Why it's so easy to shoot rocks

Bill Burk · Sep 23, 2014

Andreas Feininger explained a philosophy of photography, in which Black and white photographs deprive their subjects of three of their most important qualities - color, three-dimensionality and motion.

Absence of these qualities in the subject, makes such subjects so much easier to photograph since fewer of their characteristics will be lacking in the picture.

I don't think he was trying to make the point that landscape photography is easy. But it struck me as I read that passage... that it might explain why I so much love black and white landscape photography. For the print of a rock "only" loses its three-dimensionality. As a subject it doesn't have movement to lose. Granite might literally be black and white to start with. So a print feels very close to the original scene to me.

I think I understand more now why I am so satisfied with a print of a rock.

Ken Nadvornick · Sep 23, 2014

FWIW, the kind and very, very patient people who live in cemeteries harbor all three of those same qualities, which helps explain why it's so easy to photograph them as well.

(Their three-dimensionality in life being effectively reduced to the two dimensions of that final inscription on their headstone, which is all we can now see of them.)

They are by nature an extremely cooperative lot in front of the camera...

Ken

NedL · Sep 23, 2014

Hi Bill, Carry your stereographic camera to racetrack playa

and make a chromoskedasic print!

Bill Burk · Sep 23, 2014

I see your point Ken, time to contemplate your next move. I photographed a grave that looked like a chessboard, but don't think I carried it off.

Saw the story about moving rocks. That would be so cool to have a time-exposure shot from the playa the day they move, and with the rock blurred.

Roger Cole · Sep 23, 2014

Well I've found rocks and trees agreeable subjects because they don't move and they aren't fickle about how they look in the final result. Both endear them to me compared to photos with those unpredictably moving, disagreeable, argumentative and generally chaotic homo sapiens.

analoguey · Sep 23, 2014

I dont understand what this means - are you being sarcastic?

darkosaric · Sep 23, 2014

I was reading about Koudelka and his project "Wall" - he was saying that he likes panoramas now (between other things) because he is getting old, he can not run fast after the people as before .

wildbill · Sep 23, 2014

I love me some rocks.

removed account4 · Sep 23, 2014

bill

there are ways of manipulating the camera ( time based photography ) where
the images aren't static but there is a record of time that exists, whether it is through
portrait making, architectural or landscape (rocks) subjects.
while black and white images lack color, sometimes we are able to add colors in our minds eye
( landscape for example) where the subject matter is so familiar that it isn't hard to imagine and make
the photograph more than just a metaphor, because that is pretty much what all photography ( color or black and white )
ends up being ... it is removed from context and a scene that "looks like" or "is" something else
and it doesn't matter if it is that thing or not because the viewer always brings their experience to it.
many years ago i showed a composite print of asphalt and reeds to a friend. she looked at it and
asked me when i was in missisippi because that is where she was from, because the image looked exactly like bullrushes of cotton.
i had never been to mississippi and i have never seen bullrushes of cotton ( then or now )
it didn't matter what it actually was because at that point, it wasn't.

Richard S. (rich815) · Sep 23, 2014

Berkeley Marina Shorebird Park Rolleiflex3-5E Planar Neopan400 HC-110dilH 7min 21C 2010-12 VSmac 9000 Scan-101230-0003 by rich8155 (Richard Sintchak), on Flickr

aRolleiBrujo · Sep 23, 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTOwMeimSl4

Richard S. (rich815) · Sep 23, 2014

The pioneers used to ride these babies for miles!

Bill Burk · Sep 23, 2014

No, not sarcastic at all. I have long felt that sense of having captured the essence of... a rock. While capturing the essence of a flower or sunset (which depends so much on color) has been more elusive.

I think Andreas Feininger set up a philosophy which helps me understand why.

ntenny · Sep 23, 2014

Hmm. I tend to think that photos of rocks typically are "photos for photographers"; with a few exceptions dominated by Ansel Adams, it seems to me that civilian viewers aren't much interested in a black-and-white rock, either as a print or in person. That doesn't make the rock a bad subject (nor does it make the viewers a bloody rotten audience, I suppose), but it says something about the scope of this discussion.

