Are you a snapper?

Yes, I snap them up left and right, but I don't burn film on random pop shots. Like Benji said after awhile you get an eye for it, and you read the situation and see it unfold.

But I guess there's a downside, as I progress I end up talking myself out of lots of things a younger or less experienced version of me would have tried to get with a snap.

I would say that I'm not. I always apply the required amount of meticulousness to each exposure.

Yes, I do snapshots, so in that respect I am a snapper. One of my favorite images (unfortunately captured electronically so I can't post it here) is a snap I took at Big Spring near Van Buren, Missouri. The trees are green on the hillside, you see the water boiling out of Big Spring, then at the bottom of the frame is an empty park bench. After getting back from vacation I thought it was not a very good picture but went ahead and posted it online. My sister said she liked the way it was framed and the park bench at the bottom of the frame was a nice touch.

A lot of pictures I took back in the 80's and 90's I originally thought were snapshots, but now that I go back and look at them, I've realized that some of them are more than just a quick snap.

So I would argue that whether something is a snapshot or if it is art is in the eye of the beholder.

ME Super

Sometimes I'm a snapper.(usually with a 35mm) Other times I take my time.(usually with medium format)

Jeff

Snapping is not necessarily a bad thing. I think if you think too much and prepare too much when you shoot your photos can look contrived. I think snappers can capture unexpected moments. Does anybody considered HCB a snapper? I think snappers are more open to the Zen experience.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

...I think snappers are more open to the Zen experience.

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I will disagree with this only because not-thinking is as far away from the "Zen experience" as over-thinking.

It is the decision to make or not make an image -- and the mental gymnastics one may or may not do to reach that decision -- that defines the "Zen experience". It is not the speed in which one goes about making the image, once the decision is made. In The Art of Zen Archery, it is how the arrow is released that matters, not the speed in which one draws and fires.

Otherwise, one is just using the shotgun affect by snapping away. So my point is that even when one takes 30 minutes to set up a 8x10 camera and expose a sheet of film, that image has as much of a possibility of being in a "Zen experience" as one might have exposing 36 exposures in 10 minutes with a 35mm.

Both have the potential of spontinatity. (sorry for the sp).

Vaughn

Vaughn said:

...my point is that even when one takes 30 minutes to set up a 8x10 camera and expose a sheet of film, that image has as much of a possibility of being in a "Zen experience" as one might have exposing 36 exposures in 10 minutes with a 35mm.

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At least they'd be using the same amount of film area...

Your comment is well spoken. To me Zen seems to be more about balance and enlightenment.
Whatever task is undertaken, enough effort and contemplation is applied. It's a way of being, a lifestyle if you will, acting upon life's inclinations with wisdom.
Like you, I don't think it has anything to do with what type of camera is used, but rather that A camera is used, and you use it in a way that suits the task at hand.

Well Susan Sontag and her reasoning that 'taking' photographs is an aggressive act, is backed up by the 'snapper' mentality that digital photography encourages. I would have thought this is the biggest reason many here choose to shoot... ahem, I mean 'make' photographs on film?

I've always thought it important to consider my relationship to the subject before photographing it, rather than being a paparazi. The snapping away in my mind clearly defines those traditional practitioners as more concerned with quickly getting home to play with chemistry, rather than making compelling photographs. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't ever call yourself an artist if it's the case!

And Cartier-Bresson wasn't a snapper, he was just quicker at seeing well!

I snap, shoot, take, make, steal, and lie to get photographs.

I've seen snapshots that are technically, and artistically better than a lot of the drivel I see in galleries and museums. Naturally that is the .1% exception, rather than the rule, but I think everyone has a different methodology to shooting. I behave differently on a day to day basis. Sometimes I breeze through 36 exposures in two or three hours, other times a roll will sit in a camera for a few weeks, being used for one or two frames a day.

I also use my Hasselblads as "snapshot" (whatever the hell such a murky term means...) cameras though, so what do I know.

Vaughn said:

It is the decision to make or not make an image -- and the mental gymnastics one may or may not do to reach that decision -- that defines the "Zen experience". It is not the speed in which one goes about making the image, once the decision is made. In The Art of Zen Archery, it is how the arrow is released that matters, not the speed in which one draws and fires.

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Agree! Putting terms as how it is done has possibility of spawning "format wars", where folks who are LF vs say 35 square off and the HCB gets thrown in there and none of it makes any sense. Take photographs, how ever one wishes, and call it a day

zsas said:

Agree! Putting terms as how it is done has possibility of spawning "format wars", where folks who are LF vs say 35 square off and the HCB gets thrown in there and none of it makes any sense. Take photographs, how ever one wishes, and call it a day

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^^^ What he said.

