"Made" v. "Captured" or "Taken"
thanks for the input... my work is not to balance things.. to make things nice... any person can with the will.. do that...
Interest is not a given but something found... I make.. not take... that is not semantics ...the fact you are not interested is fine..
you look for something that will not be in what I do.. this is not a capture .. this in this case is a made piece of work...
Mark,
I take exception to your approach to Alain's use of the word "take"**. It's perfectly reasonable for one to say that we all just take a picture. That's a common easily understood term. One faces the tangle of ruined branches and presses the shutter. This
takes the light coming from the subject you have chosen and it is recorded in some manner by the electronics. That's what we mean by "taken"! Making pictures is what
I do. I study a location, visit it many times and still
take images from various positions and angles. I then make drawings of how the image might be and then what will be included and excluded. I now control the lighting and bring in the subjects and define their positions. Then I expose in a particular way, process in a defined sequence for various characteristics I have intended from the start. I work on every line, texture and shadow. At the very end, when it's a completed image, I can say
I made that image. Otherwise, just pressing the shutter is
taking the image.
In general, just making global alterations are not going to alter the fact that the image has only the minimum of craft in it beyond the framing and that is not undervalued.
From what you have shown, (and that's all we can judge), the images you have here are rather flat, have no evident distinguishing pattern and no allocation of interest, love or dedication to particular forms. Unless "disorder" itself is a theme, I see no point. What artistic choices have been made? In any case, even in "disorder", all items being the same level in importance creates a single plane of order and is too bland to hold interest. So I cannot find either worth or work that would allow one to say the picture has been "made" as opposed to"captured" or "taken". I say this since there might indeed be merit in distinguishing the product of merely releasing a shutter on a modern, almost perfectly automatic DSLR and the craft in materializing some idea in a masterful way so that it becomes a new living being with breath in it's lungs, to survive separately from the photographer. The prints of Edward Weston, for example, are such
works of art and live beyond him. They were guided by strongly formulated personal and original ideas and formed into physical existence by his tireless persistence, trials and errors and progressive mastery, until he has perfectly built pictures. So his pictures were indeed
made.
This is the one standard I use for works that are claimed to be anything other than snapped.
I ask myself the following question, "To what
extent is the image delivered the end product of seeing with the mind and expressing that through the camera and darkroom craft, choosing between a myriad of alternatives, until the likeness of the physical form resonates with the artists premonition of how it might exist." If we build our photographs in this way, they are
made. Otherwise, we are mostly just "clickers"! Oh yes, I grant that we can claim a tad of sophistication and insight, but these do not necessarily elevate our snaps to become photographs of lasting worth.
Of course there is a
continuum, where at one end we are the snap shooter and the other extreme we might aspire to be the talented disciplined photographer who does, at times, really "make" a picture.
Of course, you might now post a picture of your Selenium-gold toned photographs and humble me!
Asher
**It so happens that both Alain and Ken are remarkably capable photographers and eloquent teachers with more patience than I possess. My experience has been that they have a lot to offer, even to accomplished photographers as long as one is open to new ideas. BTW, one can argue openness to new experience is a characteristic hallmark of the artist, so it may be worth consideration.
