The Online Photographer

Two pictures to illustrate a point:

Before sundown

After sundown

Same camera, same lens, same scene, same framing (or close). The Celestial Assistant suggested a setup change and kindly moved the main light a little—just 15 or 20 degrees, not a huge change. But not subtle either—in the second picture there's a planetary gobo impinging and all the light is ambient.

I've always loved watching how different light changes things. Whether I take a picture of it or not.

It begs a more subtle conceptual problem: is a photograph a picture of the thing in the picture, or the light on the thing? Mostly, I think good pictures are usually of light, whether "what the picture is of" is important or not. Learning how to pay attention to light instead of sorting everything in your field of view into its solid structure is a crucial step in photography if you ask me. In one sense, this didn't need to be a pickup truck...the pickup truck just serves to clarify what the light looked like. Light creates the composition, the mood, the structure of the picture, the color of the picture, on and on.

You can have a perfectly serviceable photograph without good light, of course. Many photographs just show things—places, objects, people, animals. Most of the important aspects of a good photograph, however, a successful photograph, are created by what the light's doing. It's at least half the battle.

You could look at it the other way around as well, of course. That the meaning of the picture is usually in the things it shows, and the light is just a means of revealing it. In the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, for instance, they insisted on flat, overcast light for every picture, specifically to remove the light from being part of the subject and concentrate visual attention more completely on the structures they were photographing.

It fascinates me how pictures come and go. I took a picture of a farmland scene once that I put up on the blog a couple of years ago. (I didn't do a very good job of capturing it. Wrong equipment.) Since then I've passed that place perhaps as many as forty times and I've never again seen it look like anything. I look at it every time I go by. The light was just right that one time, that's all. There's never been a photograph there since then.

One of the ways to improve your photography is to give yourself an idea. Identical views in very different light would be an idea the right photographer could build a project on, I think, if they had the visual chops and sensitivity.

Back soon
As I do every Monday morning, I'm off to the Moose now to play pool with the guys—Loyle, Jerry, Lyle, Norm, and Tom. Back later to hear what you have to say. I might sneak over early to get a little practice in, too...Jerry's been coming outta nowhere lately and tearing up the joint, and I can't hit the broad side of a barn with buckshot.

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Walter Glover: "This post of yours brings two axioms to mind for me, Mike: 1.) My commercial days of making photographs of things are well and truly behind me and, in my personal work the pursuit is to make photographs about things. All the qualities of varying light form a huge component in the vocabulary and grammar of conveying the spirit or essence of a motif. 2.) To achieve such ends the notion that light reveals and shadow gives form is forever emblazoned in my photo consciousness."

Mark Sampson: "Subject and lighting are inextricably linked. In the best photographs they combine to make a 'good' photograph a 'great' one. Chicken or egg?"

Kenneth Tanaka (partial comment): "Light, and its strategic conceptual usage is the tool that hobbyists tend to overlook or misuse most in their photography. Light sculpts form. Light sculpts mood. Light manages the focus of attention. Light, not the camera, is the photographer’s tool."

Mike replies: Couldn't have said it better myself (and, in fact, I didn't).

Ernest Zarate: "John Szarkowski wrote a terrific book, The Photographer’s Eye. In it, he detailed the specific choices photographers make, consciously or accidentally, each time they press the shutter button: the frame, vantage point, time, the thing itself (i.e., raw material), and the detail. Great primer and one of my foundation books. Yet, brilliant though Szarkowski was, I’ve always felt the book missed a big one: light. It’s true most photographers can’t choose their light. It is as you say the Celestial Assistant in control. Give that, though, the photographer has the choice whether to use the light being offered. Your point about the farm lit in glory that one time, and never again (the fickle Photo Gods at their devilish best) illustrates the point exactly."

Mike replies: Excellent insight into the great Szarkowski title and one I've never heard or thought of before. But I think you're right.

Jan Kwarnmark: "Henri Cartier-Bresson: 'I go for form, much more than light. Form First. Light is like a perfume to me.'"

Arg: "Lighten up, Mike!"