The Four Stages of Seeing

I don't plan photos like this one. I'm not that clever. Frame, focus, click--that's it. A few days or weeks later, I check to see if it's any good. What do you think? Is it any good?

I’m going to get a bit metaphysical in this post, so if this sort of thing doesn’t appeal to you may want to give this post a pass. The subject is seeing. More specifically, it’s how the way we see affects our photographs and how that in turn affects the way they are perceived by others. If you’re interested, read on.

Stage 1
Those who don’t give seeing much thought assume there’s not much reason to. You see something you want to photograph, you photograph it, and if the picture looks good, that’s that. These are the photographers who, when they later take a closer look at their pictures, are often surprised to see objects, shadows, highlights and all other types of image elements that they never noticed at the time. The challenge for them is to learn how to notice everything that’s happening in the frame while they’re composing an image, not just what they happen to be paying the most attention to at the time.

Stage 2
The next stage in seeing is learning the difference between what you see in the viewfinder and what you will see on your computer screen or in a print. Depending on what type of camera you use, there will more or less depth-of-field, the shadows will be darker than you expect or the highlights will be lighter. The trick is “learning to see like a camera.” Some photographers are so good at this that they can previsualize a photograph even when they’re looking through an optical viewfinder instead of the lens itself.

 

Stage 3
Once photographers are comfortable with the first two stages they start to become aware of how their choices affect their images. Camera, lens, distance, subject, angle, composition, lighting... You have partial or sometimes even complete control over them all.

 How much control you decide to exert will depend on your personality. Some photographers want as much as possible. For them, tools like Photoshop are a godsend. They can control the look of a photograph not only before they release the shutter, but after. Other photographers are content to establish a basic working method that allows them to control only the parameters they care about and they leave it at that.

 In either case, what you see becomes heavily influenced by what you want or expect to see. Your emotions and intellect begin to act as filters that affect what you choose to photograph and how you choose to photograph it.

 This tendency comes with a risk: It can become hard to tell when emotions and intellect cross the line into bias, prejudice, propaganda and sentimentality. For example, if you believe that there is beauty in symmetry you might go out of your way to photograph only objects that are symmetrical. You might even photograph non-symmetrical objects and use Photoshop to make them appear symmetrical. Or if you believed that cities are ugly you would photograph cities only in a way that would help prove your point. But is the city really ugly or is it just your photographs that are ugly? It might even be possible for you to produce beautifully crafted photos of an ugly subject. Which would you want your viewers to notice more?

 Clearly, things can start to get quite tricky at this stage. Many photographers and their critics never move past it, nor do they want to. After all, this is where they get to show off their creative vision, intellectual accomplishments and mastery of theory. It takes a humble soul to contemplate the possibility that possessing facts and theories about a subject is no substitute for a direct, intuitive, unfiltered appreciation of it.

 Stage 4

This brings us to the ultimate stage, the stage at which we can remove our mental filters and look at our subjects in a direct, unprejudiced way. It's hard to explain the difference to those who have never experienced this type of seeing for themselves. When you do it right though, it's not unusual for people who look at your photographs to say something like "I've walked past that same place every day and I've never noticed that before. Now that I’m looking at this picture, I can't take my eyes off it." If, on the other hand, they say something like "Nice technique," or "Did you use Photoshop?" or "What lens did you use?" you're probably not there yet.

One irony of arriving at Stage 4 is that you find yourself sharing so many of the characteristics from Stage 1. A camera is just a camera. A lens is just a lens. When you see a picture happening in front of you, Something tells you when to click the shutter. So you do, and that's that. It can almost seem as if you didn't really create anything, you just recorded a moment in time that Someone Else created for you.

 And with that, my friends, I will stop typing and resume marveling at all the wonderful things there are to see in this amazing world of ours.

Comments

[Al]

Hmmm...thanks for sharing an interesting and informative post.

[Andreas]

Zen

When I made this picture (http://tinyurl.com/nj5djq) I think I was at stage 4. Oddly this was a few month after I started photography "seriously". I have the feeling that by reading and searching... something between style and creating a portfolio for some near commercial future, the scale shifts backwards to 3, only sometimes coming back to 4 and in between falling to 1 and 2. Don't know if this makes sense.

So let me put it differently: It is all equipment and gear hustle, but I ever more often feel like throwing away everything except the Epson RD-1 with 28/2 and click away _without_ thinking about style, gear, professionalism or the likes ever again.

That being said I feel sometimes like on stage 4, just very seldom.

Great post, btw. - made me think, keep on rocking dude!

[Lesley]

I am in a very busy stage of life now, helping my 92 year old mother move from a large house to an apartment, something that is both physically and mentally exhausing--for both of us. Although I have thought of documenting the process, there just isn't enough energy left over to do it.
When I read your description of seeing at stage 4, it brought to mind a number of photographs I have made when I was seeing at this level. I remember the almost meditative feeling I had before clicking the shutter release and the way the scene was, and still is, imprinted on my mind.
Thanks for helping me remember some of those precious moments.

[Andreas]

Gordon, I overlooked your question: "...is it any good?" I think you know the answer. It is an absolute street classic, G-style ;-) and I think it is really good.

I had to look at it, which is good. Then I see perfect light, gesture, looks, composition, contrast. The contrast is everywhere, in tones, but also in gestures, in generations and in ethncities. Then I could derive that I see a record of modern western society, at least of the wealthy parts. From the positioning and accentuation of the persons I could derive further inherent statements. But maybe I am stepping too far here.

However this image gives me food for thought and makes me look more often. Well done!

[Paul]

Great post, Gordon. I think that stage 4 is when you have slipped into the moment and removed all labels of what you think 'it' is, be it a tree, rock, person, etc.

Those are the magical photos, the ones that are so sublime that they make you wonder who took it. I think that many of my photos come from stage 3 and are colored by my emotions about how I feel about the subject. These are perfectly fine for artistic purposes, as you mentioned. Those special stage 4 photos are the ones that keep me shooting and help me to realize my potential.

[Dave Eichelman]

Very interesting post. Thank you!

[Tomas]

Thanks for the post. It seems to me, that these stages often apply to any kind of "art" we do .. I've read poets and prose writers talking about the same kind of things.