Was this the photograph the product of planning or serendipity? I'll let you be the judge.
At one time I had a book in my collection that was titled "Right Brain-Left Brain Photography," by Kathryn Marx. Her basic premise was that there are two types of photographers. Left brained photographers like to plan things out ahead of time and to express a specific vision in their minds. Right brained photographers shoot from instinct. They suspend thought, act "in the moment" and release the shutter "when the time feels right."
It's an interesting premise for a book and the work of the photographers she used to illustrate this premise was insightful. Based on my experience, I agree that some photos do require a lot of forethought to pull off, whereas others are primarily the product of receptivity and serendipity. Where we disagree is the idea that some photographers work in one mode or the other, or that their mode of thought is somehow obvious in their work.
Take the photo above, for example. It's entirely possible that I came up with the idea of photographing broken Crayons on snow, bought Crayons, broke them, laid them out on the snow, and then photographed them. In fact, one of my kids dumped the crayons on the snow and left them there. I liked the way they look, so I moved a few so they'd make a better composition, then I shot a few frames. Right brain or left brain photography? You tell me.
That would make me a Right Brain photographer.
I would have even left all the broken crayons as they were. Not touching one of them. I think that would be because I'm not sure I could do better than chance.
Posted by: John Krill | February 15, 2009 at 03:16 PM
It's interesting that you talk about this. I am 99% of the time shooting from the hip. I've talked about how I find myself almost uncontrollably just raising the camera to my eye and shooting. Only then, after I've taken one frame, do I check things like exposure and stuff. With manual old-school cameras, I like to get a general exposure setting and zone focus, for that exact reason. With modern cameras, it's nice sometimes that the camera can just handle a lot of that, but I almost always shoot in Aperture priority mode. With digital, I'll quickly take one shot, then check what decisions the camera made, then take a second frame if I can. I've thought about this a lot, and whether I could be better if I planned a *little* more than I do.
Posted by: Chris KLug | February 15, 2009 at 05:52 PM
The reason I guessed (correctly) that this was not planned is because: it doesn't make any sense. Why would crayons be on snow? You don't use crayons in the snow. You happened to see it and it looked good, but a planning process would be unlikely to come up with "crayons in the snow".
If it was a shot of crayons on a child's desk, with a generic crayon-drawn portrait next to it, then I would start to think it was set-up, because that would tell a story. And ... if each crayon were turned so that there were no ROSE-ART logos visible, that would be a dead giveaway!
Posted by: kickstand | February 19, 2009 at 12:58 PM
I could believe it was planned - it's a great photo - lots of energy and emotion is what I see. Kickstand may be right about the logos, but that would be for a commercial shot, as opposed to a "fine art" image.
Thanks for mentioning the book by Kathryn Marx. I'm going to check it out.
I really appreciate your blog - stumbled across it, but now it's on my Favorites menu :-)
Posted by: Steve Rosenbch | March 05, 2009 at 10:10 AM