Photographing chaos - Strategies?

Some thoughts by Gueorgui Pinkhassov which could be relevant in this context:

"a thought crossed my mind: perhaps in photography, there is no such thing as composition. Perhaps there is, instead, a decisive point in space—just like Cartier-Bresson’s decisive moment in time. If the decisive moment masters time, then the decisive point governs space. And the photographer’s role is to find it—through the lens—and react in that fleeting instant. In painting, the ancestor of photography, you arrange the elements to create composition. In photography, to remain faithful to the flow of life, you seek that elusive point."

Daniela said:

Yesterday, I went to a carnival/fair/not sure what the right name is. I went with the intention of photographing one particular attraction and got that done. However, as I walked through the rest, overwhelmed by the sensory overload from colors, smells and sounds, I couldn't take any more pictures and that left me frustrated. I know there's a way to organize that chaos (isn't that what we do every time we lift the camera?), but I just couldn't find my way through it.

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Looks like you attended the carnival for a reason and goal was met ("and got that done."). Now, maybe you could not find a common thread in what you saw around you and lost interest in the chaos surrounding you. Not something uncommon if it was not what you were prepared for. To me, the only recipe is to convey an idea (or to try to) on what you shoot regardless the gear (choice of film, camera or lens) and stick to it. Will you succeed or not, time will tell after you print your negs.

Daniela said:

Yesterday, I went to a carnival/fair/not sure what the right name is. I went with the intention of photographing one particular attraction and got that done. However, as I walked through the rest, overwhelmed by the sensory overload from colors, smells and sounds, I couldn't take any more pictures and that left me frustrated. I know there's a way to organize that chaos (isn't that what we do every time we lift the camera?), but I just couldn't find my way through it.

I just attended a Stephen Shore's class and the way he spoke about the importance of taking time, really observing and composing, finding the "grammar" of making an image, etc was enlightening. Still, I couldn't quite figure it out "in the wild".

What strategies have you found useful for dealing with complex scenes like that? Another aspect of it is that I don't find all that plasticky stuff beautiful to begin with, but that's exactly why I'd like to take on that challenge!

Thanks for sharing any thoughts or advice

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Daniela,

first of all, it strikes me that it's great that you achieved your original goal. You could have gone home satisfied after that. But you didn't. That leads me to my first question: why not?

You write that you then walked through the other attractions. What was your motivation for doing so? My second question for you. From your description, I assume that you wanted to take more photos. What were your expectations?

My third question: Why exactly were you frustrated when you couldn't take any more photos?

Finally, I wonder what the challenge was that you wanted to face.

If you would please answer these questions, I will try to give you some answers. At the moment, I'm not sure if this is really about complexity or even its ultimate increase, chaos.

Thomas

Great examples but in the context of photographing chaos I will stand by my advice.
If there are indeed two principal subjects within a single photograph, then that photograph should be able to be cropped into two different equally good photographs.
Here, the presentation of possible exceptions strengthens the rule of thumb.

gary mulder​

A single point of interest is too easy.


IMOP not necessarily. Sometimes more than one "subject" work together ie juxtapositions.


Arms and Legs

ABOUT | JEFFREY GLASSER
http://www.sculptureandphotography,com/

Details and isolated subjects are easy. It is the chaos that is the challenge. Try to capture it.

Pieter12
Would you have taken the one above if the girl in the middle didn’t have her finger in her mouth? Nice

jeffreyg said:

Pieter12
Would you have taken the one above if the girl in the middle didn’t have her finger in her mouth? Nice

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I did take others. Having a subject to focus your attention helps. The chaos is still apparent, but your eye has something to rest on. The other shots have a similar focal point, but the fact that the young woman is centered and her action stands out in this one, making it better.

I like photos where all the extraneous detail threatens to overwhelm the purported single subject.
Jeff Wall comes to mind:

The Arms and Legs I posted was at a large square in Salzburg during a folkloric festival. There were at least two or three hundred people most of them in marching bands as well as horse drawn wagons. I guess you could consider that it was organised chaos.

MattKing said:

I like photos where all the extraneous detail threatens to overwhelm the purported single subject.

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'Threatens' - maybe in the sense that there's a lot going on in the photo beyond the single human figure that's assumed to be the subject. But in reality - no. I like what @gary mulder said earlier about visual logic. In all their complexity (and thanks to their complexity), the examples you've shown by Wall have an absolutely rock-solid visual logic. This logic does not depend on isolation of the subject - to the contrary, it exists by the grace of a seemingly random collection of items throughout the image frame, that on closer examination form a virtually unbreakable chain of linked image elements.

