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Recognizing "Concept" in Photography and Whether or Not it has been Materialized.

Rachel Foster

New member
Recognizing "Concept" in Photography and Whether or Not it has been Materialized.

This original thread was to help in deciding if a crop would help Rachel's picture taken behind a lighthouse. From it we discovered that there was a motive behind the picture and the title didn't relate to it. The idea of the crop, itself, remains with the original thread. Here we'll just explore the value of discovering whether or not the picture is related to some concept. A.K.

I'm stuck on the appropriate crop for this one. Any suggestions?

smallpostlight-1.jpg

Rachel Ann Foster: Muskegon Lighthouse in November
 
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charlie chipman

New member
Ideally I think a better option to cropping this shot would have been a tighter framing when taking the picture, and by that I mean walking closer to the trees, not zooming in.

The subject here is the lighthouse because that's what is in the name. When I first opened the picture the trees and the fence had all of my attention and I didn't even see the lighthouse at first. The fence adds depth but does not hold interest for me.

If you were to walk closer to the trees you could explore a better frame of the light house within the trees. Moving closer would change the perspective and that branch would not going through the top of the light house, but it would then be above the light house.


Edit Added: The above comments aside, I would suggest a crop to this image just below the fence and just above the trees.
 

Nigel Allan

Member
I must say I agree with Charlie. I hadn't read the title very carefully and only when he pointed out the name did I realise that a lighthouse had anything to do with this. I thought it was a tree shot on first glance.

Even if i had read it and realised this was a 'lighthouse' shot I would have been disappointed since the branch obscures the very part where the light comes out. I hate to sound negative and critical but I don't think the title and the picture work together. maybe it should be 'Muskegon beach in November'
 

beth anthony

New member
i too think you should have walked closer to the trees. when i look at the image i see a wonderful natural frame for the lighthouse where the two branches arc through the upper 1/3 of the lighthouse. had you moved in closer you would have eliminated the fence (sorry, it does nothing for me) and made the lighthouse smaller in relation to the trees and eventually it would have fit in that frame between the two trees and under the arcing branches. this would have also filled up more of the sky with the trees which would help draw top of the file into the picture for me.

overall i love the colors and the soft muted light. with the lighthouse and those pinkish colors it is very romantic. congratulations on creating an image with so much feeling.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Just change the title, "Trees and wall behind the Lighthouse".

Frankly,

I think everyone is wrong here. There's no need to walk closer! The matter that interested Rachel was what was behind the lighthouse. That's her particular point of view that no one else would have. It's essentially right. Imagine if one had gone closer: the perspective of the trees would be so totally different. Going closer is not an option to get the same feel of being "behind the wonderful Lighthouse." it's like looking at an alley behind a great hotel. The idea is to "see it" and not distort it.

If anything, one might clone out the tree intruding on the left. Better, than that, keeping its disturbance to our esthetic need for balance and clean images is perhaps what's needed! After all, this is the unheroic, unsentimental, unpretty picture of what leads to the lighthouse. Hurrah for that!

Just change the title, "Trees and wall behind the Muskegon Lighthouse in November".

Asher
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
Asher, I think you get what I was interested in: the relationship and proportions between the trees and the lighthouse. I, too, noticed the intrusive tree to the left. My first inclination was to clone it out. What I'm not sure of is how much foreground and the fence.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Discovering "Concept" in a work and then seeing how effective it's been materialized.

Frankly,

I think everyone is wrong here. There's no need to walk closer! The matter that interested Rachel was what was behind the lighthouse. That's her particular point of view that no one else would have. It's essentially right. Imagine if one had gone closer: the perspective of the trees would be so totally different. Going closer is not an option to get the same feel of being "behind the wonderful Lighthouse." it's like looking at an alley behind a great hotel. The idea is to "see it" and not distort it.

Asher


Good point Asher.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about how I would have taken or processed a picture instead of my thoughts on the picture as it is. Who cares about how I would have done it, I have my own camera.

Usually I catch myself and say nothing, this time I let it slide.

I apologize Rachel :)

Thanks, Charlie for seeing the need to protect, where we can, the points of view of other photographers. If there's a concept or a formulated intent, then we should know it. The idea is to share feelings and opinions and doing so, open up our own horizons.

It's a tough job, however, to know when a person has a real concept they are working with or just a haphazard approach and sort of lost. Where there is no concept to be fathomed, we're "twiddling pickup sticks" to try to make something pretty or intelligent. However, none of this is as meaningful as recognizing and nurturing a photographer's real intent and concept.

Once we know what this concept is, a start to questions we might pose ourselves might include, "What parts of the presentation works for me?"

Asher
 

Nigel Allan

Member
hmmm...I'm not sure I agree here, Asher

The original question was how should this be cropped? I didn't feel I could contribute there because I felt that whichever way you crop it the title of the picture doesn't really resonate with the actual image itself.

