Tag Archives: Minor White

Photography lessons with Black And White Film 

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5-flower

port-view

rip-proof-overalls

seagulls-and-boat-2

deadman-junction-building

windowpane

I have recently been talking with many photographers that are very interested in the process of black and white film photography. Most had their introduction to photography in high school using film and although they moved forward to iPhones and digital cameras, they were pulled back to film by memories of the unique “hands-on” experience they had with film.

With all that interest I thought I would revisit an article I wrote in June 2014,  “What I Learned About Photography by Shooting with Black /White Film”.

I began using black and white film because it was cheap and it’s what we used in my first college photography class. After I began to understand the medium as being creative instead of just a way to records things, I grew to like B&W and for years refused to shoot with anything else.

With film, once the camera’s shutter was released what one got was, well, what one got was-what-one-got. There were no second chances as enjoyed today. Photographers were left with only a memory of that moment until the film was printed.

We used a term called “Previsualization”. Previsualization is attributed to photographer and educator Minor White. While studying their subject a photographer predetermines how the final image would be processed and printed. Ansel Adam referred to that as “the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure”.

There was also the Zone System. American photographers Fred Archer and Ansel Adams collaborated on the technique for determining optimal film exposure and development for a method to precisely define the relationship between the way one visualized the subject and the final results.

Those techniques helped us determine how the final print could look. Colour film had to be printed in an almost lightless room, whereas labs for printing B&W were quite bright allowing us to see the image and control an image as it was printed.

With B&W film I learned to previsualize, and as I selected my subject I would think about how I would process the film and make the final print. I could alter the exposure rating, as with the Zone system, and depending on which chemicals I planned on using, how I would develop the film. I would select different papers and chemicals to change contrast or tonal values in the final print.

Shooting with black and white film taught me to think about tonal shifts from black, to mid grey, and finally, to white with detail. Managing the process of developing and printing taught me that the camera and film (now the sensor) are just the starting point to making a photograph match my personal vision, and my personal vision is much more important than the camera’s.

A B&W photograph is a matter for the eye of the beholder, the intuition, and finally the intellect. Of course colour is all that, but much of the time it seems photographers are overwhelmed by colour, rarely seeing anything of importance in a scene other than the colours.

Because black and white images don’t attract with a play of colours, they seem subtle and demand close attention to composition, lighting, perspective, and the context the image is shot in as important factors.

 

Getting Close 

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Cowboy hats Not eaxctly bullet proof

Ford V8

c. Cat & Car

Blue bottles

People watching Ocean Tree

Watching the Rodeo

 

 

There is an old saying in photography that goes, “ If your photographs aren’t good enough, it’s probably because you aren’t close enough”.

I remember saying this to a young photographer, who became somewhat alarmed and responded, “You mean I should stop using my wide angle and shoot with a telephoto instead?” However, that isn’t what that long time photography quote is about.

What that means is that a photograph should be about something. That the photographer should discard, crop out, or, when making the original capture, move in close enough so that those elements visible in the image are the only things that relate to the photograph.

When I was just a young photographer I would question other photographers who I felt were successful at their craft for ideas that would make my photographs better, and I remember the following advice by a working photojournalist.

He talked about pre-visualizing a photograph (a term Ansel Adams and Minor White coined regarding the importance of imagining in your mind’s eye what you want the final print to reveal about a subject), and continued that a photographer should follow the rules of composition with all the elements in the scene, and finally told me I should always think about stepping closer to “tighten up” the image.

His advice came from a time period when very few photographers were using mutifocal or “zoom” lenses. In that time period quality glass and sharp images depended on fixed focal length lenses, or the more modern term is “prime” lens.

I will not go into a discussion of prime versus zoom lenses. Some people enjoy arguing about equipment, and they will pull out charts and make lots of tests to prove their point of view. Personally, I select a lens with which I am comfortable with and that I think will help me do the best job for the work at hand.

Getting closer changes the perspective and builds a relationship between the foreground and background. With a wide-angle or 50mm lens, the elements in the foreground become more important, and with telephoto’s 200mm and longer, they become less important and, as in a scenic taken with, say a 100mm, everything seems to have equal importance.

Teach yourself to look at the many features inside your composition. Start with the centre of interest or main subject, decide what in that composition relates to that centre of interest and then step closer to remove areas and features that have no relationship or interfere with whatever you want your viewer to concentrate upon.

Pre-visualise what you want to say visually and get closer to remove everything that doesn’t relate to the composition.

