Nuts, Bolts, and Mindful Looking.

Copyright 2010, Kirk Tuck.  Primary Packaging, New York.


I'm going to try and make the argument that mindful looking trumps "skinning" a shot with technique.  First a few definitions.  Let's start with skinning.  It's from our friends that turn wire frame CAD constructions (drawings and renderings)  into what are commonly called CGI's or computer generated images.  Everything starts as a skeletal wire frame and once the shape and details are rendered the artist(s) apply the color, tone and texture; or the "skin" to the construction.  This is what makes it real.  Skinning also includes the application of shadows and highlights to the "skin" in order to complete the illusion of reality to the virtual object.

I'm using "skinning" in this instance to refer to the overlaying or application of a set of filters, actions or techniques to an existing photograph in an attempt to make it a personal expression or to add value or excitement to an image.  This could include:  hand coloring a traditional black and white print,  diffusing a print in traditional enlargement, using HDR techniques, the "David Hill Look", any one of a number of PhotoShop's native filters,  etc.

The idea of "mindful looking" comes from the practice of Zen Buddhists of being aware of one's consciousness and attention in the moment.  In a nutshell the idea is to look, without an agenda, at all the things that come enter your consciousness.  "Experience this moment" or be "present in this moment" are some ways people  talk about this philosophy.  In the practice of meditation ( and in certain realms of "Gestalt" psychology ) the idea is to sit quietly and examine thoughts that come to your attention without judgement.  And then to let those thought pass.

I'm stealing the philosophy and warping the meaning.  Not because of any dire intention but because I lack the talent and insight to really use it correctly.  What I mean by "mindful looking", in the context of photography, is the practice of approaching each subject without the conscious intention to change it's meaning by altering its perceptible structure.  Without altering it's integral and organic construction in an attempt  to make a new presentation or interpretation of the subject. Especially because the changes are done in the service of our egos.

The basis of Buddhist philosophy is the interconnectedness of all things.  In a way it's a repudiation of egoistical differentiation and an affirmation that we're all in this together.....along with the rocks, trees, stars and more.  From my photographic point of view each object has it's own objective appearance, although each of us probably experience it through our senses in very different ways.  We also filter our interaction or appraisal of objects through a filter of our experiences and our very DNA.

Because of our individual filtering, all of our seeing as photographers is flavored or filtered to some extent.  But here's the gist of my point:  If you have a technique or stylist post production tweak in mind as you go about your existence as a  photographer you will consciously and subconsciously begin to look for subjects that are most conducive to the style you have in mind.  You will begin to reject subjects or compositional constructions that don't fall into the set of parameters that constitute a glide toward the post production appliques.  When you hit this behavior you resist or reject different ways of seeing subjects, or seeing light on subjects, or even different angles of approach to your subjects.  In essence, you reject any potential image that doesn't hew to your protocol driven, post capture parameters of skinning.

I think this is fundamentally limiting for an artist and also establishes a feedback loop that replaces truly creative seeing with a "sub-routine" that adds a comforting reference while stripping the act of photography of its essential representational power.  The mastery of the "enhancing" technique delivers the comfort of skill mastery in general and gives the impression of artful expression while supplanting the individual creative vision (which is powered by the act of subject selection and timing or interaction with the subject at the time of acquisition ) with a culturally "accredited" sack of techniques akin to religious rites of passage to an elevated priesthood.

In the image above I've imprinted my creative point of view thru selection of actual point of view, selection of capture tools and the gesture and timing of the subject.  It could be argued that just in taking these steps, coupled with the selection of one frame from a group of many, that I've made as many subjective adaptations to the image as anyone else along the wide spectrum of the creative endeavors, but I would make the point that, had I a post processing application in mind I might not have been able to see the image I took here because my mind would have negated the relevance of this frame while searching for frames with more pliable characteristics.  In effect, the above sample probably a poor one since the argument can be made that just in knowing that all the images in this project would be rendered in black and white I have already subconsciously rejected shots that use color as their primary attraction.....