That rug really tied the room together.
- Donny

Pieter12 said:

Embrace the chaos. Shoot wide angle (very wide if you can, like 21mm). Get close, be part of it.

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The danger with a 21mm lens is that it removes or diminishes the details at a distance.

If the chaos is too intrusive, put the lens cap on and put your effort in to enjoying the environment.

koraks said:

'Threatens' - maybe in the sense that there's a lot going on in the photo beyond the single human figure that's assumed to be the subject. But in reality - no. I like what @gary mulder said earlier about visual logic. In all their complexity (and thanks to their complexity), the examples you've shown by Wall have an absolutely rock-solid visual logic. This logic does not depend on isolation of the subject - to the contrary, it exists by the grace of a seemingly random collection of items throughout the image frame, that on closer examination form a virtually unbreakable chain of linked image elements.

That rug really tied the room together.
- Donny

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This made me smile - particularly when I thought about one of @koraks recent posts in the "A picture a day" thread
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/a-picture-a-day.212171/page-4#post-2891846
I will agree though that Wall is particularly talented at imposing some visual logic on the chaotic - particularly in the wall sized backlit transparencies that are the chosen mode of presentation he favours/favoured for his best known work.

Sirius Glass said:

The danger with a 21mm lens is that it removes or diminishes the details at a distance.

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And? The benefit of the 21 is that it includes much more of the chaos to begin with.

Pieter12 said:

And? The benefit of the 21 is that it includes much more of the chaos to begin with.

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And each piece unless the main dominant item is greatly reduced in size. When I got my first 21mm lens and took wide angle photographs of red rock scenery, all the detail and beauty almost vanished.

Sirius Glass said:

And each piece unless the main dominant item is greatly reduced in size. When I got my first 21mm lens and took wide angle photographs of red rock scenery, all the detail and beauty almost vanished.

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Thus chaos.

How do you feel about a pocket flask? A little Dutch courage... Seriously though...sometimes you just have to push through. I was in Norway in April. I am not wild about heights, (like the looking down part)...and it can kind of wear on me. Nevertheless, sometimes you just have to push your envelope and make it a little bigger. This is Rampestreken...a steep hike in Andalsnes. This is the Ramp(e) that juts out over a steep drop. The floor at the end is a grate so you can look straight down when you are at the end of the ramp. Well...I got this far.. Then continued another 200m up (steep) to the gondola. In hindsight I probably could have gone out on the ramp a bit more...next time. PS: Prekestolen was a few days later...there were some kind of scary parts but I figured that if little kids and small dogs could do it I could too. You can do it.

Historically, carnivals fostered a liminal, otherworldly atmosphere where the normal order of things was overturned. A peasant acted as king for a day, and the king a peasant. Participants wore outlandish costumes and masks that allowed them to take on different personas. The local art museum featured an exhibit of rock posters of the 1960s that represents that sensibility. I like to use methods that evoke that surreal ambiance, such as by cross-processing film.

https://www.oregonlive.com/entertai...aphic-bravura-to-the-portland-art-museum.html
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tjwspm said:

Daniela,

first of all, it strikes me that it's great that you achieved your original goal. You could have gone home satisfied after that. But you didn't. That leads me to my first question: why not?

You write that you then walked through the other attractions. What was your motivation for doing so? My second question for you. From your description, I assume that you wanted to take more photos. What were your expectations?

My third question: Why exactly were you frustrated when you couldn't take any more photos?

Finally, I wonder what the challenge was that you wanted to face.

If you would please answer these questions, I will try to give you some answers. At the moment, I'm not sure if this is really about complexity or even its ultimate increase, chaos.

Thomas

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Hi Thomas,
the lack of satisfaction has to do with not being able to photographically understand how to make sense of the scene. In general, I like to take pictures of things that are a little "off" and that setting offers a lot of that! Yet, I just couldn't make it work. Confusing...or not, maybe there's too much "off" Maybe that's what it's about: what I like is to take a random every day scene and find that little off that stands out...but if there's too much weirdness, there's not much to counteract it and make it "manageable"....hmmm....yet, I like challenges and the possibilities they bring!

Thanks all for your comments. I'm reading and taking them in even if I don't get to reply individually!

I like to tackle chaos with a ultra wide angel. (14-19mm) It give’s me the possibility to get what I think is the most important element in the picture prominent in the image. Other elements will get suppressed. Or bits sprinkled on top of that as you call it. A line will be big most of the time with a ultra wide. For the last 5-7 years I do not make street photography. Because ethical en legal reasons. So I have no resent examples. But landscape can present the same challenges.