For me the issue is this simple. Not whether it is a nice picture or well cropped. It is to do with the expectation of the viewer, regardless of the intention of the photographer. Let me elaborate.

I don't think you can divorce the title from the image since they are both integral elements of Rachel's story. If the title had been "Winter falls on Muskegon beach" or similar I would simply have thought "What a nice evocative image" but the title demanded that I take the lighthouse into consideration as the subject matter and therefore I felt there was a miss-match. I felt let down.

I think a title gives a foretaste of the image to come and creates an expectation just like the smell of a roast chicken dinner gets your mouth salivating before it actually reaches the table. The chicken has to deliver on its promises!
 
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Michael Fontana

pro member
talking about concept - when I had a look at Rachel's image, I didn't detected anything giuiding to the later pointed out concept; with wall in the foreground, its posible too, to think it as a concept of foreground/midground and background - just to stay in the used terminology.

It might be a start for a concept - often, concepts turn to have another sens when beeing in a serie of photos. I find it - more in photography, than in the other arts - pretty unreliable to talk about concepts in a single photo; as we all know, photography will show something more or less interesting with any shutter klick - easy to talk about concepts later.

If we talk about concepts here, I want to see/feel/smell/think it (whatever you like) - and not by a text afterwards. (Or then the concept is, to have none but a text afterwards ;-) )

Asher's
"it's like looking at an alley behind a great hotel. The idea is to "see it" and not distort it."

I don't eat that; still its somehow composed. Rachel's attempt to crop it is just the sign of a °composition-probem°

We could bring the discussion on a aleatoric track, but my opinion is that every composition is a choice, as the selection of the focal lengths, etc - beeing a language, a stylization - which is all the time °kinda° distortion, as well.

I' dlike to encourage Rachel much to go ahead with "the relationship and proportions between the trees and the lighthouse" and bring home some more of it.
 

Nigel Allan

Member
I don't eat that; still its somehow composed. Rachel's attempt to crop it is just the sign of a °composition-probem°

Michael makes an interesting point. Composition is a conscious decision usually made before you click the shutter. I don't think many of us shoot at random and think "I'll crop it later" to convey a message.

I agree that occasionally cropping can enhance our initial vision and maybe allow us to show the viewer an aspect we were not able to get close enough to with the camera - or sometimes even we might discover something in the crop we hadn't initially seen (like my shot I called 'Absolutely gay' in another thread, whereby blowing up a small section yielded some meaning I hadn't previously recognised or even intended), but isn't it better on the whole to try and start with the right image capture in camera rather than looking to fix it later? (no slight on Rachel intended here as this is a generalised and rhetorical question)

Perhaps photography should be like driving and we should all be forced to learn on a manual before we are allowed to drive an automatic.

Just imagine the discipline we would all learn if we were only allowed to shoot with a fully manual SLR (exposure, aperture, shutter and focus) and 5omm 'standard' lens for the first year. Boy, we would all learn how to frame and compose in the viewfinder and get just the shot we want so that the processing is simply 'finishing'.

Most modern digital photographers seem to approach it the other way round and believe the work only starts once you get it into Photoshop or whatever. I picked up a recent popular photography magazine and flicked through it on the shelves yesterday and all the images they praise and publish are heavily and I mean heavily Photoshopped to the point where I question whether this can even be called photography and whether they should just rename the magazine 'Digital Artist'. You know the kind - every last pixel has been 'optimised' to bring out heavy moody skies and dynamic range that probably was never in the original scene at all to the naked eye

Sorry, I got off topic... rant over :)

In fact one of the nice things about Rachel's image IMHO is that it is barren and stark and does convey a cold winter's day on a deserted beach...the trees have lost their leaves and it feels cold...maybe it should be black and white, but it is a credit to her that she hasn't over processed it and she's left it slightly 'empty'.
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
This discussion has been very helpful to me. With only a few exceptions, I despise the need to give my images titles. I understand the "arc of intent," but I resist directing the viewer's impression of the image. If I could have posted this without title, I would have.

I prefer the viewer bring her/her own interpretation to an image. (It's not a Rorschach, of course, but that's the idea; you bring what you want to the image.) What I saw and tried to capture was the lighthouse. That WAS the draw for me; but not the typical lighthouse shot. I was enchanted by the almost hidden but still visible lighthouse. Lighthouses are heavily symbolic. So is winter. What I saw and intentionally tried to capture was the bleakness of a winter’s day. It’s bleak, cold, but not hopeless. Partially obscured, far away, but still there is “hope.” I loved – absolutely loved – the proportions of the lighthouse behind the tree. I felt like the fence somehow belonged in there but was not sure of that.

So, I may start giving my images numbers instead of titles. For example, this might be “Image 111409,” or simpler.
 

