Previsualization heresy

I think people who shoot predominantly with primes or fixed focal length lenses are probably more adept at previsualisation. Adept or prone to -I'm not sure which it is. Because they kind of have to be. There is no fallback of simply twisting that zoom ring to "fit it all in", or isolate a particular part of a scene on a whim, quite often you have to both improvise, & compromise. Personally, I find that damn good fun. Which, at the end of the day is pretty much the only reason I take pictures. I think you're also a little bit more aware of the effects of focal length, field of view, and the other properties that go along with such. Because there are much larger, more noticeable jumps, or steps between fixed focal length lenses, rather than the infinite increments of a zoom ring. So you're kind of forced to think ahead a bit, or previsualise.
I think previsualisation may occur at a couple of different levels too. Some people may set out with a predetermined concept in mind, and go looking for the situation to implement it in, while others may go with the flow, and it happens a bit more instinctively for them.
Personally, I'm not particularly fussed about it, in some ways my orderly, logical engineering brain likes to have a set plan or blueprint as it were, the rebellious side of me likes to say f#@( that, & shoot weird angles, non traditional focal lengths and all that. Whatever makes it fun.

I am encouraged by this, as it indicates that I do a certain amount of previewing, of which I am not aware. I frequently go out with just one prime lens, as a discipline. Of course, during my trip, I usually discover things to photograph that need a lens of a different focal length!

A friend of mine, who has more experience of photography than I, has pointed out to me that He has often noticed me moving around until I have the framing I want: I was also unaware of this.

Despite this, I remain dissatisfied with my efforts most of the time...

David

Sorry I picked the wrong example. I usually shoot 35 or 60mm macro and just got the 100 used for this example. Still the power of previsualization pertains. The colors are a good example. The colors shown are what the camera produced. The flower was white and that is what I saw.

This technology does exist: www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00019557

Or for something even more autonomous: flashingstarsphotobooth.com/flashtheselfiebot/

"This technology does exist: www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00019557"

And when it's finished, a certificate of authenticity prints out, declaring the image to be a First Prize Blue Ribbon winning photograph. No training necessary.

"Or for something even more autonomous: flashingstarsphotobooth.com/flashtheselfiebot/"

Just in case you didn't know you were at a party, the images are instantly sent to the party's pre-configured Web page and broadcast to all Social Media sites for population to all your contacts, follows, followers and you. You never have to keep up with reality on your own ever more.

/Disgruntled-Sarcasm

Rich

I'm not saying they are good 😅 but cameras which take composition out of the hands of photographers exist. A few years back I was teaching an intro to photography class and one of my students had a Sony with the auto-composition feature turned on. It took me a while to figure out what the camera was doing and turn off so the photographer could actually learn composition when there were people in the frame.

Seriously, until this post I had never heard of "Auto Composition." It's really a thing?

Wow.

Rich

This thread is about examining how people approach their techniques. There's been judging since page one, lol.

If all you're doing is buying a camera and shooting in auto mode with no exploration of what the tool is capable of, which is what my issue is about - people who do that, how is that person learning and growing? Framing better so they actually take pictures of what they aim it? Perhaps, but compared to someone who leans to shoot in other modes, learns about ISO settings, learns about setting WB, etc, they are simply not learning and growing.

You say there is no difference in the images. Individually, sure. Now show me a handful of selected shots between someone who shoots in only full auto, vs someone who knows how to work their tool. I have to imagine only the blind couldn't spot the difference with a larger sample pool of shoots to compare between.

It really is. I was initially baffled at what was going on- the student had her camera held horizontally and was framing a loose portrait to show some background as part of an exercise on perspective. When we looked at the "final" result, it was cropped to a tight vertical on the person in the frame. I finally figured out that the camera was "fixing" her composition for her and promptly turned that feature off.

