Contemplation

Pieter12 · Apr 9, 2024

Over the years, I have visited many artist's studios. Whether they work on stretched canvas on an easel, standing in front of a canvas pinned to the wall or on the floor, working on paper or mixed media on a table, there always seems to be a common object in the studio: a chair. Often a paint-splattered, tattered armchair that looks like it might have been rescued off the curb. The purpose of the chair is for the artist to sit and contemplate his or her work in progress. It allows for sometimes long periods of observation, seeing what might be working or not, speculating changes and possible improvements. As a photographer, I find there is not enough of this kind of thoughtfulness. Obviously, if I were shooting landscape or other static subjects, I could take time observing the scene and forming compositions, but even then there is not always the opportunity to revisit the next day--so many thing can have changed, lighting, weather, the addition or removal of components of the scene, or the remoteness of the location. The closest might be a studio still life that can remain set up and manipulated for extended periods of time, even after the photo has been taken.

But my point in bring up the practice of contemplation is that (at least for me) one does not spend enough time with work prints, making variations and pinning them to the wall, studying them and coming back to them after some time and determining what to do to make the best print for one's satisfaction. I tend to make all those decisions over a short period of time, usually a couple of days working in the darkroom. Most of the things I do are gut/intuitive reactions to what I see and maybe even my mood or influences at the time. Sometimes I will pull a print from a box after a while and think, did I consider this or that aspect of the image? Slight cropping adjustments, dodging or burning certain areas differently? This would apply to digital as well, where one needs to make several print variations for comparison. Looking at a monitor, it is difficult to make such comparisons, difficult to step back.

koraks · Apr 9, 2024

Pieter12 said:
But my point in bring up the practice of contemplation is that (at least for me) one does not spend enough time with work prints, making variations and pinning them to the wall, studying them and coming back to them after some time and determining what to do to make the best print for one's satisfaction.

That's what a few artists I know do. They 'live' with their photographs for quite some time before they materialize in a finished form.

Daniela · Apr 9, 2024

I find myself struggling with taking the time to contemplate during shooting and after printing. With street photography, things happen so fast that once I start walking I just don't stop unless I remind myself to do so. And even then, I don't always sit as I observe. Afterwards, I'm so excited to see if anything came out that I develop, print, post here and "archive" (put in a drawer/box) and forget about it...only to discover new things later on, just like you describe.

One exercise that has helped me slow down a bit and do more contemplation has been cutting up the reject prints and creating collages with them. I have discovered reoccurring themes, and have found more personal connections to certain images that I just didn't know why I took. It's an eye-opening exercise and I encourage anyone to give it a try.

Pieter12 · Apr 9, 2024

koraks said:
That's what a few artists I know do. They 'live' with their photographs for quite some time before they materialize in a finished form.

Do they make changes or just accept or reject the photos?

koraks · Apr 9, 2024

It varies from artist to artist. They tend to start with proofs and then work towards a selection and a final mode of presentation. There are two specific artists I'm thinking of at this point and their methods are already so fundamentally different apart from these generic commonalities that you'd have to consider them individually to give a proper answer. But the simple and truthful answer is that both selection and modification of the images plays an essential role in both of their work, and the contemplation period in turn plays a big role in that process, it seems.

This paper may be of interest: https://archivopapersjournal.com/ojs/index.php/apj/article/view/52
Mangiapane (she posts here from time to time) calls this period "latent time-space", in her conceptualization of the time dimension in photographic works.

MattKing · Apr 9, 2024

A cork board or some other temporary display space in a location you see frequently is a great tool!

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2024

Pieter12 said:
It allows for sometimes long periods of observation, seeing what might be working or not, speculating changes and possible improvements.

To oversimplify, I'd say the main difference is that photographers are looking outward while painters are looking inward. And the questions asked, be it to the print or to the painting, are quite different. To the painting the painter asks "Are you true to what I feel, to what I am, to my imagination?" while to the print the photographer asks "Are you true to what I saw, to what I felt when I saw what I saw?".

