I am no where near as organized or experienced as Lodro or Drew, but here goes. Currently, I have three main modes for shooting images; casual, assignment and planned shots. Since I am still a beginner, my style (if I have one yet) and approaches are still evolving.

The BlindSighted Project allows members of Blind Photographers to explore challenges related to our eyesight, challenges that affect our image-making process. This project is an opportunity to explore how we approach photography.

By casual photography, I mean those times I throw my camera bag over my shoulder and wait for interesting scenes to happen. Not unlike street photography, but I broaden the idea to any situation I find myself, whether alone, with friends and family or out in public (i.e. on the street). For these times, I try to start with a blank slate and an open mind. Many times, the camera stays in the bag.

When the camera comes out, I face a challenge of what settings to use. I need to change glasses to my low vision reading glasses to change settings on my camera and this is quite awkward. I often lose the moment wasting time or catching others’ attention. I have started to set the camera to either aperture or shutter priority mode and then to a particular f/stop or shutter speed. From there, I know which knobs to turn to adjust settings back and forth between the two modes and adjust the relevant setting. Sometimes, I will be lazy and set the camera to its automatic mode, but not normally.

I am not sure how I find the right moment to press the shutter. When I try to force the moment, the images are almost always boring. I really enjoy the photography of Henri Cartier Bresson, especially his environmental portraits. So I try to follow his idea of the decisive moment when I am shooting:

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which – in visual terms – questions and decides simultaneously. In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry. It is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. One must always take photos with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself.

I find it difficult to articulate how I put this idea into practice. Part of my mind is always visualizing how the scenes around me would look in a photo. When I feel a scene would make a good image, I start pressing the shutter.

Unlike HCB, who did little post-processing, I take my photos knowing that I will later fix them in Lightroom. I bought a ten megapixel camera not because I need such large images per se, but knowing I can’t frame images well in the viewfinder. In the viewfinder, I only get a sense of my subject and the space surrounding it, so I need to zoom out or back up a bit to make sure I do not cut off some detail. So many of my images cut off fingers or heads or other important details that I still work on this issue. I also take multiple shots, hoping to improve the odds of having caught that decisive moment. I am lucky if one in ten shots is a reasonable image and one in a hundred is a good one.

Once in Lightroom, I make several passes through the images, deleting the obviously poor ones and tagging the better ones. I keep whittling and tagging photos until I have a reasonable number of reasonable images. Then I start processing the individual photos. First comes straightening and cropping. Then comes color correction, usually darkening the image and bringing out shadows. I am not sure why I need to do this, probably it helps me see the details in the image. Once I have have processed the images, I review them and select my favorites. These get exported and uploaded to Flickr. Later on, I will print one or two on my R1800 for my collection. If I can, I will take breaks during this process, often taking days to complete it. Looking through my shots is an emotional roller coaster, with frustration from missed shots to excitement over unexpected gems. Much of the frustration is exacerbated due to my sight as many images are lost due to my inability to see through the viewfinder the image I have in my head.

When I take photos for an assignment, usually for my local paper, the process is very similar. The main difference is the constant need to have good images to submit that nags at me while shooting. I become impatient for the decisive moment and have difficulty relaxing into the moment. An editor critiqued the results from a recent shoot, mentioning that I do not inject myself into the scene sufficiently.

There are a few other differences as well. I often bring more equipment, tripods and an off-camera flash. I also do more preparation. Besides contacting relevant parties to make sure I can get to and around the assignment, I also need to think through and plan for possible images. Anticipating the decisive moment becomes paramount and this is a skill I am still working on. Once the shoot is over, the rest of the process is the same except for the final destination of the best images.

I do not take planned images, still life or portrait, very often, but I am actively working to improve my process here. I have been following the strobist blog and its lighting guides as well as reading a few photography books, including Light: Science & Magic and some of Bryan Peterson’s books. But I am struggling to adapt what I am learning to my circumstances.

This project has inspired me to some thinking. The has resulted in a few upcoming blog posts, including this one, Stitching Sight – Why What I See is Not What I See.

I think this translates into my photographic process in the why I need to prepare even for candid shots. I need to be very aware of my surroundings to feel comfortable shooting. I think that I do not feel comfortable until I have built a mental map of the scene I am shooting. It makes taking posed portraits more complicated, as I can’t use the clues available in candid scenes to stitch together the scene in my mind’s eye.

Responses

Drew Bedo:

Oberazzi : Are you speaking to the differences between previsualization, the realities of the creative act and percetion of the final image? Many people think that photography is a case of :What You See Is What You Get” but we all have pexerienced that it is not.

lodrorigdzin:

I second Drew on that. One of the interesting things about the process seems to be the construction of the image from other sources than sight. The “stictching together”. That’s a procedural approach to photography, instead of instantaneous capture.

