scene or subject as something I want to photograph means that I have already visualized the print. Many of my photos fail, of course, but that's just my own shortcoming.
-
Yes but 'pre' is the prefix du jour, dontcha know ... In the UK now, you don't order a copy, you don't even get to reserve a copy, you have to pre-bleedin'-order. I refuse to 'pre-order'. Bloody silly term.
-
Irregardless, people understand better when you say "pre-visualize". ;)
-
Irregardless.
NICE!
Peter
-
For a contrarian point of view on previsualization, look here (http://blog.kasson.com/?page_id=1858).
Although the approach that I wrote about in the post linked-to above is heartfelt, I know it's not for everyone, and I respect a Minor White mindset.
Jim
-
I pre-visualize picking lottery numbers. I haven't gotten the knack there either.
-
I hate to be a grammar nanny, but why "pre" visualize? Adams himself said "visualize," and when you are visualizing a print before taking the photo, the "pre" part is implicit. Sloppy!
Minor White distinguished between pre-visualization, which he defined as visualization before the exposure, and post-visualization, which was visualization after the exposure and during the printing process.
Jim
-
Irregardless, ...
Should be "disirregardless", pre-obviously. ???
-
Whatever you want to call it......it comes from one thing-practice.
-
The modern use of previsualization has come to mean imposing a particular look on a subject that was determined without much regard to the subject itself. You make the subject look like the previsualization. It's the new, cost-efficient soul of commercial photography and motion pictures. It is arguably a good idea to know what you're going to do BEFORE the $100,000/day shooting session begins. Image makers attempting to preserve unplanned and therefore expensive spontaneity are not finding work. I think Ridley Scott was ruined by the heavy handed instrusion of previz into the story line of "Prometheus" versus "Bladerunner" where previz was mostly limited to the effects scenes.
Ansel knew what his print was going to look like from the moment he first saw the scene, which was his instant of privisualizaion. The look was selected from the small but dramatic vocabulary of what was possible technically, given the conditions of light and subject. What Ansel made out of a scene was often quite different than what the scene looked like to the eye. Deepen the shadows, texturize the clouds, and so on. He always knew where he was going to go with it, which was usually towards a bigger-than-life interpretation. There were few surprises or deviations in post. So in Ansel's case previz was liberating in the strange way that well defined constraints are liberating. He knew there were maybe 2 or 3 interpretations that would glorify the subject to his liking and he had the technical mojo to head straight to them, without wallowing around in keeping the creative possibilities open for later.
One thing's for sure...you can get away with a lot more processing hoopla in b&w than in color, before people start whispering "....Photoshop..." behind your back. Have you noticed? It's not fair. Sorry, I wander.
-
Reading this thread from its inception, I'm truly impressed and suprised by the large percentage of people who have been gifted with the abilty to know what St Ansel was thinking; extraordinary! I sometimes have difficulty knowing what I, myself, might be or have been thinking and, worse, I sometimes don't even know what to think...
That St A. might have been indulging in a little self-promotion never enters my head - so that's something I don't have to worry about thinking, as anyone can tell.
Rob C
-
Reading this thread from its inception, I'm truly impressed and suprised by the large percentage of people who have been gifted with the abilty to know what St Ansel was thinking; extraordinary! I sometimes have difficulty knowing what I, myself, might be or have been thinking and, worse, I sometimes don't even know what to think...
That St A. might have been indulging in a little self-promotion never enters my head - so that's something I don't have to worry about thinking, as anyone can tell.
Rob C
:)
-
Ansel knew what his print was going to look like from the moment he first saw the scene, which was his instant of privisualizaion.
We are fortunate to have examples of Ansel Adams prints from the same negatives made many years apart, and we are able to see evolution in the way the images are printed. In some cases, like Moonrise, the changes are huge. To the degree that previsualization was involved in creating the negatives, the earlier prints must be closer to Adams’ pre-exposure vision. Does that make the later prints bad? No. Just not previsualized.
Jim
-
If I do not visualize the final print - not in every detail, but in broad outline - I do not take the photo. Recognizing a scene or subject as something I want to photograph means that I have already visualized the print.
Taking the photo can be part of the exploration, that leads to recognition of the subject --
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome. ... "I realized after exposing that the image would not express the particular mood of overwhelming grandeur the scene evoked. I visualized a dark sky, deeper shadows, and a crisp horizon in the distance. With my one remaining plate I used the #29 dark red filter, achieving very much the effect I wanted."