I submit that most viewers have enormous difficulty in the comparativ^W^W^Wfinding the essence of a subject in any black-and-white image, and that as a result, b&w photography is almost inevitably about some combination of (1) overcoming that challenge, (2) preaching to the relatively small choir of monochromophiles, and (3) working to one's own taste rather than to any particular audience. Rocks mostly skip over the first of those items, the third is wholly personal---and so while I'm all for lithotropism, I do think it resides in a specific, fairly insular segment of the photographic dialectic.

More generally, I'm a little suspicious of viewing photography as "reality with constraints". I'm not sure I can articulate a good alternative, but Feininger's idea of focusing (so to speak) on what the subject is, and on what aspects of it fail to be duplicated in the photo, strikes me as needlessly narrowing.

-NT

grahamp · Sep 23, 2014

Well, I trained as a geologist, so I come by my interest in the landscape from that perspective. Rocks do change, but usually not at a speed we can directly observe. Part of the challenge is introducing some element of change or passage of time in an otherwise static subject.

Sirius Glass · Sep 23, 2014

You took the posting right out of my keyboard!

cliveh · Sep 23, 2014

When you photograph a rock, you may have missed the decisive moment by 400 million years.

pentaxuser · Sep 23, 2014

True and only a Leica used in Paris has any chance of saving the situation

pentaxuser

Richard S. (rich815) · Sep 23, 2014

Ha. Good one!

Ken Nadvornick · Sep 23, 2014

Ken

analoguey · Sep 23, 2014

I'll have to look up who Andreas is - or could you elaborate on the philosophy?

I have observed (and hence felt) that B&W actually lends itself better to conveying emotion, conveying "3-D ness" and motion.
IMHO, the last two are both a facet of light and shadow and not of colour - so B&W or colour, given the right light conditions, should perform equivalently (barring the obvious difference)?

Of course, photographing a tiger, the B&W will only have photos of an animal that could in passing be confused for a zebra's different relative, but the Tiger's stance, its crouching or its powerful jaw/limbs would hardly be looking much different in colour or not.
Colour adds a dimension sure - but it is not the sole "essence" of the subject? (unless we are perhaps photographing things like the colour palette)

Edit: Just noticed, it is in the "Landscape" forum. Oops on the tiger example, but I believe my analogy still holds!

Edit2: Wiki on Andreas- "He was noted for his dynamic black-and-white scenes of Manhattan and for studies of the structures of natural objects." :-/ (Did he shoot B&W while saying colour was better?)

NedL · Sep 23, 2014

You just made my day

Bill Burk · Sep 23, 2014

That is a good one cliveh!

Bill Burk · Sep 23, 2014

I should have carried the theory at least a little further because I didn't give enough to make it clear where Andreas was going with the thought...

Suppose your subject is 2-dimensional, black and white and has no motion already? He gives the example: copying the text of a newspaper page. The photograph does justice to the original and there is no lost quality. But there's no need for an artist in that example.

His theory went on to say that because these important qualities were destroyed, an artist needs to put qualities back... to create a convincing picture.

The only solution he wrote is to "create new artistic values to replace those natural values that are lost".

He named a few:
Graphically-effective contrasts to replace color
space illusion-creating perspective to replace three dimensionality
action-suggesting blur instead of the missing motion

He called this translation, like translating from one language to another. He wrote that it can be done badly, leading to dull photographs or "artistically-conceived and imaginatively executed photograph that stops our eye and captures our imagination.

That's just theory No. 1, theory No. 2 goes into the things that make photography special and able to see more than the eye can see...

This is from Andreas Feininger, Advanced Photography: Methods and Conclusions. I'm truly enjoying this book as it's more than an instruction manual.

markbarendt · Sep 23, 2014

ROFL

Why it's so easy to shoot rocks

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