Who brought Zen into this?

Zen can also mean enjoying being hit across the shoulders as that gets the blood circulating again and yearning for the bell so I can move for a few minutes and the hope dawn will start soon and we can have breakfast

Blame the Maine Coon.

Vaughn said:

I will disagree with this only because not-thinking is as far away from the "Zen experience" as over-thinking.
a possibility of being in a "Zen experience" as one might have exposing 36 exposures in 10 minutes with a 35mm.

Both have the potential of spontinatity. (sorry for the sp).

Vaughn

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I like the spelling of spontaneity - I won't say why, but it does make me think of unexpected joys

This morning is not one of joy, I am battling with my neg scanner, lifted from a friends rubbish bin, and deciding the only way to get a reasonable result is to make 10x8 prints of these negs and scan them for a client - I digress, but as digression is one of the things I am good at I will continue

To borrow Minor White's idea I'm always photographing everything mentally. After some decades at this game I can form a pretty reliable mental image of the final picture as it would emerge from the darkroom. If it's no good I'll go and look at something else. Just snapping, just burning film, to see what things look like when photographed (thanks Gary Winogrand) is a lazy alternative to thinking the process through in the first place. And later discovering some twee frames in a pile of contact sheets is no salvation.

Snappers like Friedlander, Winogrand, and Cartier-Bresson, who never stopped and looked at what was in front of them, never pondered it, and never knew exactly what was on the film until they winnowed the contact sheets ask what I cannot give: To put through my mind stuff they didn't bother putting through theirs.

"To borrow Minor White's idea I'm always photographing everything mentally"

Yeah but what if your mind is extremely narrow? Art is jumping into the unknown not going the safe pre-thought pre-visualized way.
Garry W. I'm still in awe of your work!

Maris said:

To borrow Minor White's idea I'm always photographing everything mentally. After some decades at this game I can form a pretty reliable mental image of the final picture as it would emerge from the darkroom. If it's no good I'll go and look at something else. Just snapping, just burning film, to see what things look like when photographed (thanks Gary Winogrand) is a lazy alternative to thinking the process through in the first place. And later discovering some twee frames in a pile of contact sheets is no salvation.

Snappers like Friedlander, Winogrand, and Cartier-Bresson, who never stopped and looked at what was in front of them, never pondered it, and never knew exactly what was on the film until they winnowed the contact sheets ask what I cannot give: To put through my mind stuff they didn't bother putting through theirs.

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Maris, I fail to see how you can criticize these photographers, unless you can show images of your own that you feel are as good or better.

Vaughn said:

BTW...How much a pound does a commie, I mean a red snapper go for these days?

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Oh please, communism was just a red herring!

yeknom02 said:

Oh please, communism was just a red herring!

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Thank you thank you thank you! I needed that! I now have a Monty Pythonish image in my head of a red herring with Lenin's face and the Hammer and Sickle on its side! Rough time at work -- how can artists be so bloody anal about running an university art department! Well, enough about politics!

Grumpy Old Man -- hope to meet you someday. I have ex-in-laws in Oz and would like to visit them again -- and lots of places there I'd like to photograph! I have only been in NSW and a bit in the NT. Got to see Western Oz someday! And Tas!

I hope you don't mind my Zen references. I have read way too much Zen stuff to ever be able to obtain satori! Dang brain has been contaminated! But it does not stop me from spreading my ignorance, though...LOL!

The mind can not know the Mind -- heaven help me!

Vaughn

Snappers

Grumpy Old Man said:

They are the best, I had a fresh one pan fried on Tuesday night with chips and salad and few (too many) beers

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I like this idea and may give it a try.

It may occasion another PM exchange with someone who doesn't agree, but drat for the hundredth time the lack of the multi-quote button on APUG. Done via lots of aborted replies with quotes and Notepad...

Poisson Du Jour said:

I do not recognise the term.
Photographs are not snapped and they certainly are not taken.
They are made.

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Some of mine I feel are made, some taken. If I had to make a distinction I'd say it revolved around how much departure from reality the final image shows. That's a trap laden concept because black and white, which is mostly what I do, is a departure from reality by definition. And color films all differ and none have the range of human vision and none reproduce color perfectly so that is too, albeit probably to a lesser extent.

But some images are shot at relatively normal exposure and development and printed to "normal looking" tones that are similar to a straightforward rendering of the scene, with little to no dodging and burning. Those are probably more "taken." Others look nothing like the original scene and are probably more "made."