While I've argued that adding gratuitous technique to already well seen images is mostly aesthetically destructive, and that trying to save marginal images through "filter boost" is a waste of time, I'm not really making a judgement here.  What I'm trying to say is that the mindful seeing should always come first.  Any other way of looking at and filtering subjects is a drag on the primary creative process that takes place in the unfettered mind.

If you must aggrandize an image to meet your subjective vision, so be it, but I would argue that while looking for images it's best to leave the mental impedimentia of post processing routines at the door and enter the house of exploration, selection and interpretation in as streamlined a way as possible.  I find that when I go looking for art it is elusive.  It's elusive because, at a certain level,  I've pre-defined the search coordinates and constraints and I reject, subconsciously, anything that doesn't fit that claustrophobic matrix.  If I go out with an open mind and no roadmap of conquest I am much more likely to be the beneficiary of chance or the grace of my muse.

If I do my best to capture the object and find that it can subsequently be improved in post processing I won't hesitate.  But I would wonder about the disconnection from what I search out, and the gap between the right seeing and the final altered realization if I have to routinely subject my images to the (un)tender mercies of PhotoShop.

So, I'm probably just rambling after spending long hours photographing a three day conference.  In a nutshell I'm basically admitting the we all do some post processing from time to time in the service of our images but I think it would be a good idea to go into each session with an open mind and a mindful attention to the nature of the objects we photograph instead of pre-defining that which we'd like to see as the end result.  Wow.   That was a long way to go for one little thought.....but I guess not every blog can be perfect and so sometimes you get to suffer along with me as I do that human thought process thing for a thousand or so people to see.

I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions. - Garry Winogrand

A repudiation of all the over complication of photography.

Just because I can change something doesn't necessarily mean I should.  Many, many years ago I was walking down Commerce Street in San Antonio.  There was a fantastic bookstore called "Brock's Books". It had been there just about forever.  I shopped there from time to time and my real pleasure was going into the maze like basement, through acres of magazines, books and other collections of paper, searching for the vintage photography magazines.  I'd stand there for an hour or so, until the smell of mildewing paper overwhelmed me, and I'd leaf through photography magazines from the 1940's and the 1950's.  The magazines were enormous then.  Hundreds of pages.  Hundreds of photographs.  And the writing........

It's enough to make you cry.  Back in the days of the American enlightenment, before the fall from intellectual grace that began in earnest in the 1980's and has accelerated since then, even visual magazines paid attention to the written word.  Interviews spanned five or six pages.  Discussions of trends and styles were meaty essays that left you sated, like a good meal.  Now.....American Photographer and even Photo District News run articles that are little more than captions.  Squiggly gray space between photographs.

The image above is so simple.  I was walking around with some sort of sad sack camera from Nikon.  I'll guess it was the original FE.  I had the cheapest 28mm lens on the front.  Had to be the old 28mm 3.5.  Probably had to be updated to meter on that body.  I was just out walking,  on the prowl for images and coffee and pastries, though not necessarily in that order.  I was alone.  Always alone.  Because photographers are like little magnetic fields and when they come into contact with other photographers or even just people who want to tag along, it distorts and disrupts the purity of the magnetic field and causes problems.  The creative impulse gets detuned and the underlying rhythm of of the walk gets distorted and wrenched out of shape.  Some people are totally immune to disruption.  I don't know what to say about them but they seem to be the same people who are immune to positive social pressure, subtle hints or straightforward instruction.

Anyway,  I walked over to Brock's Books and stood in the open shade looking down on the box of bargain stuff that they always put outside.  I don't know if they ever sold the stuff in the boxes or if it was just there to let people know that the store was open.  On this particular day I leaned over to see what was inside and loved the look of the True Romance magazine cover.  I shot two or three frames on automatic, with slide film, and then I moved on.  Didn't think much of the image at the time but it's steadily grown on me over the years.

It's too simple an image for anyone to appreciate these days.  Too quiet.  Bereft of flash and sizzle.  And that's what I like about it.  It's about the content and the juxtaposition to the close surroundings.  It's calm.  You can rest your eyes on the image.  At most it's decorative art.

