What is "Visualization"?

[ChristopherCoy]

Yes, that's a serious question.

Uncle Adams generally defines visualization as what you saw or felt. Well, if I see a purple flower and think it's pretty, then what I saw was a purple flower that I thought was pretty. Is that visualization?

Or is visualization trying to picture what shade of gray the purple flower is going to reproduced as in a black and white print?

Or, is visualization trying to see the flower, determine what shade of gray the flower is going to reproduced as, and deciding whether you'll vignette the print and increase the contrast between the grass behind the flower, and the flower itself?

Or is ALL of that combined visualization? Or is NONE of it visualization?

I've left some of these out for y'all to write down your explanations. It's the only way I can understand things.

 

[Horatio]

Eagerly awaiting responses. I’m glad you’re here to ask questions for me.

 

[ChristopherCoy]

Eagerly awaiting responses. I’m glad you’re here to ask questions for me.

My 4th grade teacher referred to me as "the questioneer".

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Ansel Adams' exact definition of visualization is the following : The process of "seeing" the final print while viewing the subject. With practice, the photographer can anticipate the various influences of each stage of photographic procedure, and incorporate these intuitively in visualizing the final image. (quote from Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs).

In other words, for him, it had everything to do with process and the choices you make through each stages (film, filter, exposure, developer, development time, paper, etc.). I think the "what you saw or felt" is misleading if you don't take that into account.

One must always remember that Ansel Adams' basic artistic training was that of a musician (he wanted to be a concert pianist). He thought of visualization in the manner of a composer: you can hear the piece in your head but it doesn't exist until you've decided the instrumentation, put it down on paper and have it performed (he himself often used that analogy, comparing the negative to the written score).

Personally, I know I'll never reach Adams' level of craftsmanship, but I find it a good ideal to strive for - or maybe I just feel some correspondance because I have the same musical background as he did.

 

[DWThomas]

In a quick pass, I think of visualization as picking a framed area around a subject guided largely by compositional considerations. What do I want to emphasize. Although contrast and color could no doubt affect that process. "Rule of thirds" or "Guideline of thirds" in my world , and those sorts of thoughts.

 

[MattKing]

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Visualization is fine. But you have to snap the picture.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

It's everything that you mentioned. And then there's post visualisation...

 

[Vaughn]

Visualization is knowing one's tools and process, and then being able to use that knowledge to create.

I would use the word 'conceptualization' if I wished to extend the same concept of visualization as a general term to cover all the arts.

I assume that those photographers who do not consider themselves as artists nor their work as art really have little use for visualization, and can happily keep to the technical side of photography and do good work. AA was an artist and approached and taught photography as an art form and as an artist (as did Minor White)...so of course conceptualization becomes an important part of their process.

 

[pentaxuser]

It's everything that you mentioned. And then there's post visualisation...

Is that what occurs when Big Jim McKay sees Charlie as a large chicken and then finds a handy axe

pentaxuser

 

[Maris]

Visualisation is photographing everything mentally.
After enough practice at exposing film and making photographs in the darkroom the connection between what you see, what you do, and what you get becomes pretty obvious and reliable.
In most cases the result of visualisation is a decision that the subject is not worth the expense and effort of the 'see-do-get" cycle. But when the subject is worth the pursuit good visualisation will ensure a high percentage of keepers.
In effect editing photographs before taking them rather than after.

 

[VinceInMT]

I am a formalist. Form is everything. Once I have that, I can piddle away hours in the darkroom getting everything else I want.

 

[Down Under]

An easy one, this. It's how one sees the scenes in one's eye and mind before one takes a film/digital image of it. Academic rant ended.

As an architect (happily retired from the hurdy-gurdy of designing office interiors for governments), I think in grids. I am obsessed with keeping my verticals verticals and I let the horizontals and everything else go their own way and look after themselves. Of late I have been playing with my wide-angle lenses and examining how those verticals react when I tilt and turn my cameras at various buildings I have been photographing for a long time now (too long in fact, but that is entirely another story).

Another part of my visualising I dislike in myself is my obsession with not getting anything I do not want in the corners and sides of my photos. Most Nikons do not give 100% views unless you use the back screen on digitals which I almost never do. Cigarette butts, odd-looking stones and the glut of consumer detritus people throw away all tend to sneak into the edges of my photos and as I dislike doing too much post-processing when I play with my images on a laptop, this is annoying. So I try to overcompensate when I shoot. This can be annoying to me. But I persevere.

I also have a tendency to shoot too many landscapes and townscapes a la Ansel Adams, which to my mind was a fun fad in the 1960s to the 1980s but has now mercifully declined to a minimum.

recently I discovered the joy of using a 20/2.8 D Nikkor for extreme views. I recently resisted the urge to buy a 16/2.8 Nikkor, partly as I already have a '20' and thought the two lenses were too close (I now realise I was wrong about this), partly as I did not want to spend A$850 for only one lens, and largely as the '16 'did not come with the back filters it originally sold with. Someone else snapped it up a few days later (yes, I did go back to the shop for it). I now fantasise about all the wonderful artistic images I could have made with it. So it goes. Life is like that. Lost moments.