I think it is a bit different than “the differences between previsualization, the realities of the creative act and perception of the final image”. Its about the previsualization necessary in the moment the shutter is pressed. The way I understand it, a typical photographer previsualizes well before setting up the shot. By the time she snaps the shutter, there is no longer a need to previsualize as she sees the image through the viewfinder. I do not see the image until it is on my computer monitor well afterward. So, what I think I am saying is that, for me, the previsualization process continues through the shutter snap and that the previsualization process continually evolves during a shot as I take in more information. Does this make sense?

Drew Bedo:

Yes; I think I understand what you’re saying…and its not that much different than the “old” film days. The imag on the film was only a latent image untill developed, in those days (or even today if you shoot film, thats just the process)

Receintly, I made several exposures in an unlit barn filled with clutter. The only light came from a doorway with stairs leading up. I had walked around the space for 30-45 min befor weven setting up the tripod. I knew the space.

When the negs came back from the lab, I was so disappointed that so little of the cluttering objects actually showed up. I “knew” the space and could “see” the barn clutter, but didn’t make the adjustments and the extra exposures that might have made the scene really work. Oh, and there is no amount of PS manipulation will bring it back either!

lodrorigdzin:

The way I understand it, a typical photographer previsualizes well before setting up the shot.

not to my understanding, and I never was of the pre-visualizing kind either. i think it’s more or less a myth.

Drew Bedo:

Pre-visualization a myth? Read Adams.

Perhaps an anology to photographic pre-visualization with a tactile element would be hand thrown pottery. Beginning potters are developing the physical skills that will allow them to produce a shape…any shape…that will (in ascending order of competence) hold together, be recognized as a bowl, cup or whatever, and look pleasing. Later on a developing potter, has the ability to produce say, a mug from the get-go. Still later on the potter is challenged to produce the mug that they want to make…they menally design a mug and make one that matches what they had in mind. They have pre-visualized an object , then produced that mug from raw materials.

This is much like a photographer manipulating small objects on a table-top or watching a sweeping landscape waiting for the slanting sunlight to cast dramatic shadows with a interesting cloud drifting into the field of view.

Several years ago I heard a talk by a man who had had worked on assignment for Nat Geo. He had an image published of a Soviet monument with children climbing on it. He waited quite some time until a child took a hand-hold on the giant finger of a worker depicted in the monument. He knew that if he waited, some child would clasp that finger…he pre-visualized a street scene and got THE shot…the money shot.

Its not a myth…its just sometimes an elusive goal…like the potter trying to make a cup and winding up with a small bowl.

Drew Bedo:

OOps…That post seems a little abrupt now that I read it posted. I dont really want to change the bulk of it, just want to say that it is ment with respect and appresiation for all previous posters in this thread.

lodrorigdzin:

in my process thread, Tim asked me about memory of sight and photographs, and I said that for me it was mainly the memory of “what looks good in a photograph”. As with your NatGeo example.
I can’t imagine HCB pre-visualized like Ansel Adams, and somehow, I think Adams pre-visualized the print, not the capture. I know I put it strongly, but I also know that an emphasis on pre-visualization has the potential of removing much spontaneity from the process of capture. I didn’t even pre-visualize when I still had my sight. I know I like blur in my photographs, so I search out situations where I know I will photograph attractive blur that “looks good in a photograph”. Is that pre-visualisation? I don’t know. I was always being pestered by my teachers in photography school for being sloppy and nonchalant about photography, and that’s true. I like the raw edges of photographs, the fact that they can be totally unpredictable. Much good photography comes from moments when all deliberation falls away and there is only doing, only the gesture with the camera.

In my ignorance, I am using pre-visualization more broadly than commonly understood. Inarticulately, I think of pre-visualization as incorporating an unconscious process that manifests itself as HCB’s intuition. “This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry“. Concentration, discipline, sensitivity and sense of geometry all come together to allow a street photographer, any photographer actually, to recognize that decisive moment when an image comes together. So, what I am talking about here is that a ‘typical’ photographer can see an image come together with her eye, while I use my mind’s eye. This leads to differences between what I think I am capturing and what I actually capture.

All the training that Drew discusses is meant to help develop that intuition. As usual, the goal can be lost as the means become the sole focus with the overemphasis on training at lodroridgzin’s school Teaching intuition is hard. Though I not a follower of hers, Ayn Rand makes that point abundantly clear in The Fountainhead. Institutionalization call kill the spirit that inspired it.

The point is about the process of knowing when to snap the shutter. That process is simpler for a fully-sighted photographer as they rely mostly on visual information in the moment. When I snap the shutter, I rely on a broader information set and intuition to guide me.

Does this make sense?

Drew Bedo:

Ok…I misses the distinction betewwn capture and final out-put (be it print or screen). sorry, I didn’t read carefully. Yes, Adams was focused on the print.

You are describing the “Decicive Moment” of Carter-Bression…is that right?

I also recognise that spontaniaity is also a valid creative process. Many un-planned things turn out to be great images.

Our son has a way of keeping me grounded with loving sarcasm: “Oh, now THAT is Art!” on seeing an out of focus image with obvious vibration artifacts; or, on seeing a good/great image…”Nice, what a happy accident!”)

lodrorigdzin: That process is simpler for a fully-sighted photographer

Not much, I think.

