Adding And Subtracting

Crab pot and float.  After surveying the overall scene with stacks of crab pots and floats, docks,
boats and other peripheral objects, I slowly kept reducing and simplifying my subject to just
its essence, a single float in its 'cage.' This simplification is enough to say what I want the image to say.(click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T4; 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 38mm; 1/850th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 320

I had a good friend who was an excellent painter.  I say had as he has now passed away.  His name was 'Casey' Holtzinger.  Casey was self-taught, a bit of a character, self-destructive in a few ways but extremely talented.  He mostly painted historical scenes based around ships (historical, military and industrial), railroads (primarily in the steam era), lighthouses, historical buildings, marine and harbor scenes, etc.  His medium was normally in a combination of ink and watercolor.  Also, he did a lot of work on commission for various companies and institutions.  You can see more of his work here (work commissioned by Bill Colonna who owned Colonna Shipyard) and here.

Casey engaged in extensive in-depth research to ensure what he painted was historically accurate.  Not only did he want accuracy in the primary physical subject he was painting as well as the ancillary objects he would include in a painting, but also accuracy in the colors of the subjects in his paintings.  He would go to great lengths to find and closely examine a number of old photographs and as well as books of his subjects, almost always black and white, and even greater lengths to determine exactly what colors were utilized.  His research was quite involved and usually took much longer than the painting itself.  But that was the kind of artist he was.  I am fortunate to have several of his signed prints that he gifted to me.

'Casey' Holtzinger at work. (click to enlarge)
From a mid-1980s 35mm Kodachrome

That said, when Casey sat down to paint, he picked up a blank canvas.  Just a white board devoid of anything but texture.  From there he would start by lightly sketching in pencil a basic scene, then add, add, add, change, add,, etc. until he was happy with how the scene would be eventually portrayed.  After that, he started using ink to permanently sketch the scene and then add color, shading, three dimensionality and such.  The blank canvas allowed him to use all of his creativity to "make" the exact scene which was optimized for the story he wanted to tell.

There were a group of us who were friends at the time.  We met often.  For years, a few of us met each week for dinner.  All but two others of our group have passed away, sadly.  Casey was the only painter and the rest of us were photographers.  It was a very diverse group including a thoracic surgeon, railroad locomotive engineer, author, insurance fraud investigator, master mechanic, housewife, a retiree and, of course, me—a law enforcement officer.  When we did get together, often times, we engaged in spirited conversations about who had it easier, painters of photographers?  We photographers would argue that painters had it easier as they didn't have to worry about out of place telephone poles, trash laying around spoiling a scene as well as other unwanted objects intruding into our carefully thought out compositions.  A painter only included what he or she wanted and placed objects in just the perfect location of the composition.  Remember, these were the film days where there was no Photoshop, etc. for us film photographers to alter, clone, remove, correct our photos.  What we shot was what we got.

On the other hand, Casey would argue that the photographers had it easier as we just had to walk up to a scene, stand at the optimum position, put on the appropriate focal length lens, set our exposure and snap the shutter.  Done.  No painstakingly sitting, researching, building a painting little by little over a period of days or weeks.  

This is the group to which I referred in the post.  This is a scan of a 35mm Kodacolor negative made in the late 1980s.  Unfortunately, the only surviving members are the individual on the far left, the man with the dark blue sweater and the red shirt and, of course, me in the green sweater
 (back when my hair had actually color!) (click to enlarge)

Of course things have changed dramatically since the advent of digital photography and all of the editing tools and capabilities we photographers now have.  I'll add to that, thankfully.

The point in this to me is that painters sit with a blank canvas and add, add and add some more until he or she has built the painting to be and mean exactly what the artist wants to portray in the final work.  The photographer, on the other hand, walks up to a scene and the entire world is before him or her.  The photographer has to then decide what is the subject, what is the essence, what he or she wants to say, what will be in the final photograph and then start eliminating and excluding from that 360 degree view.  Exclusion is the name of the game.  Painting is an exercise in addition and photography of subtraction.

That's where the problem starts for many photographers and I'll include myself to some extent.  What do you exclude and what do you leave in?  We've all posed that question to ourselves, if not out loud, then silently.  We see something that strikes an emotional chord in us.  How do we portray it?  

Let's use the Grand Canyon as an example.  We walk up to the edge and view this striking landscape in all of its size, color, glory, depth, history, and geology.  Wow! we think.  We want to capture that emotional feeling we have about what is before us but it is one of the most difficult things photographically to do.  That is when we need to start to distill down what it is exactly about the Grand Canyon that leaves us in awe and try to capture only that.

Is it the colors, the grandeur, the cliffs, the tiny people standing on the edge of huge ledges, the depth, the rock layers, the shapes, etc.?  The job of the photographer is to try to identify just what about the scene before him or her is its essence and capture only that.  That is a tall order and we often fail at it as we tend to want to include everything our eyes see.  When we do, the photograph usually fails as well.  By including too much, objects of importance get very small, details are lost, the eye of the viewer just wanders aimlessly about the photo and we do just the opposite of what we intended—we don't convey the emotion of what we saw.

When we stand before grand vistas we tend to grab a wide angle lens to capture it.  But that may be just the opposite of what we should be doing.  That is when a normal or telephoto lens may be better than a wide angle lens.  We need to identify specific parts of the scene and capture those successfully.

The image at the top of the post is a small example of this.  This image was practice for me.  There were stacks and rows of crab pots containing various bright colors of floats all around a place I visited the other day.  Nearby were docks, boats, fisherman, a fishing shack, blue sky, water, etc.  As I looked at the crab pots, I kept eliminating and eliminating until I just had one crab pot with a single float to represent the scene before me.  I was trying to convey the cool of the color blue on the float and in the sky contrasted with the warmth of the red and orange on the float, the sharp hexagonal shapes of the wife against the soft rounded shape of the float.  I was looking to convey color, contrast, shape and balance.

I didn't want to include everything as there was too much clutter and distraction.  To me, this was an exercise in exclusion to boil down to as simple composition as possible but still keep the essence of the object in front of me.

Successfully conveying your emotions attached to a specific image are one of the most difficult things to do in photography.  Doing so successfully, takes practice, clear thought, more practice, self-criticism and even more practice.  You have to put in the effort to regularly achieve success.

Painters build a painting by including more and more subject matter but photographers start out with everything in front of them and have to try hard to exclude, exclude, exclude until a final composition is found.  As we all know, that is easier said than done.  But if we practice, 'seeing,' we can get better at it and convey the emotions we felt to our viewers.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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