Work for each isn't done in the same timeline or time-frame. As you mentioned, for the photographer, contemplation comes before clicking the shutter. And "contemplation" doesn't need to be slow, submitted to a "long period of observation". For the photographer, who deals with moments which can be as much hours as instants, contemplation — let's get into Zen territory while we're at it — means awareness. Means being present to the here and the now, and looking. Yes, there are times, especially in landscape photography, when you have to wait for the moment — the right light, the wind to stop, someone to move out of the frame, a cloud to be in the right spot —, but that, to me, has little to do with contemplation: the thing to capture has already been seen, the decision to click the shutter has already been taken, the time just isn't quite now.

After that, the work on the print becomes one of both correspondance and interpretation. But between a print and a painting the things that can be changed are totally different. The painter can change just about everything in his painting, immensely affecting its mood, its tone, its rhythm, how it is felt, how it is received, etc. In a way, until he's finished, he's working with a canvas as blank as it was before he started applying his brush to it. He's only limited by his imagination. And for him, meaning is reached at completion.

Not so with the photographer facing the print. He is limited by the many choices he's already made, by his darkroom technique, by the limits of the medium. And for him, meaning was reached at the moment he clicked the shutter, at the moment he said "This — what I see — is important to me, means something to me."

Not saying one shouldn't look carefully and at length at one's work, that one should not come back to one's print and see what can be changed or improved. On the contrary. But I've always felt that one of the things that is wonderful about photography is that you can abandon your work for a while after working hard on it, that you can let it sit somewhere, be it in a drawer or on your wall, and one day, after weeks, months or years of forgetting about it, come back to it and naturally approach it differently because one's technique has evolved, as well as one's vision.

The one moment where I can really see contemplation necessary is when working on sequencing for a book, pinning your prints on the wall and taking a step back to see what kind of story your sequence tells.

Pieter12 · Apr 9, 2024

Alex Benjamin said:
To oversimplify, I'd say the main difference is that photographers are looking outward while painters are looking inward. And the questions asked, be it to the print or to the painting, are quite different. To the painting the painter asks "Are you true to what I feel, to what I am, to my imagination?" while to the print the photographer asks "Are you true to what I saw, to what I felt when I saw what I saw?".

Work for each isn't done in the same timeline or time-frame. As you mentioned, for the photographer, contemplation comes before clicking the shutter. And "contemplation" doesn't need to be slow, submitted to a "long period of observation". For the photographer, who deals with moments which can be as much hours as instants, contemplation — let's get into Zen territory while we're at it — means awareness. Means being present to the here and the now, and looking. Yes, there are times, especially in landscape photography, when you have to wait for the moment — the right light, the wind to stop, someone to move out of the frame, a cloud to be in the right spot —, but that, to me, has little to do with contemplation: the thing to capture has already been seen, the decision to click the shutter has already been taken, the time just isn't quite now.

After that, the work on the print becomes one of both correspondance and interpretation. But between a print and a painting the things that can be changed are totally different. The painter can change just about everything in his painting, immensely affecting its mood, its tone, its rhythm, how it is felt, how it is received, etc. In a way, until he's finished, he's working with a canvas as blank as it was before he started applying his brush to it. He's only limited by his imagination. And for him, meaning is reached at completion.

Not so with the photographer facing the print. He is limited by the many choices he's already made, by his darkroom technique, by the limits of the medium. And for him, meaning was reached at the moment he clicked the shutter, at the moment he said "This — what I see — is important to me, means something to me."

Not saying one shouldn't look carefully and at length at one's work, that one should not come back to one's print and see what can be changed or improved. On the contrary. But I've always felt that one of the things that is wonderful about photography is that you can abandon your work for a while after working hard on it, that you can let it sit somewhere, be it in a drawer or on your wall, and one day, after weeks, months or years of forgetting about it, come back to it and naturally approach it differently because one's technique has evolved, as well as one's vision.

The one moment where I can really see contemplation necessary is when working on sequencing for a book, pinning your prints on the wall and taking a step back to see what kind of story your sequence tells.