One area of interest to me is the fact that if you’re blind, the sight-based and instantaneous gives way to the sequential and time-based. To me, with my sight, distance isn’t space, it’s time. That in itself is a world of difference. It’s one of the reasons I’ve started to make videos, as time-based photography. A friend whose artistic judgment I completely trust, suggested to me that I should stop editing my photostream and simply show all captures, as she felt there were too many gaps in the flow, as it were. So I’ve started to concentrate on somehow making the flow happen, instead of focusing on single captures.

Tony Deifell:

You can have a decisive moment in video and audio too… a “moment” doesn’t have to be 1/250 of a second. It could be 1/250 of a year.

I look at it just as the perfect moment that tells a story, a confluence of element that add a larger meaning. It’s the ‘whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts’ thing.

Btw, lodrorigdzin… I always love reading your thoughts.

lodrorigdzin:

Well yes, of course. But I am taking some time figuring that out. /smile/ And likewise. Nice to see you stop in here.

Other subject: do you think photography can be narrative? I saw the Nan Goldin slideshow at moma, with SusaNYC and she narrated the storyline. Very interesting experience: it turned into an annotated soundtrack (which had also been put together by Nan Goldin)

Tim, I’m hijacking your thread. Forgive me.

lodro, No worries. I will hijack it right back.

This morning’s thoughts are about the Strobist approach. The staff photog at the Chapel Hill News pointed me to the site and I have been trying to apply it ever since. Storbist is basically about moving the flash off-camera to make more interesting photos.

Drew asked us about our process, so I have been thinking about how I have adapted the strobist approach to my sight. So, I spent some time thinking about it and posted about a  blind strobist here. Besides balancing my sight and the strobist thing, I am also trying to balance my preferences for candid portraits with the better light from off camera strobes.

lodro, as to your question of narrative. I believe that photography can offer a narrative both within a single image and across a series. Though I am still working on getting a single image right, a longer term goal for myself is to develop the skill of a photo essay that becomes a complete narrative. Many of your photos have a sense of narrative, as do many street photography images, but your have that additional sense of movement from the blur.

I  cross-posted to the Strobist.com group on flickr

Drew Bedo:

lodrorigdzin: The depth of time and sequencing. In still imaging the use of an intervalometer enables the photographer to set up a shot and capture an image at set intervals…every second, several times an hour and so on.

In videography, the use of the intervalometer compresses time by allowing very slowly evolving events to be represented in a few minutes…a growing flower for ecample.

Slow-motion techniques, on the other hand stretch time, by spreading a very fast motion over several seconds of minutes.

Do any of these techniques mesh with your interest in narrative, event sequencing and space-time?

lodrorigdzin:

oh absolutely. for instance in:

flickr.com/photos/lodrorigdzin/3093550264/

and a good and very knowledgeable friend told me not to edit anymore, to show the photostream as flow. And it hit me yesterday: I do photograph to replace seeing. Photographing is somehow “having seen” something, or somewhere. I was obsessing over “which ones are the good ones”. But I’ve decided to let that go.

Drew Bedo:

lodrorigdzin: Remenber how in the “good-old” 35mm days, a roll of film held up to 36 images as negatives. We used to print a proof sheet of the whole roll to help in choosing the ones we wanted to print. Today we might call that an index of thumbnails or something similar.

When examining a proof sheet. the images were all in sequence and all of them were there. You could sometrumes get a sense of the photographers thought process as he worked the subject. Is that the sort of thing you sre trying for?

In another matter: Have you thought of shooting with an IR converted D-SLR (or with a night-vision device), AT NIGHT, to capture images of places known to you…but in the dark of the night. I’m not quite sure of what I’m groping for with this concept…What do you think?

lodrorigdzin:

interesting, and yes to the proof sheet question

IR could be done with my 1Ds. Interesting suggestion that, I’ll investigate (am not going to be around flickr for some time, but it’s a good subject to think about.)

Drew Bedo:

lodrorigdzin: Bye for now. Have a great holiday season…and good shooting!

Tim; This has been a great thread…I’m sorry it got so hij-acked away from your imaging.

I have been doing some thinking about how processing an image on the computer may be affected by my vision.

I am currently using (really learning) Lightroom. I would like to leave the image as close to the one captured, but almost always the color balance and exposure are off significantly. It makes me wonder if I am adjusting the image to how I see the world not how the rest of the world sees it.

I know that my monitor is not properly color balanced. I also have adjusted the monitor setting’s contrast and brightness for my vision. But I find myself always increasing the black, the shadows and the contrast. Am I just hiding noise? If not, am I overcompensating for my vision, trying to bring out and emphasize detail?

Does anyone else have a similar experience or thoughts?

Read more on the original flickr discussion thread: [BlindSighted] Oberazzi’s Process

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This entry was posted on March 8, 2009 at 5:38 pm and is filed under blind photography, our photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.