The Negative, Ansel Adams (http://www.anseladams.org/the-negativehc-book-9.html)
-
Might there be a chance that AA was simply talking-up the somewhat universal act of deciding to use a filter, and which filter?
-
Presumably deciding to use a filter to achieve some visualized effect ;-)
-
Exactly, Isaac! But the stuff Ansel did made it very clear that a photograph no less than a painting is a "picture," not truth.
-
Maybe we should all have listened to George E. and just used a Box Brownie and handed in the film.
That way, it would have remained a more honest and less subjective pastime, devoid of pretence.
;-)
Rob C
-
But the stuff Ansel did made it very clear that a photograph no less than a painting is a "picture," not truth.
I think the different uses of photography already were clear -- Photography has been so multifarious... (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=63950.msg516444#msg516444)
What impressed [Harry] Callahan (http://books.google.com/books?id=A6HAQgAACAAJ) the most, though, were Adams' photographs: "Ansel put his pictures up and that was what did it for me. That just completely freed me. They really had tone and texture with no monkey business. ... They were all beautifully sharp." p34
-
"I am constantly amused by the notion that some people have about photographic technique – a notion which reveals itself in an insatiable craving for sharpness of images. Is this the passion of an obsession? Or do these people hope, by this trompe l’oeil technique, to get to closer grips with reality? In either case, they are just as far away from the real problem as those of that other generation which used to endow all its photographic anecdotes with an intentional unsharpness such as was deemed to be 'artistic.'”
Henri Cartier-Bresson: from The Decisive Moment
-
Ah, another battle of quotes.
Just goes to say you can't prove anything with quotes, as there is always something that someone said in favor or against practically anything under the sun. Quotes, at best, could help illustrate one's position, perhaps more eloquently.
-
"You're going to need a bigger boat."
Chief Brody
-
Just goes to say you can't prove anything with quotes.
May I quote you on that, SB? ;D
-
“You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.” (Isaac Asimov)
A quote that should be on the cover of every copy of Das Kapital.
-
Ah, another battle of quotes.
In this instance, Russ's quote is appropriate (although it doesn't seem to help the "stuff Ansel did" point he previously wished to make).
As part of his campaign to liberate photography from the hidebound aesthetics of pictorialism, Adams traveled extensively during the 1930s and 1940s speaking to camera clubs and other organisations, urging photographers to adopt a style that respected and exploited what he felt were the inherent qualities of the medium -- its objectivity and precision, as well as its ability to render detail, texture, and tone (http://books.google.com/books?id=A6HAQgAACAAJ). In August and September 1941 Adams conducted a workshop at the Detroit Photo Guild that Callahan attended. p34
-
As part of his campaign to liberate photography from the hidebound aesthetics of pictorialism, Adams traveled extensively during the 1930s and 1940s speaking to camera clubs and other organisations, urging photographers to adopt a style that respected and exploited what he felt were the inherent qualities of the medium -- its objectivity and precision, as well as its ability to render detail, texture, and tone. In August and September 1941 Adams conducted a workshop at the Detroit Photo Guild that Callahan attended. p34
Strange. I thought Stieglitz already had pretty much pushed pictorialism into the background in the teens and twenties. The Steerage, in 1915, certainly wasn't pictorialism.
-
Perhaps the message hadn't quite percolated from his NYC gallery to the Photo clubs of America.
-
Er - Planning? Working the scene? Thinking? Definitely AA had to do more planning than the modern day digital shooter, simply because he was shooting 8 x 10 view cameras with expensive plates. Working the scene must have consisted of walking around until he found the right vantage point and right framing, then setting up that big-a** camera, then waiting for the desired light.
The medium required more up front from the photographer than the current digital medium does, aka spray and pray.
Getting an eye like AA's - can't help you there.
-
The medium required more up front from the photographer than the current digital medium does, aka spray and pray.
Yes, we need to remember that Ansel Adams worked with tools from a bygone era, and those tools shaped his working methods.
aka spray and pray
:-)
"In summer 1954, Cartier-Bresson was therefore the first western photographer to obtain a visa for the Soviet Union since the thaw in the Cold War 15 months after Stalin's death. ... He took 10,000 photographs in ten weeks."
p203-4 Henri Cartier-Bresson: A Biography (http://books.google.com/books?id=_ICFQgAACAAJ).
More seriously, "spray and pray" can be a practical way to push the boundaries. Hand-held photos I take at 1/15th and 130mm are mostly too soft because of camera movement -- say 1 in 4 are good, so remember to take 6 in a burst.