I remember reading an article written by a photographer I really enjoy, Ron Bigelow, www.ronbigelow.com. In an article he discussed his experience shooting with another photographer. However it was his summary that made me stop and think,   “I couldn’t help thinking of some of the extraordinary images that I have seen from various large format photographers. It was obvious to me that much of what I admired in their images had nothing to do with the very high resolution that their equipment produced. Rather, it had everything to do with the time that they put into each image. The observing, thinking, and preparation that occurred before they fired their first shot.”

Does Film Lend Itself Better to Creativity Than Digital?

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Digital VS Film

Where does a photographer’s creativity come from?

 

This past week I received the following question, “is film a better creative format than digital?”

I admit that the discussion regarding film vs. digital isn’t really that common anymore. Yes, I talk with high school students that are using film in photography classes. Those discussions are mostly about how film works, about processing, and printing, or using different chemicals.

Sometimes an older person who stopped taking pictures in the 1980s will loudly tell me digital is unnatural, doesn’t look good, and is cheating. Cheating? That conversation is always humorous. However, it is one-sided and not really worth getting into because any opinion but theirs is going to be ignored.

However, this question wasn’t about which is better as a way of making photographs, it was about creativity, and that intrigued me. Creativity is about imagination, originality, and art.

My quick answer to that was that I liked both film and digital images. To me, film is a more “tactile” medium than a digital image, and I like the extreme tonality that a good photographer can achieve. I believe digital image files can have more sharpness and a lot more detail. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not. That also depends on the photographer.

In my opinion creating an image is what the photographer does. It involves deciding upon the kind of camera and medium one might use, but the camera and medium is just the vehicle for a photographer’s creativity. It is really all about the final image, and how one decides to produce that image for the best visual effect.

I think some times that too much is made about the process. The process is just that, a series of actions or steps that one takes to achieve a particular end. I guess what a photographer does to create that show-stopping photograph is truly interesting, but in the end it is really only about the photograph.

The idea that there might be something more creative in making an image with film than with digital doesn’t make much sense.

I remember all the possibilities we had with film. Imaginative photographers would select different types of film and change the way they exposed and process it. Photographers probably had shelves of different chemicals for both developing film and making prints, as well as cabinets filled with photographic papers, and all as part of their process to bring out personal creative vision.

Now photographers can shoot with cropped or full frame cameras, and instead of dedicated rooms filled with equipment, they load their computers with software programs to help them with their personal creative project.

When using film one would previsualize (a term coined by Minor White) how one wanted to produce the final image before releasing the shutter. And I think many still do that to reach their vision, except now photographers are thinking of programs like Photoshop or Lightroom instead of the chemical processes required with film.

There are some photographers that only know film, there are some photographers that only know digital, and there are those that are competent in both. And although they might use film, digital, or both, to produce an image, creativity comes from the photographer and not the process.

Maybe I should have just replied to that question about creativity with photographer Ansel Adams’ words, “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”

I look forward to any comments readers have. Thank you, John

My website is at www.enmanscamera.com

 

I Learned About Photography by Shooting with Black and White Film

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bicycle & stairs

iron rails

phonebooth

Red Crown Gas

white pillars

floral entrance

Brick doorway

Last week I wrote about black and white photography. From the comments I received I realized there are many other photographers out there very interested in enjoying the process of making black and white images.

While driving my noisy, old diesel truck (with my car waiting a replacement engine) I got to thinking about what it was like when I used black and white film. The drive was along a winding, valley road that we are so familiar with in British Columbia,  And although I attempted to listen to the radio, the static caused by the power lines running along the roads edge, the loud diesel engine and, of course, the worn out radio, left me to my own thoughts, and soon I was contemplating about film and shooting with black and white film.

Formerly, once the shutter was released on a camera loaded with film what one got was, well, what one got was what one got. There were no second chances as enjoyed today. One was left with only a memory of that moment in time until the film was processed and printed.

A friend remarked that photographers had to be better in those film days than they are today. I think that’s a nice, egotistical thought to comfort aging picture takers, but I don’t think its true. And in my not so humble opinion, I am going to say that modern photography is just different, evolving and different. Even in the days when film ruled there was a difference between those that filled their cameras with colour film and those, like me, that preferred black and white film.

I began using black and white film because that’s what my first college class recommended, then after a time I began to understand the medium and grew to like B&W.

We used a term called “previsualization”. Previsualization is attributed to Minor White.

While studying the subject a photographer predetermines how the final image would be processed and printed. Ansel Adam referred to that process as “the ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure”.

There was also the Zone System. American photographers Fred Archer and Ansel Adams collaborated on the technique for determining optimal film exposure and development that provided photographers with a method to precisely define the relationship between the way they visualized the photographic subject and the final results.