Nigel Allan

Member
I agree Rachel. Sometimes I find it hard to give a title that conveys meaning but have to because the environment requires it so I struggle to come up with something which I feel adds to the image in some way or invites the viewer to look deeper. But the idea of letting an image stand without any caption is sometimes appealing as you want the viewer to draw their own conclusions with no preconceptions

My only criticism really was that since it did have a title that created an expectation which I felt wasn't fulfilled.

As I said I like the bleakness of the shot and like the fact that you haven't felt the need to keep tweaking it in PP until it becomes digital overkill. I've said it before and I believe this strongly, I think it takes more guts not less in the digital era to leave things simple and minimal

BTW have you tried it in black and white or more desaturated?
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
With no Preconceptions? Are there three ingredients in a photograph?

with no preconceptions

Nigel,

You made me think about how we really make pictures and recognize, among all our snaps what to share. Excluding patterns, are there perhaps three common essential ingredients in all art and in photography too?

A "Concept": Something seen or imagined that we can relate to. We rebuild this in our brains and get, (approximately), the feelings of the artist.

A "Playgound", even with no preconceived meaning, just a place for us to imagine an exercise what we can bring to the art

A "Puzzle" for us to solve. "What is it? What happens then, now in the future? Why? Who are the players? What's the consequences?" and so forth.

I think you may have hit on an essential pivot point in how we approach a photograph. In the simplest terms Rachel has a concept which through framing, position, timing and the click of a button she brought to us. We look at it and feelings are evoked and "we get it", that sort of set of emotions Rachel had. That was what I thought, originally art was all about, a simple "Arc of Intent".

However, if the photograph is framed really close with a macro lens, for example, and we get just form, light, colors and texture, sections of things we don't identify, and no title, what then? We might simply find it an interesting experience or "beautiful", "ugly" but with no ideas. Such a seemingly pure abstract image might possibly bring and evoke no preconceptions at all. So, we can use it as a "playground" for ideas of our own. Still in most other cases, the "Concept" of the photographer is likely related to some kind of "happening" we can recognize.

In the first case, Rachel's real scene of November with the lighthouse beyond the trees is a great example of a picture that could have no title, but still, a title is a generous act. In the other abstract extreme, a title instantly creates a "puzzle" for the viewer to solve and that's an interesting challenge.

Putting aside interesting patterns, which are likely just hypnotic, what makes a photograph work for us? It seems to me that we just add a touch of "Concept" a dash of a "Playground" and a hint of a "Puzzle" to make a picture worthwhile.

Asher
 

Nigel Allan

Member
Asher, you always bring a smile to my face as you always seem to try and dig deeper and want more.

Maybe you are right, there may be different components which set off different signals in our brains from familiarity (recognising a scene or an experience and re-experiencing an emotion) through to puzzlement (where we have to try and 'get' what the photographer 'sees' from just parts of the whole picture and our brains try and reconstruct something from sketchy information.

I don't want to get into a lengthy philosophical debate right now, but my only point about Rachel's image here is that IMHO the title created a preconception which was not fulfilled by the image. A different title or no title at all would not have led to a feeling of 'disappointment' (without sounding too harsh I hope)

From my creative advertising background whereby a billboard or DPS for example always had a headline and a picture there was a skill in having the 'title' and the 'image' play off one another - each telling partr of the story or conveying part of the message you wanted the reader to 'get', so they construct the 'entire' story in their head
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Nigel,

You are so well grounded and smelling the baked chicken, but getting a piece of cake instead is more down to earth. It's the unfulfilled promise that we don't like.

One can only get away with it by showing 4 squares and calling it "Lighthouse in November" but to work, we need to already have a following in outer space!

Asher
 

Rachel Foster

New member
The new title is "Untitled." The only one that works for me is "Muskegon Lighthouse in November."


smallpostlightbw.jpg


Rachel Ann Foster: Untitled in Black and White
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
This original thread was to help in deciding if a crop would help Rachel's picture taken behind a lighthouse. From it we discovered that there was a motive behind the picture and the title didn't relate to it. The idea of the crop, itself, remains with the original thread. Here we'll just explore the value of discovering whether or not the picture is related to some concept. A.K.

I'm stuck on the appropriate crop for this one. Any suggestions?

smallpostlight-1.jpg

Rachel Ann Foster: Muskegon Lighthouse in November

Only Rachel can claim conceptual intentions on her photograph. All others must speculate.

"Concept" is a high-level form of premeditation. With regard to a single piece (photo, painting, sculpture, etc.) it's phony to define your concept after it's created. Rachel's basic, and simple, question was how to crop this image. That's not a conceptual quandary; it's a technical one. Based on her other posts and images I think she was just trying to create a pleasing photo from this scene.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
"Concept" is a high-level form of premeditation. With regard to a single piece (photo, painting, sculpture, etc.) it's phony to define your concept after it's created.
Ken,

At first, this seems self-evident. However, it does not appear to accommodate found art or the Dadaists., There, for sure, the work is given meaning in a new context. Why can't I go through my 20,000 snaps, select one set with ideas in common and then give the series a title that reframes their context in a higher order concept?