-
... "In summer 1954, Cartier-Bresson was therefore the first western photographer to obtain a visa for the Soviet Union since the thaw in the Cold War 15 months after Stalin's death. ... He took 10,000 photographs in ten weeks."...
How appropriate... after all, he was in the country that invented the best "spray" (with bullets) and "pray" (for victims) tool: AK-47 ;)
-
Spray: don't confuse a high professional film usage with being anything similar to high digiital usage.
A typìcal calendar shot over ten days to two weeks could run me around 50 - 60 36-exposure Kodachromes; that's nothing for a digital hobbyist on a similar length holiday shoot.
Different concepts.
Rob C
-
don't confuse a high professional film usage with being anything similar to high digital usage. ...that's nothing for a digital hobbyist
And maybe that's nothing for a current accredited photographer holding camera at full stretch above the photog mob, pointed in the general direction of the subject :-)
-
I learned to pre visualize ... mainly from AA's Zone system & a Wratten B/W filter. When I carried around my 4X5 > I could actually visualize the final print. I knew where the Zone 7 highlights would fall and the detail in Zone 3 would be expected. After being in the darkroom with AA and walking by a wash tray > I could see 4 identical prints all masterly seen and perfectly exposed & printed. It was a science that worked.
Brett could also pre-visualize .... he lived so many years , behind every size camera & a family that lived for the image ... he could work quickly without a meter in the field. The film in the holder or roll in his back > would just gel perfectly with the chemicals and paper he had in mind when he got home ,,, & after a drink :D
Its a new world with digital > so many leave so much to the post work > I still shoot manually and with a meter > with the screen flipped over on the Canon 6oD.. old techniques follow you around.
-
I learned to pre visualize ... mainly from AA's Zone system & a Wratten B/W filter. When I carried around my 4X5 > I could actually visualize the final print. I knew where the Zone 7 highlights would fall and the detail in Zone 3 would be expected. After being in the darkroom with AA and walking by a wash tray > I could see 4 identical prints all masterly seen and perfectly exposed & printed. It was a science that worked.
Brett could also pre-visualize .... he lived so many years , behind every size camera & a family that lived for the image ... he could work quickly without a meter in the field. The film in the holder or roll in his back > would just gel perfectly with the chemicals and paper he had in mind when he got home ,,, & after a drink :D
Its a new world with digital > so many leave so much to the post work > I still shoot manually and with a meter > with the screen flipped over on the Canon 6oD.. old techniques follow you around.
And when they work, why not?
Rob C
-
Or how about previsualizing in post Ansel Adams American landscape school like Joel Sternfeld?
http://www.artspace.com/joel_sternfeld
http://youtu.be/lNzr7g8FQgk
-
You are driving along in your vehicle. Something catches your eye. You pull over and start to walk around and find the best spot. Then you reach in the back of your car and start to pull out your gear > large tripod ... view camera ..etc
Now you hope you have a variety of lens ( I was fortunate to have at least 3 ) > you have to select a lens to capture what the eye sees . Maybe a 135mm on your 4X5 format. Now what film for the characteristic of scene. This is all part of the pre-visualization. Do I need a certain filter to open up an area or definition to those clouds over head ...(http://www.westernartandarchitecture.com/dynamic/images/article_images/thumbs/634x375okad6_252.jpg)
A huge a check list before the exposure is even thought about. Bellows extensions --- reciprocity -- filter compensation --- dof -- etc. Then you have to start framing > up side down ~! Now metering and marking your holder for development >> just where will that foreground fall in the paper >> will the highlights have detail > the middle tone on the hillside may fall into Zone 2 BUT I need it at Zone 3 . I can see it all in easily with the naked eye but how do you pre-visualize that for the whole process that entails to the final print ??
Today you might venture out to shoot artistically with your digital --- bring back 50+ shots in afternoon. With a view camera I might bring back 3 holders > 6 images. The time factor made for a easy visualization == The image wasn't captured in a flash.
You worked those movements on the view camera > loupe to the screen for critical sharpness > under that dark cloth was your canvas. Sometimes you would spend a half hour just looking in just a few feet perimeter & then pack-up and move on. You made those 6 sheets of film worthy ;D
-
In street photography, which to me is a lot more significant branch of photography than landscape, the kind of pre-visualization Ansel was pushing is impossible. You visualize a street photograph as the scene unfolds. Now! If you have some preconception of what you're after you're going you miss the shot.
I'm surprised this statement has been left unchallenged.
-
I did a lot of street shooting with a tripod ... just waiting for things to unfold > as they came into view. SO, a slight pre-visual :o