Those techniques were, at least in the way I applied them, to formulate or determine how I wanted the final print to look. Colour film had creative limitations and had to be printed in an almost lightless room, whereas my personal lab for printing B&W was quite bright because photographic paper is only sensitive to white light, not yellow, orange, or red. And that allowed me to fill the room with light and see the image and control how it would look.

With B&W film I learned to previsualize, and as I selected my subject I would think about how I would process the film and make the final print. I could alter the exposure rating, as with the Zone system, depending on which chemicals I planned on using and how long I would keep the film in the developer. I would select different papers and alternate chemicals to change contrast or tonal values in the final print.

Shooting with black and white film and managing the process of developing and printing the picture taught me that the camera and film (now the sensor) are just the starting point to making a photograph match my personal vision, and my personal vision is much more important than the camera’s.

Shooting black and white taught me to watch for tonal shifts from black, to mid grey, and finally, to white with detail. Studying how it would look became an intellectual process rather than an emotional one.

B&W photography is a matter for the eye of the beholder, the intuition, and finally the intellect. Of course colour is all that, but much of the time it seems photographers, overwhelmed by colour, just push the shutter seeing nothing deeper in a scene than the colours.

Black and white images, because they don’t attract with a play of colours, seem subtle and make me think about the tonal range and demand my close attention to composition, lighting, perspective, and the context the image is shot in as important factors.

I learned about photography by shooting with black and white film. I don’t use film anymore, and the photographic examples I have included are digital. When I am thinking in black and white, I slow down and that stretches me to creatively see, and show, the world differently.

I really appreciate any and all comments. Thanks, John

My website is at www.enmanscamera.com

Some Thoughts on Portrait Photography

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   Kisa4

Monica

Model 2

Walter's Portrait

Almost exactly a year ago I wrote an article titled, “Some Thoughts on Portrait Photography” and included a quote by Peter Brunnell the author of, “Creative Camera International 1977”.  Brunnell wrote, “There is no single form or style of portraiture. Portraiture means individualism and as such means diversity, self-expression, private point of view. The most successful images seem to be those which exist on several planes at once and which reflect the fantasy and understanding of many.”

I remembered that blog post and decided to revisit it after having a discussion with friend and fellow photographer, Michael Beach this week about creative portraiture. We talked about several aspects of photographing people, but I think the topic we kept returning to was a about making portraits that had a different look and feel than other photographers in the town we both lived in.

In last February’s article I referred to my college photography instructor’s contention that we should always follow rules for portraiture. I won’t go into those at this time. I’ll just say they weren’t very imaginative and left little room for innovation or experimentation for that matter.

My argument with his lectures on portraiture, are that great portrait photographers like Irving Penn, Arnold Newman, Bert Stern, Yousuf Karsh, Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, and Annie Leibovitz, to name a few that I like, were anything but rule followers, and what marked their work, as Brunnell wrote was, “individualism .…..self-expression, (and a) private point of view.”  I did then, and still do think, that’s a lot for us mere-mortal photographers as we struggle to make our portraits something more than mere documentaries.

When I approach portraiture I try to create portraits that are, well, creative. Sometimes everything works and sometimes it doesn’t.  However, I always strive for something different, maybe even unique, in each.

Of course, one must be aware of how our subject sees themselves and the circumstances and conditions under which the portrait is made. Using a word coined by Minor White, I think most successful portrait photographers “previsualze” the final portrait.

White, co-founder with Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lang of the influential photography magazine, Aperture, has been hailed as one of America’s greatest photographers. And regarding previsualization, Ansel Adams defined it as, “The ability to anticipate a finished image before making the exposure.”

I’ll ad another quote by Minor White that fits here and might be a good thought for a photographer about to pick up that camera to make a portrait, “One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.”

Sometimes it’s the expression on a subject’s face that makes the image. And to get that expression the photographer and subject may need to experiment with different moods and emotions.  Portraitists spend much time putting people at ease and making them comfortable in front of a camera. I think it’s all about gaining a person’s trust that we are going to help them look the best they can.

The Internet is packed with “How to” advice on portraiture photography. Some of it is worth thinking about and some is bewildering. Those serious about bettering his or her portrait photography will select what works best and is the most comfortable.

A year ago I summed up with the following that worked for me then as it does now,

Everything comes down to one’s personal definition of what a portrait is. According to Wikipedia, “it is a picture of a person, a description. It can be a photograph, a sketch, a sculpture, but a portrait is so much more than that. It is collaboration between the subject and in this case the photographer.”  Collaboration is the key word for me in that description, and in my experience those portraits I have made that I think are the most successful, is because the person who was in front of the camera was willing to work, or collaborate, with me towards the final image.

I always look forward to any comments. Thanks, John

My website is at www.enmanscamera.com