Even this is not straightforward. If you have to burn down the sky quite a bit to get it to look like it looked to you by eye at the time, what is that?

Ultimately I don't think it matters which of these terms one uses.

Thomas Bertilsson said:

What about it is it that you 'make' that wasn't already there?

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Not that it wasn't there, but the relative emphasis of different areas are easily changed in the darkroom, the contrast can deviate radically from what was there - a contrasty scene can be printed more flatly or, much more often probably, a scene in very flat light can be boosted in contrast. It looks less like the scene than it would otherwise, but may make a better image, assuming pictorial accuracy isn't the aim.

Sometimes one, sometimes the other. A foolish consistency...

eddie said:

I've always thought that, when I snap the shutter, I "take". When I'm in the darkroom, I "make". In truth, I'm not at all concerned with the terminology.

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I kind of think of it like that too, but I agree that too much emphasis on terminology serves no purpose and is a distraction.

Vaughn said:

I will disagree with this only because not-thinking is as far away from the "Zen experience" as over-thinking.

It is the decision to make or not make an image -- and the mental gymnastics one may or may not do to reach that decision -- that defines the "Zen experience". It is not the speed in which one goes about making the image, once the decision is made. In The Art of Zen Archery, it is how the arrow is released that matters, not the speed in which one draws and fires.

Otherwise, one is just using the shotgun affect by snapping away. So my point is that even when one takes 30 minutes to set up a 8x10 camera and expose a sheet of film, that image has as much of a possibility of being in a "Zen experience" as one might have exposing 36 exposures in 10 minutes with a 35mm.

Both have the potential of spontinatity. (sorry for the sp).

Vaughn

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Bravo! Bravo! Well said!

I think working with my 4x5 is more "Zen like" most of the time than shooting 35mm, but that's certainly not hard and fast.

zsas said:

Agree! Putting terms as how it is done has possibility of spawning "format wars", where folks who are LF vs say 35 square off and the HCB gets thrown in there and none of it makes any sense. Take photographs, how ever one wishes, and call it a day

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In the words of a blue grass musician I know, "shut up and pick."

Photographers could take a clue from that. Shut up and shoot, or shut up and print. Better yet, shut up and shoot and print.

Maris said:

Snappers like Friedlander, Winogrand, and Cartier-Bresson, who never stopped and looked at what was in front of them, never pondered it, and never knew exactly what was on the film until they winnowed the contact sheets ask what I cannot give: To put through my mind stuff they didn't bother putting through theirs.

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Frankly, what a crock. I've seen the display of HCB that was at the Atlanta High Museum recently. It's nothing like my style, but it was superb none the less. The fact that someone does something radically different from what I'm trying to do doesn't make it unvaluable, or mean I can't appreciate it.

Grumpy Old Man said:

They are the best, I had a fresh one pan fried on Tuesday night with chips and salad and few (too many) beers

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My fiance does a Snapper Vera Cruz that's delicious. Red snapper covered with diced tomatoes and jalapenos. Mmmmmm....

The entire raison d'etre for 35mm is, in my opinion, the ability to move quickly, quietly, and efficiently. Just because staring at a ground glass pondering suits some, doesn't mean that the spontaneity and flexibility afforded by the sprocket-hole format is of any less value. Who gives a damn if a photograph was "snapped" or "made", if the final result is fabulous? The versatility and visceral nature of speed inherent in the smaller formats is why I love photography. I'm not a "snapper" or a "ponderer" because I "ponder" while on the move, I compose before the viewfinder hits my eye, and I've shot the photograph that I already knew I wanted in the split second it takes me to jam that shutter release down.

I've been a Snapper for years.

Regards.

Bob

I carry an Olympus Stylus Zoom 140 in the car for just such purposes. The 140 is rather absurdly long and slow (f/9 I believe) but I found the camera for $12 in a thrift store, and it has some "serious photographer friendly" features like focus and exposure memory lock combined with a spot mode. It's handy for "snapping."

cliveh said:

Maris, I fail to see how you can criticize these photographers, unless you can show images of your own that you feel are as good or better.

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The criticism of photographs credited to various famous snappers is not based on what the pictures look like or what they are of. The defect lies in the identity of those photographs as found things, found in a pile of contact sheets, rather than made things, made by a creative process of mind.

The only worthwhile reason for looking at photographs (or any other kind of picture) in an art context is that they are "mind maps" of the artist. Otherwise with no mind, there's no map, and finally no art. Merely undertaking activities that might lead to finding pretty things in a heap of dross is like going to the beach for seashells. Signing pretty shells does not make the shells art or the signer an artist worthy of reverence.