where does technique end and creativity begin ?

blockend · Jul 6, 2018

It depends what you mean by technique. Bert Hardy shot a Picture Post story on a box camera to prove it isn't the camera that makes the picture. He's normally pictured with a Contax. Some people go to a gallery and are knocked out by a photograph. Other people press their nose to the glass and wonder whether it's printed on toned bromide paper and shot with a Leitz lens. Reductionists reduce. Everything.

removed account4 · Jul 6, 2018

blockend said:
It depends what you mean by technique. Bert Hardy shot a Picture Post story on a box camera to prove it isn't the camera that makes the picture. He's normally pictured with a Contax. Some people go to a gallery and are knocked out by a photograph. Other people press their nose to the glass and wonder whether it's printed on toned bromide paper and shot with a Leitz lens. Reductionists reduce. Everything.

thank you for posting this

Arthurwg · Jul 6, 2018

The painter Eugene Delacroix , in a very un- pic way of expression, had the essential idea correct. He noted that there were many great female writers all the way back into antiquity but no great women painters. His explanation: the process of writing is linear with one element following another, but painting required that subject, composition, color, drawing, size, emotion, etc, etc. all be done simultaneously and was just to difficult for women..[/QUOTE]

He was wrong, of course.

Berkeley Mike · Jul 6, 2018

Are" techniques" measuring the light, setting the aperture/shutter speed/ISO, and focus, and pressing the shutter? The dictionary offers circular definitions that beg themselves. What are "techniques," anyhow? Is a setting on a machine a technique?

I was at a gallery and struck up a casual chat with another viewer. He was elder, say late 70s, and was wearing what I call the photographers outfit; multi-pocket photo vest, light meter (like a watch on a fob) AND a loupe (another fob), khakis and sensible shoes. We were admiring an image and he started describing the lines in the image to analyze it. I said, "I don't see any lines, I just experience balance,"; I compose from the gut. He insisted that there were lines to be seen underpinning the composition. I told him very clearly that there were no lines except those he was imagining. He needed to reduce understanding to something measurable by an abstract idea. I bet he studied "techniques".

I guess my self-teaching, the mechanics of the camera, understanding what goes in the frame and how dark or light things should be, doesn't consider technique. There is just the doing. It may be that, while I can tech-up, get all sciency, and do data analysis with the best of them, that has always been in the background. I have well-developed pathways for that sort of thing. It is even genetic if you look at my parents and grandfather. Grampa, who was a goatherd, gathered and cut driftwood on the Berkeley mud flats, selling it in the windy bayside Oceanview neighborhood in the 20s & 30s. He made chicken and rabbit hutches and sheds without a measuring tape or square. He just made them.

Back in the 90s I presided over the Photo Department's Technical Advisory Board at the invitation of a former instructor. I wondered aloud that one either was a photographer or not. I wondered about teaching people in spite of their proclivities. As I spent more time teaching than shooting, working directly with the modalities of photography and students, I saw that there were certain students who were simply naturals. After they learned the mechanical basics they just went out and shot and produced wonderful work. Vision, talent, confidence seem to blow past abstracts.

So, maybe, techniques may be less critical for some than others and ends pretty early in the productive process. Natural facilities or pure experience can appear to operate without techniques.

jtk · Jul 7, 2018

Photographic success doesn't imply creativity any more than pianistic success does. Lots of beautiful works are made by highly accomplished (fill in blank).

Sirius Glass · Jul 7, 2018

One sees the composition, chooses the viewing location, frames the image and all of those are creativity. The technique is focusing and setting the filters, if any, lens hood, and he exposure, all of which are technique. However some of the exposure may entail creativity. These are general guidelines and they can vary. This being the internet, some will go on for many posts beating their gums. Enjoy.

DREW WILEY · Jul 7, 2018

What a ridiculous question to begin with! When does a driver take his eye off the road, or hand off the steering wheel? Visualization and craft go hand in hand the whole distance; otherwise neither come to fruition. I'm sick of the very word, "creativity" - might as well be a synonym for "pretense". Real creativity doesn't need to be obsessed either about itself or about what some airhead curator or gallery owner might think while slowly sinking in the inevitable muck of the latest fad (there are some sharp curators too; but you get the point). Just do it.

