A Forum Post About Photography and ‘Realism’

April 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 5 Comments

From time to time I share here a post I made elsewhere. Recently I posted something in one of those familiar threads lamenting that some photographer did something in an image that “altered reality” in some way. Yes, that topic. Again.

With apologies to all of you who know that the following is pretty darn obvious, here is the post:

The notion that a photograph can portray something equal to the original reality of the subject is a myth. All photographs lie.

This is not news to those who are familiar with the history of photography or with philosophical musings about the medium. The process of determining what to include and what to leave out, deciding when to click the shutter, selecting the time of day or season of year to make the exposure, chosing whether to shoot black and white (which isn’t remotely real!) or color, using filters on the camera, using filters in digital or optical/chemical post, using shift and tilt lenses, controlling DOF with aperture selection, choosing what paper to print on, selecting one frame over another, choosing how to describe and explain explain or simply title the image, dodging and burning, choosing methods of developing film for their effect on the image, shooting Velvia (!), attaching a polarizing filter, adding a hood to control flare, using flare as part of the image, brushing that bug off the leaf, adding a bug to the leaf, waiting for the bug to land/fly away, picking the prettier bird out of the flock rather than the other one with the bent wing, choosing to point your camera in the direction that excludes the power line or the buildings, waiting for the wining smile, waiting for the smile to to away, shooting with very short focal lengths, shooting with very long focal lengths, and on and on and on and on…

It is impossible for a photograph to be an analog of “reality.” At best it can suggest something that the photographer saw or felt in the presence of that reality or something about how the photographer views it. It can evoke a memory, an association, or an imagination in the viewer. It cannot portray objective components of the “reality” of the subject such as the cool breeze on your face, the smell of pine trees, the moisture in the air, your sore feet from the long walk, the warmth of sun on the back of your neck, the sound of birds and wind – all of which are components of the “reality” we experience in the presence of the actual subject.

And I really don’t care. If the only thing that I thought photography could do was “capture” an objectively accurate rendition of reality I wouldn’t bother to make photographs – which would always fail to equal the experience of that original reality. I’d get rid of may camera and just go experience it. (Which I actually did for a time, but that is not a story for this post.)

But that isn’t what photography does, and it would be far less than photography can do. One of the most interesting and humane things it does is it offers us a view into the mind and world of the person of the photographer. Frankly, in the end I’m far more interested in what the photograph tells me about the person who made the image, and perhaps about myself, than I am in the extent to which the photograph pretends that it can stand in for the real.

Imagining that the purpose of photography is merely to “capture” the real, thus creating a sort of second-best shadow image of the real, is simplistic and naive. It is also nearly completely contrary to the history and development of the craft and art of photography. It is essentially impossible to find photographs that are totally “pure” – whatever that even means.

And when I view a great and powerful photograph, virtually the last thing I ask myself is, “is this a real thing?” I think about the effect it has on me, what it tells me or suggests to me about the world, its pure aesthetic power as an image, its intrinsic beauty, the associations I draw between it and my experience.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Lower Slopes of Tucki Mountain, Dawn

April 12, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Dawn light on the faces and gullies of the lower slopes of Tucki Mountain, Death Valley National Park.

On the final morning of my recent (March, 2011) visit to Death Valley I decided to go to a spot not far from my campsite at Stovepipe Wells where I know of a bit of raised terrain that provides large-scale views of big chunks of this part of the Valley. I arrived before dawn and lugged my gear to the top of this rise with the primary plan of using a long lens to photograph across the Mesquite Dunes toward the Cottonwood Mountains at sunrise.

However, when standing in a spot like this one there are so many interesting effects of light all around that it is impossible, for me anyway, to just shoot that one thing. Far up the Valley to the north light starts to hit the highest peaks of several mountain ranges, to the east the light comes through and illuminates morning haze and layers of low hills, and to the southwest of my position the light began to reach the top of Tucki Mountain. So, between photographs of my intended subject to the west, I swung the camera though the entire 360 degrees to photograph many of these other subjects.

Tucki Mountain has fascinated me since I “discovered” it one morning while shooting on the “back side” of the Mesquite Dunes. At dawn I had been photographing the low dunes and other features on the side of the dunes that cannot be seen from the usual roadside viewpoints. As the light changed I worked my way up into the dunes a bit to photograph the shapes and textures of the sand, and I saw a composition that included this massive mountain to the south with it dark and jagged features. It was only later that I found out that it was Tucki Mountain. (If you have visited Stovepipe Wells, you have been right below the mountain.) It is a huge, sprawling peak – almost more of its own small range than a simple peak, or so it seems to me.