True, painting and other graphic arts do not necessarily as restricted as photography. On the other hand only so much can be done to a watercolor painting, an etching or lithograph. The one point I will disagree with is "Are you true to what I saw, to what I felt when I saw what I saw?" For me, the inital exposure is only the raw material for my art and is up for interpretation in the darkroom, having been detached from what I may have seen or felt at the moment of exposure.

cliveh · Apr 9, 2024

Alex Benjamin said:
let's get into Zen territory while we're at it — means awareness. Means being present to the here and the now, and looking.

For me printing is a skill acquired over many years and I have to think about what I'm doing. But the taking of the image is often completely devoid of thought. Total relaxation without any angst. I am merely an earthling who presses the shutter. An act that I find difficult to explain.

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2024

Pieter12 said:
For me, the inital exposure is only the raw material for my art and is up for interpretation in the darkroom

Alex Benjamin said:
After that, the work on the print becomes one of both correspondance and interpretation.

I'm pretty sure we agree, actually.

MurrayMinchin · Apr 9, 2024

I pin prints to the wall and live with them for a while...annoyances emerge with time.

The biggest hurdle is consistency between printing sessions where exposure and developing variations can mess with intentions. Once exposures are controlled with stabilization or compensating metronomes, and developing times are adjusted for temperature variations, that still leaves developer freshness/fatigue.

I came up with a developer suited to my images and a way of using factorial development where prints would be identical between printing sessions, even if they were made weeks apart and developed in new or months old developer:

12/15 Developer

I loved the look of Ansco 120 developer, and felt Ansco 130 had too much snap and sizzle for my images, but wanted the depth, richness, and keeping qualities of Glycin...so I came up with what I call; --------------------------12/15 Developer...

www.photrio.com

Pieter12 · Apr 9, 2024

MurrayMinchin said:
I pin prints to the wall and live with them for a while...annoyances emerge with time.

The biggest hurdle is consistency between printing sessions where exposure and developing variations can mess with intentions. Once exposures are controlled with stabilization or compensating metronomes, and developing times are adjusted for temperature variations, that still leaves developer freshness/fatigue.

I came up with a developer suited to my images and a way of using factorial development where prints would be identical between printing sessions, even if they were made weeks apart and developed in new or months old developer:

12/15 Developer

I loved the look of Ansco 120 developer, and felt Ansco 130 had too much snap and sizzle for my images, but wanted the depth, richness, and keeping qualities of Glycin...so I came up with what I call; --------------------------12/15 Developer...

www.photrio.com

I find that using f-stop timing and rudimentary notes, I can pretty much get consistent results. I always develop to (maybe past) completion--3 minutes--and have not seen noticeable variations printing between 16-22ºC.

MurrayMinchin · Apr 9, 2024

Pieter12 said:
I find that using f-stop timing and rudimentary notes, I can pretty much get consistent results. I always develop to (maybe past) completion--3 minutes--and have not seen noticeable variations printing between 16-22ºC.

A benefit of a glycin print developer is that darks get proportionally darker (while hardly touching high values at all) as development times are extended past a normal developing time.

MurrayMinchin · Apr 9, 2024

...and I'd keep working solutions for weeks, putting it into mylar bags (the kind boxed wine used to come in) between sessions.

Alex Benjamin · Apr 9, 2024

cliveh said:
For me printing is a skill acquired over many years and I have to think about what I'm doing. But the taking of the image is often completely devoid of thought. Total relaxation without any angst. I am merely an earthling who presses the shutter. An act that I find difficult to explain.

I wrote this in another thread on one's mental state while photographing:

Henry Cartier-Bresson talked often about how enlightening the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Herrigel was for him, and should be for photographers. Here's an excerpt from a 1974 interview:

For me, to be yourself is to be outside yourself. It's like what Herrigel describes: we reach ourselves by aiming at the target—the outside world... This book, by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach onself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.

