The Art of Seeing

At the age of nineteen I was firmly fixed on a career as a photographer. By that time I had been taking photographs and processing and printing my own negatives for more than a decade and spent the last year working with an American commercial and advertising photographer in Bristol, pre-University. But despite having enrolled for a Communications degree at Goldsmiths College, with the intention of specialising in stills photography,  I was seduced by the moving image and for the last twenty odd years I have enjoyed a successful career as a Director and Writer.

My recent photographic excursions have been driven by the deep-seated compulsion to make images and brought me full circle; back to where I started – taking photographs. 

The camera does not see what the eye sees, it sees only what the camera sees. This may seem very obvious but it is a fundamental fact of photography. This is because photography is a different way of seeing.  Looking through a viewfinder is not the same as  looking through our own eyes. The viewfinder frames our field of vision, the focal length of the lens limits or extends our field of view, dictating how much or how little we see and the framing focuses our attention.    The discipline of seeing things through a lens is very different than just seeing.

"My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.”  Edward Weston

 How often have you heard someone say, when they show you a photograph, that it does not capture the awe-inspiring view that they experienced being there in person?   As the photographer Paul Caponigro says “It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” The same holds true of a photograph of almost anything. For a photograph to be anything other than purely a record of a scene it must reveal or expose something about the subject, evoke a feeling or capture a moment that tells a story. For me landscape photography is about just that, revealing, evoking the spirit, or capturing the evanescent mood and moment of a place - its power, drama, beauty or whatever I happen to feel about it not just documenting the scene.

"A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed." Ansel Adams

 From the instant an eye is placed against the viewfinder, rather than being a passive voyeur, the photographer is constantly making a series of visual judgements and decisions – when, where and what to point the camera at, how much or little to include in the frame and the precise moment to fire the shutter.

“The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it.” Ansel Adams 

 For the most talented and experienced photographers this process becomes a series of autonomic, instinctive responses to time and space, reacting in tens, hundreds and thousandths of a second.

“One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years – learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this – then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment." Edward Weston

 While reviewing a series of shots of stormy seas Weston's words came to mind and it occurred to me just how instinctive and spontaneous the creative act is or can be.  Taking a shot every other second to capture the motion of the sea, the ever changing light and sky sometimes does not allow for the luxury for review, assessment and correction.  You take shots, knowing they are right, but not necessarily knowing or analysing why. Of course there is conscious thought too, about composition and exposure but there are times when  first and foremost, the act of taking a photograph is instinctual: a direct connection from eye to soul. That is part of the art. The moment, as Cartier Bresson says, is  ‘decisive’.

At the other end of the scale, growing up as the son of a Landscape Photographer I was accustomed to spending hours, days, sometimes weeks accompanying my Father on photographic expeditions, often to windswept, wild and remote locations.  This was time, more often that not, spent waiting.  Waiting for the sun, the clouds and shadows to fall into place; and sometimes if they did not, not a single frame of film would be exposed - the moment just did not arrive.

“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer, and often the supreme disappointment.”  Ansel Adams

 However, my exposure to the raw power and beauty of the landscape at a tender age has had a life-long influence.   For me nature is the ultimate, awe-inspiring  subject and it is only by stimulating and engaging all of the senses; the smell, sound and taste of a place can one distil that into the pure and powerful single image that conveys a sense of moment and location.

"Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter."  Ansel Adams