Asher
 

Rachel Foster

New member
Actually, Ken, the explanation I gave was what I saw: symbolic representation, along with shapes, textures and colors that I liked. This scene spoke to me at a very deep level. However, I rarely crop scenes in the most effective way. That's one reason I cannot really see any other name for this scene. It has meaning for me. This image turned out far closer to what my mind's eye saw than almost any other image I've shot. I'm very aware that I struggle with presentation, particularly with the crop.
 

Nigel Allan

Member
The new title is "Untitled." The only one that works for me is "Muskegon Lighthouse in November."


smallpostlightbw.jpg


Rachel Ann Foster: Untitled in Black and White


regardless of the title, I like the black and white version better for its bleak portrayal of November...and now the fence doesn't detract, it adds IMHO

At the risk of sounding patronizing, which is not my intent, showing this scene in black and white more clearly shows YOUR INTENT I believe as to make a shot black and white like this is a conscious 'opt in' decision which means it is 'intended' rather than showing it in colour which requires no intent as the sensor records in colour anyway. Am I making sense? Does that sound pretentious? I hope not.

In other words, the portrayal of this scene in mono is a deliberate, conscious decision whereas keeping it in colour could have been an unconscious (without thought) decision and displays less intent...I'll stop before I ramble too much
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
regardless of the title, I like the black and white version better for its bleak portrayal of November...and now the fence doesn't detract, it adds IMHO

At the risk of sounding patronizing, which is not my intent, showing this scene in black and white more clearly shows YOUR INTENT I believe as to make a shot black and white like this is a conscious 'opt in' decision which means it is 'intended' rather than showing it in colour which requires no intent as the sensor records in colour anyway. Am I making sense? Does that sound pretentious? I hope not.

In other words, the portrayal of this scene in mono is a deliberate, conscious decision whereas keeping it in colour could have been an unconscious (without thought) decision and displays less intent...I'll stop before I ramble too much

Nigel,

Spot on! Delivered thus, it makes more sense. Part of the work in making a picture can be the devotion once one gets to the darkroom no less than in the field. Intent, anyway, (for an open-minded person, at least), generally gets modified as one appreciates what one is starting to make as a material thing to experience, be it music, sculpture or photography.

Even if the high intent is not so lofty, whether it's started in a meadow, bent over a print appearing in the glow of a safelight, or on the LCD screen, its embedding into the photograph should add to our experience.

Here, B&W does just that, adds to our experience, in spite of the title.

Asher
 

Ken Tanaka

pro member
Ken,

At first, this seems self-evident. However, it does not appear to accommodate found art or the Dadaists., There, for sure, the work is given meaning in a new context. Why can't I go through my 20,000 snaps, select one set with ideas in common and then give the series a title that reframes their context in a higher order concept?

Asher

You're absolutely correct, but you've shifted contexts. Instead of a single image, such as Rachel's, you're now considering a different creative concept; that of using images, mostly produced with other intentions, to compose a body of work guided by another concept. That's an absolutely valid, in fact common, strategy. (Rather like building a picture of Abe Lincoln using photos of the antebellum South as the half-tone dots.)

In further fact, I'm in the process of tidying exactly that type of conceptual project as I write.
 

Leonardo Boher

pro member
Picture is good. It has potential. I rarely see a picture as something done. I think best is looking the potential it has and enhancing it.

Personally, I would clone out the tree on the left, it distracts too much from the main subject. The cloudy day is perfect for contrasting the clouds to give them more presence, probably, abit of the same on the ground. Then a vignetting, of course.

Well... took some minutes to do this, it doesn't look perfect.

As the quote says: '1 image is better than thousand of words' (such a materialist quote!)

smallpostlight-1.jpg
 
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Rachel Foster

New member
I too think the tree on the left intrudes. And, I prefer the color version. The black and white doesn't look as forlorn to me. I have to think about that as others (whose opinions I highly value) prefer the black and white.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I too think the tree on the left intrudes. And, I prefer the color version. The black and white doesn't look as forlorn to me. I have to think about that as others (whose opinions I highly value) prefer the black and white.

Well, Rachel,

Leonardo is the man who thinks with window-light, so he immediately goes for the shading! I too like the effect, but I prefer the untidiness of the part of the tree being there. After all, this picture is the antithesis of the postcard shot of the same Lighthouse from the below, showing the shore, some green turf, perhaps rocks and a line of trees one one side and water on the other, all balanced to perfection.

Asher
 
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