Your mental state is key to a successful photography career, says Canon research

Your mental state is key to a successful photography career, says Canon research https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/your-mental-state-is-the-key-to-a-successful-photography-career-says-canon-research Won't say anything about the article. Curious to read how people will respond to it.

www.photrio.com

awty · Apr 9, 2024

I'm forever in the shed sitting in my contemplating chair thinking what to do. Maybe better if I did more and contemplated less.

cliveh · Apr 9, 2024

Alex Benjamin said:
I wrote this in another thread on one's mental state while photographing:

Henry Cartier-Bresson talked often about how enlightening the book Zen in the Art of Archery by Herrigel was for him, and should be for photographers. Here's an excerpt from a 1974 interview:

For me, to be yourself is to be outside yourself. It's like what Herrigel describes: we reach ourselves by aiming at the target—the outside world... This book, by Herrigel, which I discovered a few years ago, seems to me fundamental to our profession as photographers. Matisse wrote similarly about drawing: set a discipline, make rigor a rule, forget oneself completely. And in photography the attitude must be the same: detach onself, do not try to prove anything at all. My sense of freedom is the same: a frame that allows any variation. This is the basis of Zen Buddhism, the evidence: that you go in with great force and then you succeed in forgetting yourself.

Your mental state is key to a successful photography career, says Canon research

Your mental state is key to a successful photography career, says Canon research https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/your-mental-state-is-the-key-to-a-successful-photography-career-says-canon-research Won't say anything about the article. Curious to read how people will respond to it.

www.photrio.com

Exactly.

Pioneer · Apr 9, 2024

Thanks.

I don't contemplate my work as often as I should.

I commit to doing this more as Spring comes through the door. To take more time smelling the flowers and considering different compositions.

ic-racer · Apr 9, 2024

I'm not sure. I think that, at least for me, the hours of contemplation are during printing. Literaly hours for a single print.

So, yes, for a single print, I would have spent hours contemplating it. And that is just until the time before it dries. I wish I had a chair, but most of that time is on my feet.

eli griggs · Apr 9, 2024

I'm an artist, oils, acrylics watercolours, etc, as well a photographer.

In the studio, before the vertical easel, with a painting under way, I have to be able to step far back from time to time, and study the painting loosely, like a framed piece in a gallery.

No chair, I do this standing at least twice the longest diagonal of the frame/stretcher and when I'm ready, I slowly walk into the picture letting my focus drift into whatever space im drawn to.

Usually, I am picking up the entire composition and find where my eyes take me, either a good place or to a problem space.

Though I'm generally painting in one long period, which has ment sleeping in the space my studio is in, I also spend time viewing the image upside down, like a view camera or waist level finder, and if I'm slipping out for breakfast or a nap on a couch, I'll leave the picture upside down, so when I return to it, with "fresh" eyes, I don't enter the viewing path before slowly walking into it again.

For photographs, I suggest the same approach, hanging your work, up upside down, in a space that is well lighted, a North light living room or kitchen so that you can step far enough back to walk into the photograph over several days until you taken the decision on what to alter or if the piece is done.

I'll also suggest you buy some very low cost, plain design, black Walmart "Main Stays" plastic frames, and, over and over, use a white cardstock paper matt board, window for your contemplation print, and hang that framed print upside down for a more complete evaluation.

Using a digital camera or cell phone, to take images to further examine will help you decide what's right or wrong.

IMO.

Vaughn · Apr 10, 2024

While I look through my prints, most often I am contemplating negatives...medium format and up to 11x14 on a large light table. The experience of turning negatives into positives in print form has helped me to 'see' the print (positive) in the negative fairly well. Just went through a box of 8x10 B&W negatives of my boys (2000 to 2013...starting at 3 yrs old) -- marked a few for printing later on this year...quite enjoyed the walk through history as well.

It is good also to get prints finished, framed, and on the wall for a several months...if I get tired of looking at them, I can't expect anyone one else to give them much time.

Daniela · Apr 10, 2024

awty said:
I'm forever in the shed sitting in my contemplating chair thinking what to do. Maybe better if I did more and contemplated less.
View attachment 367869

There's a good point to here. Too much thinking can lead to too little doing...might that be the reason why your contemplating chair is only half-upholstered? Or is my interior decorating ignorance showing?

eli griggs said:
Using a digital camera or cell phone, to take images to further examine will help you decide what's right or wrong.

Thanks for those ideas. I also find taking a digital picture very helpful when doing a painting! There's something about seeing it smaller and on a screen that just makes the flaws very obvious.

guangong · Apr 10, 2024

Alex Benjamin said:
To oversimplify, I'd say the main difference is that photographers are looking outward while painters are looking inward. And the questions asked, be it to the print or to the painting, are quite different. To the painting the painter asks "Are you true to what I feel, to what I am, to my imagination?" while to the print the photographer asks "Are you true to what I saw, to what I felt when I saw what I saw?".

