It is said that to see is to discriminate an object
against its background given the special arrangement of light. We use our eyes to imprint upon our physical
(retina), emotional (readiness to notice pleasant or morose stimuli) and
predisposing (previous experience, culture, etc) dimensions. It all ends up in
seeing as a translation of sheer looking.
It may be easier to see an unusual stimulus than it
is to tease one out of an ordinary background. Yet, what surprises us all is to
find that unusual arrangement or stimulus in what we took for granted. That
element of discovery is what I believe is a prerequisite for artfulness and
perhaps artistic interpretation.
Photography seems most conveniently conducive to
that discrimination of stimuli (objects, forms, even movement) within a given
spatial arrangement of light. Technically it is called our visual resolution. And when that resolution leads to the
identification of stimuli, it is called our visual
acuity. All of us have and use our capacity of resolution and acuity to
various degrees when looking and interpreting what we looked at (seeing). What
makes some of us be photographers is, in part, our conscientious pursuit of
seeing what escaped to the casual looker. And of course, to have the reflexes
of clicking at the appropriate moment before the stimulus or the spatial background
of light change taking the story away or creating a new story for which we were
not ready. I call this adaptive choice of
stimuli as we adapt our resolution and acuity to the story of the moment
and are ready to capture it. That happens in a millisecond and if the story
changes, our previous adaptation may not be adequate or appropriate to capture
the new story. That is how we miss pictures.
All this ends up in a photograph. And for those who
still use film and mechanical cameras, all this ends up as that never
predictable moment when in the darkroom and under a faint amber light, that
captured moment comes alive, gradient by gradient, in the developing tray.
Here are some examples of seeing:
A. Parachute
I was walking in the street with my dog. He is now
older and takes his time sniffing every stone and every bush. That gives me
time to look around and even to take photographs without being pulled holding
his leash!
As he was carefully sniffing the base of a tree, I
looked up and saw a shape “out of place”. It was a conical shape, probably
paper, and the sun was shining through it. It was about 15 feet away and I could
not see much detail, but my 1970s Nikkor 105mm helped me see a less than one
inch plastic soldier stuck on a tree branch. The conical shape was the
parachute hanging upside down.
Why did I notice this toy which I assumed belonged
to a boy and was taken away from him by the wind? Was it the light shining
through it making it different from the few dead leaves still on the tree? Or
was it my ever present interest in discovering what surprises the ordinary
environment keeps for us?
B. Phone
Someone had compiled a timeframe in this creative
expression. It was the timeframe of communication and all he or she needed was
an empty tin can and a string. Yet, the story was there and the message quite
clear. After taking a photo, I stood there watching the hundreds of people pass
by. Not a single one looked at the red public phone…..
C. Shapes
and a Smoke
I took this one with a 180mm telephoto lens. I
needed the compression of the frame a telephoto gives. I immediately saw all
the various shapes, angles, and texture harmoniously coexisting. And the man
having a smoke seems to add a dimension of comfort with the environment.
So, is there an art of seeing? I believe so, but it will not translate into
an artful translation unless we place what we see within a story many others
would identify with and understand.
January 17, 2016
© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2016
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