You seem to have some "True Believer's" expectation, that because you have put in the time to learn technical aspects of "the tool" that you are entitled to some kind of recognition. Some kind of certificate or Grade Point Average. " I know ISO and WB." That's the way it works in school. That's not the way it works in life.

I don't care if someone uses a Brownie Box camera. If their photography is good, that's all that matters. The fact that they don't have "the grades" to back up their actual work is totally irrelevant.

I've played guitar and piano for many years. I've taken many lessons. I've practiced my ass off. I know music theory to the point I can teach it myself, quite well. I am mediocre at best. I can "play" guitar and piano. I am not a musician. I will never be. That's not how my brain is wired. I have watched young players, with not more than a few weeks of experience, surpass my level and soar beyond that with ease. Their music is already beautiful at their level of experience and will only get better. They have none of my technical knowledge of chord structure, scales, modes, voicing, harmony. Yet their music makes use of all those things intuitively and naturally. They can easily hear things, I struggle to perceive. They are musicians. They will eventually learn technique and theory but their work is already superior and they deserve every accolade for that and respect for their talent. They don't need a GPA from someone who forced them to take lessons.

There are people who have the ability to produce good, even great photography without knowing a whole lot about the workings of their cameras. Right from the first time they pick up a camera. Should they learn those things. Yes. I guess so. Eventually. Will that make them better photographers? I don't know. Maybe a little. Not much. I think their response probably would be, "Oh, is that how that thing works? Didn't know that. Cool!" Then they would just go out and continue to be the good photographers they are, but not because they had some additional technical "skills."

Then there are people who know their cameras inside and out, and upside down. They are completely comfortable with them in some Auto configuration of their choosing so that they can get the job done, without having to devote brain power to mechanical issues that can be automated to their wishes.

Rich

Around Monterey, there’s a saying amongst the photographers. If you buy a violin, you own a violin. If you buy a camera, you are a photographer.

Also to one of your points here, when Molly Tuttle, already a phenom at bluegrass festivals, showed up at Berklee, they gave her a bunch of tests. She did very poorly on all but one. A few years later, she was the first woman to be the International Bluegrass Association guitarist of the year. The next year, to prove it was no fluke, she won it again.

I love Molly.

Rich

Me, too. In fairness about the education part, her father made the family living teaching guitar at Gryphon in south Palo Alto. Molly went to Paly High. When I was at Stanford, I went to a concert at Paly — just across El Camino from The Farm — when another famous graduate, Joan Baez, returned to her alma mater for one great night. Her encore was The Diamonds “Little Darling”, a song she’d sung there when she was a student. Brought the house down.

Joan Baez singing "Little Darling?"

Who da thunk?

Rich

Apparently, she wasn’t always a folkie. Either that or it was all a big joke when she was in high school. Kind of like her Bob Dylan impersonations.

Adams was addressing to some extend a photographic genre that was vastly different than HCB and W. Eugene Smith. HCB's mode of operation was to find scene that he used as his stage, set up and wait for his subjects to show up on his stage. Smith cut his teeth as a war correspondent where recognizing an opportunity and getting the shot fast was important as bullets or mortar shells were often flying. He actually got injured by a mortar round which almost ended his career. They both concentrated on the small format where there were 36 exposures in a canister that was easy to change out. B&W film in their days had a lot of exposure latitude and street and photojournalism did not require the same image quality as fine art landscapes of Adams, Minor White, etc.

Adams on the other hand used a 8x10 or 11x14 camera. Many a time I have thrown my Leica M4 and a half dozen rolls of film in my backpack for a week end backpacking trip in the Colorado Rockies when I lived in Colorado or the Appalachians when I liven in the DC area and it only added a pound or so to the pack. However, when I took my 4x5 outfit with a tripod, film holders, dark cloth , etc. - I was toting a pretty heavy pack over mountain passes. The trade off of "leaving a pair of underwear home to carry another canister of film, took on a whole different meaning when you weighed out a pack with a view camera outfit at 50 pounds.