Visualisation, style, technique. Nice terms to bandy about. Fun. A much better word.

 

[Bill Burk]

Everything said so far is right.

Taken literally, it’s thinking in advance how the different subject luminance readings will appear on the print.

And knowing that once you place any one reading on any particular print Zone (shadow on Zone III for example), then other readings will fall according to their luminance.

You can compress and expand the scale by placing a second luminance value above or below the Zone it would fall Normally... the number of Zones and direction you move the second reading determines your development times ( N+1, N+2 etc).

After you place two readings and determine your N development notation.

Then, visualizing entails exploring all the luminance values of the scene and getting that mental image how it will turn out in the print.

 

[awty]

I am visualising you lying back on an ornate french chaise lounge upholsted with maroon velvet, while wearing a yellow silk robe, holding a large cuban cigar in one hand and purple flower with its stem pushed into a nostril, a slightly illuminated cream curtain behind you. Head tilted back like you are a vase for a pretty purple flower.
Then if I took a photo it would be a visualised photograph.

 

[Don_ih]

It's essentially a rewording of an older concept in aesthetics, "ideation" - essentially, the artist's activity is mediating his or her idea of the final work of art through his or her chosen medium into reality. That involves knowing the capabilities and limitations of your tools, materials and, also, your own abilities.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I don't have a darkroom. How do you visualize using color? How do you visualize using BW but not develop or print yourself?

 

[ChristopherCoy]

I am visualising you lying back on an ornate french chaise lounge upholsted with maroon velvet, while wearing a yellow silk robe, holding a large cuban cigar in one hand and purple flower with its stem pushed into a nostril, a slightly illuminated cream curtain behind you. Head tilted back like you are a vase for a pretty purple flower.
Then if I took a photo it would be a visualised photograph.

That french chaise, is a lawn chair, and that silk robe is probably a pair of jersey knit sport shorts. I also don't smoke.

 

[BrianShaw]

How do you visualize using BW but not develop or print yourself?

Is the ancient art of marking up proofs now forgotten?

 

[SrMi]

Interesting opinion by Michael Kenna:
"I don’t consider previsualization to be something particularly worth striving for. In fact, I really liked something I read by Ray Metzker who equated it with constipation. However, if anyone does enough serious photography previsualization is an inevitable destination."

 

[BrianShaw]

Visualisation is photographing everything mentally. ... In effect editing photographs before taking them rather than after.

Period. Amen.

 

[removed account4]

Christopher

think of visualization as knowing your "stuff" ( camera, film printing developing ) well enough that you have a pretty good idea what will happen

 

[Alex Benjamin]

I am visualising you lying back on an ornate french chaise lounge upholsted with maroon velvet, while wearing a yellow silk robe, holding a large cuban cigar in one hand and purple flower with its stem pushed into a nostril, a slightly illuminated cream curtain behind you. Head tilted back like you are a vase for a pretty purple flower.
Then if I took a photo it would be a visualised photograph.

I'm pretty sure you just visualized Arthur Rubinstein. With a tux instead of the silk robe, but still.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Well, you can still visualize as much as you want. Visualization is nothing more than imagining. Producing an end product that “matches” or somehow fulfills the visualization is another matter. Usually you need some kind of control over the output in order to do that. Either darkroom printing or image editing in software, or some combination of these. If you shoot film but don’t do darkroom work, scan the negatives or positives and edit in software. Don’t worry too much about whether or not you process the film yourself as this is a relatively minor consideration in the contexts of visualization and control (despite what many would have you believe).

Maybe I'm missing something. But every photographer looks at a scene, especially landscapes like I shoot, and see something they want to shoot in reality. OF course, you move around to get the best framing and maybe wait for the best lighting. But that's all caught in the picture. There really isn't much for me to do past that point especially with color chromes. Of course, I can scan them and make some edits. But that improvement is best seen while editing. What do you see on your head that you don't see in your viewfinder?

 

[MattKing]

Maybe I'm missing something. But every photographer looks at a scene, especially landscapes like I shoot, and see something they want to shoot in reality. OF course, you move around to get the best framing and maybe wait for the best lighting. But that's all caught in the picture. There really isn't much for me to do past that point especially with color chromes. Of course, I can scan them and make some edits. But that improvement is best seen while editing. What do you see on your head that you don't see in your viewfinder?

I see a projected image on a screen.
As you use a TV screen to present yours, you need to visualize the results presented in that manner.
Some subjects are difficult to present well in the forms available to us - shapes that don't fit well on a screen, lighting conditions that cause problems, objects in the scene that obscure and distract - there are a myriad of factors that cause us to think something like" "yes that will look good as a "straight" photograph", "no I can't see any way to make a good photograph of that", or "yes I can make a good photograph of that if I use techniques A), B) and C) while in the darkroom/post processing".
No matter what you do, you are translating the original scene into a final photographic product. Or you decide not to do so. In each case though, you are visualizing the results, when you decide to trip the shutter.
Some don't visualize at the time of exposure. They just "capture" at that time. They don't bring visualization into the process until they are evaluating the "captures".
I prefer not to work that way.