With 19mm

By saying chaos I believe you mean the colorful urban life of big cities.
Most photographers do the trick of using black as absence of information to draw the attention to the things you want to show. Others use bleach or AI to remove stuff post processing. Others shoot with a high MPx camera and then rely on aggressive cropping so their image is constructed afterwords. Others try to fit all things together in one image mostly unsuccessfully.

Personally I stay away from it
And especially trying to photograph a carnival is a game lost before you start play. You can never make any image other than a simple folklore depiction of an event with tremendous visual noise.
The simpler the better. The less things inside your frame the more powerful your image will be

I forgot to mention also the creative use of blurring (larger aperture)
In the past also due to technical limitations of the lenses this technique was mastered.Today with the perfect sharp lenses I don't see it so much anymore

Daniela said:

Hi Thomas,
the lack of satisfaction has to do with not being able to photographically understand how to make sense of the scene. In general, I like to take pictures of things that are a little "off" and that setting offers a lot of that! Yet, I just couldn't make it work. Confusing...or not, maybe there's too much "off" Maybe that's what it's about: what I like is to take a random every day scene and find that little off that stands out...but if there's too much weirdness, there's not much to counteract it and make it "manageable"....hmmm....yet, I like challenges and the possibilities they bring!

Thanks all for your comments. I'm reading and taking them in even if I don't get to reply individually!

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Why instead of trying to find sth "off" in an everyday scene don't you try to find sth which is perfectly on and by your lens you make it then sth "off"?
This is the real challenge in my opinion and the power of photography to transform the reality to your own reality.

By starting with sth which is already "off" it needs a lot of "guts" or "experience" to show it in a way that is beyond the obvious quirkiness of sth which is off. I don't know if you get me...

nikos79 said:

By saying chaos I believe you mean the colorful urban life of big cities.

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I disagree that 'colorful' or 'urban' is somehow an inherent part of chaos in a photographic sense. I think the discussion can (and should) be understood to encompass also chaos that is not necessarily colorful or even perfectly monochrome, and that exists regardless of social context (i.e. it can be entirely natural).

nikos79 said:

Most photographers do the trick of using black as absence of information to draw the attention to the things you want to show. Others use bleach or AI to remove stuff post processing. Others shoot with a high MPx camera and then rely on aggressive cropping so their image is constructed afterwords. Others try to fit all things together in one image mostly unsuccessfully.

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You left out the important category that among others @gary mulder is referring to and that @MattKing showed some excellent examples of. I think that's the category that in the context of @Daniela's question is the most relevant one. I base this on a distinction that I think can be drawn between two broader categories of strategies to cope with 'chaos'. The first category relates to the strategies your refer to, and that I would summarize as attempts to reduce the chaos to a simpler form, specifically by isolating a small subset from the chaotic situation that no longer represents the original chaos. The second category is one in which the photographer attempts to capture the chaos in such a way that it retains the complexity of the original scene, but makes the chaos seem more logical and therefore more palatable to the viewer.

It's the second category that piques my interest and that I feel should at least not be excluded from the discusson, and probably (for the record: my conviction, on personal, non-moderator title) is a good candidate to be made the central focus of the discussion. My reasoning is that the former class of strategies effectively attempts to negate the original chaos in order to come to a solution - which results, critically put, in a bypass or workaround at best. The cynic in me would argue that if this route is chosen, one might as well not seek out the chaotic scene in the first place and stick to more serene settings that lend themselves to inherently more quiet and simple compositions.

W.r.t. the second (IMO more relevant) category, I struggle a bit in formulating what it intends to achieve - I've settled for something I'm not entirely happy with, i.e. to make "the chaos seem more logical and therefore more palatable to the viewer". this is inherently problematic, and perhaps therefore also quite interesting, because what is palatable depends on the viewer. This carries the potential for enormous individual variance in it, as well as the influences of cultural programming. Why this is 'quite interesting' is that the appreciation of works of e.g. Wall (see @MattKing's post) prove that despite this evident variance in personal taste, will and ability to comprehend or simply patience to look at a busy photo, there is some degree of universality to compositional patterns that are appreciated. Trying to understand (perhaps intuitively more so than academically) such patterns is one of those fascinating aspects that make rare threads like this one potentially quite interesting. Provided we pick up the glove - and recognize it's a glove in the first place.

That second category is exactly what I was just contemplating as I was reviewing this thread and composing a now erased post. My focus was on @Pieter12 ’s photo where on first glance it looks chaotic yet there’s really only one element to really focus on… and it perfectly characterizes that chaos. Context and conclusion in the same frame.