On this morning I first saw a big of the deep red first dawn light hitting the top of the peak and noticed lower ridges starting to pick up traces of this light. I swung that tripod head around to point this direction and decided to tightly frame some images of the overlapping ridges and valleys ascending toward the peak as the light worked its way down toward the Valley floor.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Red Cliffs, Dawn

April 11, 2011 G Dan Mitchell 1 Comment

The Red Cliffs (also called the “Red Cathedral”) are close to the famous spire of Manly Beacon at Zabriskie Point, and off the right a bit from the typical vantage points. The light was quite special – at least when not blocked by the clouds! – on this morning. These interesting clouds against the pastel blue sky first caught my attention, and were actually my primary interest in making this photograph. While the early light was on the clouds, some soft light also filtered through low clouds to the east and created a subtle glow on the face of this feature.

The Red Cliffs are really an amazing feature, though are often overlooked in favor of the more prominent and iconic Manly Beacon. The cliffs can often can be difficult to photograph – at least for me! When more direct light hits them the large dynamic contrasts between the areas in the light and the much darker shadows are tricky to handle, so this cloud-softened light seemed like just the right thing.

And, yes, I was at Zabriskie Point. It is a long story, but I have mentioned before that I have a personal project to photograph things other than the iconic scenes of Zabriskie. (Which is not to say that I won’t point my camera at those while I’m there it it turns out to be worth it!)

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him. Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

Commentary, Technique

Wildflower Photographs: A Quick Exposure Tip

April 10, 2011 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Since wildflower season is upon us, I have a quick tip that you might find useful if you photograph intensely colorful flowers such as California golden poppies or similar seasonal wildflowers. (The tip is also useful for photographing fall foliage.)

Let’s imagine a photograph of California golden poppies in which the flowers fill the frame – either because you photograph a large dense field of poppies or because you shoot a smaller group from a close distance. You use the automatic exposure setting on your camera and make a photograph… and you notice that the color is ridiculously intense and that in the areas of most intense color almost all detail has been lost. It dawns on you – correctly, in all likelihood – that you probably over-exposed and blew out the bright highlights of the flowers.

But you are a smart photographer. You know that your camera has a histogram display that will show the brightness across the dynamic range that your camera can record. (It will probably record a somewhat larger range if you shoot in raw mode, but being a “smart photographer” you are doing that anyway. :-) You compose your shot and this time decide to work in manual mode rather than relying on automatic exposure settings. If you have live view you might look at the histogram as you focus. If you don’t, you make the shot and check the histogram right afterwards. In both cases, the histogram display looks pretty good – the curve doesn’t flatten out against the right side of the display but it is close because you “exposed to the right,” and the left end of the curve doesn’t hit or go to far into the “dark” end of the display. But when you check out your photographs later on, it seems like the brightest areas of the flowers are still too bright – they seem blown out and some detail is gone.

What is going on? In all likelihood, the image is much stronger in the red channel than in the green or blue channels since the color of these flowers is very strong in that channel. But your automatic exposure system has to make a best guess based more or less on an average of the three channels, and it “overlooks” the unbalanced light that is weak in the blue and green channels but too strong in the red channel. The normal histogram does the same thing. It shows an overall luminosity level that reflects the sum or average of the three individual color channels. For fairly normal subjects this works pretty well in most cases, but with subjects that are intensely bright in one channel all bets are off.

Many current DSLRs provide a solution. They will let you switch the histogram display on your camera to show the average histogram and/or three additional curves for the three separate color channels. (I often work in “live view” mode on my Canon 5D2, where I can choose between seeing the single white average luminosity or the three separate color channels – I leave the display on the latter option by default.) By working with this display you can now see the luminosity levels of the individual channels and spot the hot channel and adjust your exposure accordingly.

What if you have an older DSLR or a camera without this histogram display option? The basic idea remains the same, though you’ll perhaps have to “wing it” a bit. If you do shoot in an automatic exposure mode, you may want to dial in 2/3 of a stop or so of exposure compensation to darken the image a bit. If you can’t get it perfect, in general it may be better to dial in the full stop and be more sure that you’ll avoid the blown red channel.

A few final points: First, depending upon what else is in the frame, you may have to do some post-processing to get things to look the way your remember – it may involve some work with curves adjustments, perhaps some color adjustments, and possibly a bit of desaturation. Secondly, you can encounter a similar issue with some types of extremely colorful autumn foliage, especially when it is very “hot” in the orange or red tones, and the same technique can be useful here, too. Third, foliage is not the only cause of this issue – you can also encounter it which intensely colored light from other sources. For example, a common problem is seen in photographs of sunsets on mountain peaks where the intense sunset color blows out the red channel in areas that include the direct sunset light – and, again, “under exposing” a bit can compensate. Fourth, the problem is not limited to the “natural” world either – you can also encounter it when shooting scenes with very colorful artificial light.

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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.