Commentary - PhotoTrice

Emotional Seeing

The one constant of online photography forums is that people are always ready to tell you how to make good photographs. There is sage advice literally at your fingertips. So many experts and all are hanging out on amateur photography sites. Are they experts? Not so much. They all seem to have read the same photography fundamentals manual. That must count for something.

Just to be clear I’m not an expert, only a seeker of knowledge. My chops as a non-professional photographer are meager. My advice about ‘how to do photography’ is worth absolutely nothing. Actually I do know one thing. When someone sees a photograph for the first time they form an instant opinion of the image. That immediate evaluation has something to do with emotion and nothing at all to do with technical details. That comes later.

As every good marketer will tell you the emotional hook is what keeps people interested in something long enough to consider other possibilities. Unfortunately for those of us who are trying to learn photography informally, the internet gurus don’t get it. They know the formula and nothing else matters.

Are there any options for the unfortunate autodidact wannabe photographer? Yes, there are. My poor advice is to learn a few fundamentals then go on about making the images you find interesting. As I warned earlier my advice is worth absolutely nothing.

If you persist in making photographs for long enough you will either get better or quit. I’m still on the knife edge myself.

Black and White and Color

The eye What follows is a revised and extended version of comments I made recently on another website.

For close to ten years I have processed digital raw photos into black and white images nearly every day. Somehow digital black and white just suits me and I enjoy spending time doing post processing. This is unusual for a couple of reasons, not least because I never shot film in black and white or color.

Deciding to pick up a camera is easy. Becoming a competent non-professional photographer is difficult. Like everyone else I started out reading and following whatever advice I could find. There are thousands of books and millions of experts on every website just waiting to help out. Following formulas and emulating the work of others got me started but that didn’t last long. My goal was always been to produce unique personal work. So for years I have attempted to educate myself while following my muse.

Phototrice.com which is an integral part of my photography went online about fifteen months ago. It gives me the opportunity to publish pictures, create useful software and most of all communicate with a wide audience. A hobby with a purpose you might say. One thing it is not is a vehicle for making money.

Phototrice has presented a few challenges along the way. Certainly I want to maintain minimum quality standards for words and images published in the blog. The first challenge is that I’m a software developer by profession. My languages of choice are for instructing machines. In that regard English is a second language. There is also a requirement to publish mostly color images in the blog. My personal interest is digital black and white photography which has a secondary role here.

I only use digital cameras and capture technologies. Even if my finished images are completely true to the original raw photos they are not what used to be called straight photography. Digital images are manipulated right from capture to conform to the look of historical materials and processes. In other words they emulate analog photographs by design. I see this matter-of-fact processing bias as an unfortunate limitation.

Much of the potential of digital imaging technology is squandered by confining oneself to an emulation of analog photography. That is why I regularly explore techniques that are simply not possible with analog film capture. For me the camera and digital capture are source material for finished images that may or may not resemble classic photographs. I understand that some people will find my attitude annoying but I see no reason confine my work to a standard that ignores the potential of my tools.

Tools for Modern Times

When this self portrait was photographed back in 2009 my idea was to consider the implications of private and public persona. Over the past couple of years I have reprocessed the photo several times based upon my original idea. With each new version it has become apparent that the image makes some people uncomfortable.

There are many reasons why someone wrapped in a headscarf might be considered provocative. The face of the subject, me in this case, is obscured. It is a headshot which eliminates any body language to help the viewer read the image. later versions of the image are composited which adds layers of information to further obfuscate the subject.

I believe there is another reason why my self portrait makes people uncomfortable. It is a more sinister reason. For more than twenty years we as free citizens of the United States have been taught to fear those among us who speak with a different accent, dress in a different way or hold unfamiliar beliefs. Xenophobic attitudes now mainstream in our society.

Every day we are reminded to fear and judge people we don’t know because they hold certain religious beliefs. Politicians shamelessly use fear of ‘the potential threat’ to attain office. News outlets shamelessly echo those politicians without asking meaningful questions. Incidents that are thought of as terrorism are endlessly replayed twenty four hours a day for commercial gain. We are warned on a daily basis to hold our fear close.

The bargain we are making is freedom in exchange for security. The case could be made that we are trading those things that make our country great for the warm blanket of a comfortable police state. In our society informers are not even necessary, we inform upon ourselves. Every electronic utterance and transaction is subject to examination without our direct consent by machine intelligence. Senator Joseph McCarthy was once asked; “Have you no sense of decency sir?” Who in the government and security apparatus would we ask that of today?