Berkeley Mike · Jul 8, 2018

Creativity must endure its mitigation by techniques.

removed account4 · Jul 8, 2018

DREW WILEY said:
What a ridiculous question to begin with!

not really

removed account4 · Jul 8, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
One sees the composition, chooses the viewing location, frames the image and all of those are creativity. The technique is focusing and setting the filters, if any, lens hood, and he exposure, all of which are technique. However some of the exposure may entail creativity. These are general guidelines and they can vary. This being the internet, some will go on for many posts beating their gums. Enjoy.

composition is technique and has nothing to with creativity

eddie · Jul 8, 2018

I think they're intertwined like strands of DNA. Creativity without technique has no purpose. Technique without creativity has no purpose. Improvements in one area can lead to, or require, improvements in the other. It's a chicken and egg thing...

Sirius Glass · Jul 8, 2018

jnanian said:
composition is technique and has nothing to with creativity

NO

removed account4 · Jul 8, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
NO

YES

rule of thirds
center weighted
worms eye
birds eye
raking
yadda yadda
rules=technique

Sirius Glass · Jul 8, 2018

jnanian said:
YES

rule of thirds
center weighted
worms eye
birds eye
raking
yadda yadda
rules=technique

Those are guidelines but they are not what composition is about. Composition is about balance, flow, diagonals, ... which may or may not be used for any particular composition. Composition is not about rules.

removed account4 · Jul 8, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
Those are guidelines but they are not what composition is about. Composition is about balance, flow, diagonals, ... which may or may not be used for any particular composition. Composition is not about rules.

tell that to people who endlessly talk about rules of composition you don't need to go far...
to many ( maybe not YOU ) they are technique and have nothing at all to do with creativity.
its part of a mantra that is chanted ... rule of thirds, diagonals, flow center weighted here we go

jtk · Jul 9, 2018

The OT refers to "creativity".

Creativity is a noun referring to something that exists independently.

Some photographers produce beauty without creativity. Some of photography's most creative work is intentionally unattractive.

nmp · Jul 9, 2018

jnanian said:
tell that to people who endlessly talk about rules of composition you don't need to go far...
to many ( maybe not YOU ) they are technique and have nothing at all to do with creativity.
its part of a mantra that is chanted ... rule of thirds, diagonals, flow center weighted here we go

Composition becomes "creative" when you know the rules and still decide to break them for a purpose. Or something like that.

Berkeley Mike · Jul 9, 2018

jnanian said:
composition is technique and has nothing to with creativity

I disagree. I compose in response to a vision, not a technique. I have to teach people techniques who do not naturally compose well. I won't have my innate abilities attributed to techniques.

Berkeley Mike · Jul 9, 2018

jnanian said:
YES

rule of thirds
center weighted
worms eye
birds eye
raking
yadda yadda
rules=technique

I use none of these.

Sirius Glass · Jul 9, 2018

jnanian said:
tell that to people who endlessly talk about rules of composition you don't need to go far...
to many ( maybe not YOU ) they are technique and have nothing at all to do with creativity.
its part of a mantra that is chanted ... rule of thirds, diagonals, flow center weighted here we go

You are stating that creativity can be reduced to technical algorithms which it cannot. Nor is creativity as set of rules that can be built into a rule based system. You are just wrong on this.

Sirius Glass · Jul 9, 2018

Berkeley Mike said:
I disagree. I compose in response to a vision, not a technique. I have to teach people techniques who do not naturally compose well. I won't have my innate abilities attributed to techniques.

Very will stated. Thank you.

Sirius Glass · Jul 9, 2018

Berkeley Mike said:
I use none of these.

And yet you are creative which disproves jnanian's proclamations.

Berkeley Mike · Jul 9, 2018

That IS my position. In order to teach it i have to deconstruct what I do naturally.
Watching Tour de France. Is pedaling a technique? Is standing out of the saddle to accelerate or climb a technique? Is using all the muscles in your legs a technique? Are drinking water, taking electrolytes, eating before, during and after the stage techniques?

NJH · Jul 9, 2018

We don't really know what the creative spark is, it could be something that bubbles up from our subconscious, it could be an abstract high level thought process that just manifests itself in between thoughts and emotions. Unless someone can actually say what it in terms of neuro-science or psychoanalysis or something, arguing about it is a pretty fruitless endeavour.

removed account4 · Jul 9, 2018

what i am gettting at is that for some people it is sheer technique...
and for some it is not.
one problem with forum threads like this is people who are technique driven
get all bent out of shape and visa versa .. if one is happy with their results, whatever works works ..
i certainly don't care if someone makes photographs without a map, or if the whole thing is an excercise of the hinge theory
but there is a point when it is subconscious and not a technique..
and that is what i was getting at .. is there a specific time or instance where this happens.

where does technique end and creativity begin ?

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