The process with a view camera takes time. With the M4, experimentation was easy. With a view camera one does not have the luxury to take a bunch of throw aways. The time to expose a negative takes longer than a 35 mm. I could develop two rolls of 35 mm film in about the same time as four sheets of 4x5 film. With 4x5 film there is not a lot of margin for "not getting it right" in the exposure. This was the driving factor for Adams to develop the Zone System to maximize the potential for getting a good properly exposed negative for the scene and how he wanted the print to look.. Previsualization was the first step in this process. It greatly helped to have and idea of what you want the final print to look like and correlate that to the light meter readings of the scene to determine to type of exposure and development to accomplish the goal of a good negative that would produce a good print with minimal work in the darkroom. Also one should not overlook that the Zone System was developed for B&W photography where one had much more control and leeway over the development process. Each sheet of film can be exposed and developed to the formula that is optima for that one shot. I would say from my film days, only about 1/2 my 4x5 negatives were throw aways - that is did not result in a print. Many of those was where I took the same scene on two sheets under slightly different conditions, e.g., one minus blue filter and one orange filter, etc. By the time I got down to 35 mm, if I printed one in four shots from a roll I was very lucky. Medium format was somewhere in the middle but closer the 35 mm than sheet film.

That is not really feasible with film as a roll of 36 shots undergoes the same development and usually uses multi-roll tanks. A lot of people never even bother to develop 35 mm film - preferring to send it to a lab. The zone system is not all that useful for roll film. It is very useful for sheet film. For large format photography the Zone System is very useful and previsualization is a fundamental aspect to that. Carmel being the home of Adams, Brett Weston, Bruce Barnbaum, etc., and their students it's no wonder that previsualization is the ethos. I visit Clyde Butcher's studio a couple times a year. I once asked Clyde how long he takes to get a shot ( most of his work is on his 12x20 view camera). His answer was about 10-15 minutes from the time he set up the camera, metered the subject, focused the scene on his ground glass, inserted the holder. At that point he would wait until the clouds and light was right, quickly remeter and change the exposure setting if necessary, remove the dark slide and shoot. All this while standing waist deep in the Everglades. 🙀

While the role of previsualization with the small format film camera and especially digital is not as formal, it is so ingrained in me that I still do it. With modern matrix metering one does not have to survey a scene with a spot meter. However, one has to make the decisions on what highlights are critical to maintain detail in and which can be allowed to clip with digital. One has to visualize which shadows are necessary to maintain detail and which are not. That is necessary to make decisions about the exposure compensation or if the it is applicable to the particular scene which to exposure bracket to expand the DR of the final image. I mostly shoot a monochrome camera, it is necessary to know which color filter to use if any or when a polarizer is needed in order to get the final image I want. That too comes from previsualization and understanding B&W to modulate the spectrum of the scene so separate the desired tonal values. Also with a CFA sensor, there is some ability to recover highlights. With a monochrome sensor, once an area is clipped-it's clipped with no ability to recover detail. So paying attention to how one wants the final image is more critical than on a CFA.

Of course with today's digital shooting 10 to 40 frames a second - it can become "spray and pray." To make a short story long - the importance of previsualization is related to the format one is shooting and the genre. Some people may choose to use their camera as a machine gun and "spray and pray" depending on "even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while." Some may be more deliberate in their approach. A BIF guy is going to depend on previsualization a lot less that a landscape photographer. Previsualization takes time. When I used my M4 on the street - I did little of the formal Zone System process and often taking three or four shots at slightly different conditions replace getting "the one negative." Just shoot and pray for keeper - even if it were only one a 36 exposure roll I would be happy.

However, to paraphrase a song from the band Alabama, when I was using my 4x5, it was dust off the boots, put the cowboy hat on straight and "do it the right way" to maximize the probably that every shot resulted in a print. So I think the importance of previsualization is highly dependent of a lot of factors.