But the process of bringing it to life was so simple.  An interested look.  A cutting out of the image from it's multi-dimensional existence.  A commitment of resources and then,  like water behind a boat I moved on and it receded from my immediate consciousness.  

Have you ever noticed that much great art is relatively simple?  I think of Picasso's Dove of Peace series.  Simple lines, casually drawn.  Quick, intuitive gestures.  And then he was smart enough to leave it alone, in a simple state.  Distilled to its essence.  The same with the line drawings of Matisse and the beautiful Nakamura drawings.

I was in a short, three way discussion with two other photographers last night at an opening.  I had an epiphany.  The difference between printing with Photoshop and an inkjet printer versus printing in an old fashioned wet darkroom is all  encompassed in risk and intentionality.  The traditional print maker must take a risk at the time of print creation.  Every segment of the process is analog.  It's never precisely repeatable.  Even the chemistry of the developer changes subtly between each iteration.

The wet printer makes decisions, executes them and moves through the process with necessary commitment.  Most artists have limited resources.  They needed to get wet prints just right in as few iterations as possible.  They didn't/don't have the luxury of endless tweaking and endless indecisive manipulation.  They can never really return exactly to a previous version.  Everything changes.  The motions of burning and dodging aren't mechanical.

Conversely, digital printers can, through soft proofing, try variation after variation after variation with no real economic or temporal consequences.  Rather than working to get the perfect image as a reflection of the camera capture, they become free to be like the clients we love to hate in our day jobs as photographers:  You know the ones.  You'll likely be doing a fashion shoot for some mall property with a little agency.  The art director doesn't get to do many photoshoots in the age of cowardly stock photography usage.  He knows there's real money riding on the shoot.  When asked "Which colored shirt should we use on the male model?"  He will become paralyzed.  Unable to make a strong, assured creative decision he'll move to cover his bases.  He'll answer,  "Let's try all of them.  Let's do some with the red shirt, some with the green shirt and some with the yellow shirt."  Then we ask the same thing about the female model's wardrobe and we get the same answer.  So if we try every combination of the colors for both models we may end up with a possible matrix of 12 or 16 or 20 pairings.  Imagine shooting that!!!!!!!  Imagine trying to keep up good energy on that set.

But I conjecture that the lure of PhotoShop and digital printing exerts as similar effect on budding artists and, in a way, diminishes their energy to truly create photographs.  There is always something you can fix.  But should you.  In the  photo above, it would be normal to find a pleasing color balance and exposure.  Once you do that the image is created.  But the addiction to "playing God" with the images rears its incredibly ugly head.  Now it comes to mind that with a few layers and a few simple key strokes you might just be able to increase the dynamic range.  You could restore the color of the cover (never mind that doing so would destroy the feel of the image completely....).  You could increase the shadow detail in the tennis shoes.  You could create a mask in order to do something to the tile floor.  You could add elements to the scene you could use filters and you could liquify.  But at some point you'll become paralyzed by two things:  1.  The enormous, almost infinite range of abuse you can bring to this image with no financial consequences and no rules.  2.  There is no stop sign or safety net.  There's nothing to stop you from absurdly continuing to torture a simple image until it's not longer recognizable as the original image or until you drop from exhaustion from your efforts.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't use a digital printer to output your images.  And I'm not saying that no one should use PhotoShop.  I just think it's instructive to think about how much less is required to make art than a current generation in love the with the ability to add ad absurdium is willing to admit.  The Mona Lisa won't necessarily be better if we fix the faults, add some glitter around the edges, drop in a few images of Lady Ga-Ga and 50 Cent into the background for extra flavor, maybe Photo Shop the Giaconda's outfit for a some cleavage and even the hint of a nipple.......

At every step there needs to be commitment to an original vision.  Otherwise every image is nothing more than a gessoed canvas waiting to be sprayed by the latest (soon to be cliche) technique.  I guess my first rule would read:  Be true to the content.  Everything proceeds from there.