Work for each isn't done in the same timeline or time-frame. As you mentioned, for the photographer, contemplation comes before clicking the shutter. And "contemplation" doesn't need to be slow, submitted to a "long period of observation". For the photographer, who deals with moments which can be as much hours as instants, contemplation — let's get into Zen territory while we're at it — means awareness. Means being present to the here and the now, and looking. Yes, there are times, especially in landscape photography, when you have to wait for the moment — the right light, the wind to stop, someone to move out of the frame, a cloud to be in the right spot —, but that, to me, has little to do with contemplation: the thing to capture has already been seen, the decision to click the shutter has already been taken, the time just isn't quite now.

After that, the work on the print becomes one of both correspondance and interpretation. But between a print and a painting the things that can be changed are totally different. The painter can change just about everything in his painting, immensely affecting its mood, its tone, its rhythm, how it is felt, how it is received, etc. In a way, until he's finished, he's working with a canvas as blank as it was before he started applying his brush to it. He's only limited by his imagination. And for him, meaning is reached at completion.

Not so with the photographer facing the print. He is limited by the many choices he's already made, by his darkroom technique, by the limits of the medium. And for him, meaning was reached at the moment he clicked the shutter, at the moment he said "This — what I see — is important to me, means something to me."

Not saying one shouldn't look carefully and at length at one's work, that one should not come back to one's print and see what can be changed or improved. On the contrary. But I've always felt that one of the things that is wonderful about photography is that you can abandon your work for a while after working hard on it, that you can let it sit somewhere, be it in a drawer or on your wall, and one day, after weeks, months or years of forgetting about it, come back to it and naturally approach it differently because one's technique has evolved, as well as one's vision.

The one moment where I can really see contemplation necessary is when working on sequencing for a book, pinning your prints on the wall and taking a step back to see what kind of story your sequence tells.

Ditto!

Pieter12 said:
True, painting and other graphic arts do not necessarily as restricted as photography. On the other hand only so much can be done to a watercolor painting, an etching or lithograph. The one point I will disagree with is "Are you true to what I saw, to what I felt when I saw what I saw?" For me, the inital exposure is only the raw material for my art and is up for interpretation in the darkroom, having been detached from what I may have seen or felt at the moment of exposure.

Besides photography, I do etching, lithography, painting, and marble carving. Etching and lithography allow for a great deal of manipulation and modification until desired result is achieved…much, much more than is possible with photography. Even carving marble is not completely set in stone, as one might think. Water colors are trickier, but possible.
What is difficult, because photography deals with found objects (except for set up still lifes…which I find boring) is dynamic composition. Still, photography has other charms that differ from the plastic arts.

VinceInMT · Apr 10, 2024

The benefits of slowing down to contemplate what we do extends to many/most areas of our lives. For example, paying attention and planning while cooking or woodworking can prevent injuries. How much time one spends contemplating before capturing an image with photography depends on whether the image is static or not. One of the things that has allowed me to practice the “slowing down” in capturing an image is drawing/watercoloring on location. When I’m out doing an urban sketch of a local scene, I’m usually there for 2 hours or so making decisions about what to include and what to leave out as I do the initial drawing. Some of that has impacted how I photograph, sort of training me to take in the details and think about how the image will be rendered on film.

Like others have said, I do tend to work on a single negative over time. Prints will hang in the darkroom or elsewhere and eventually tell me what they need for the next iteration.

Pioneer · Apr 10, 2024

Some of my work prints never make it to the bulletin board. Some go up and last less than a day. Others go up and stay there for awhile. I have one up now that has been there for about a month but that is kind of unusual. The last print that stayed there for an extended time was a square print and everytime I thought I had decided what to do with it I would change my mind.

It ended up staying square.

The ones that typically cause me the most trouble are color prints. I guess that is why I don't work with color very often.

But I have no easy chair that I can relax in while I contemplate my prints. Maybe that is the secret sauce that I'm missing.

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