Simplifying images

click photo to enlarge
One way of reading a photograph is to consider it as a story with a narrative: to ask the question, "What is it trying to say to me?" That question can be easy or hard to answer, and the extent to which it is one or the other often depends on its complexity.

Complicated photographs can tell stories well, but it's probably done better by simpler images. In fact, a good rule of thumb in photography is to decide your subject, and then see how you can depict it with the minimum of content. A shot that is constructed on these principles will often be more striking, forceful and pleasing. Over the years I've found that high contrast and silhouettes are effective means of simplifying a photograph, and this blog is littered with examples of both these techniques. Today's image is a case in point.

The subject of my photograph isn't the gulls, rather it's the gulls in their setting and a particular kind of light. The shot depends on the gulls (and the posts, water and colour) for its content, but achieves any quality that it has by simplifying all of these elements, and presenting a semi-abstract, asymmetrical, but balanced composition in silhouette. I could have photographed this location from a different angle, and had a fairly well-illuminated picture, but I think it would have been quite dull. I find that when I'm photographing early or late in the day I actively search out such images, and am often pleased by them. But then perhaps that's just me, and I'm easily satisfied!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 134mm (268mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/800
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographic effects and silver birches

click photos to enlarge
There's a saying amongst some photographers that an effect applied after shooting won't make a bad photograph into a good one. It's a maxim born of seeing too many images where HDR, selective colouring, starbursts, graduated colours and the like, are added for just that reason. Some purists go further and see any effect as an unwelcome addition, regardless of the quality of the original. I think that the originally stated case is largely true, but as for the idea that effects have no place in photography, well, I disagree. The fact is there are too many good photographers who prove the contrary.

Bill Brandt, the British photographer, is probably best known for those images to which he applied the effect of very high contrast. The U.S.-born Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzsky 1890-1976) was so fascinated with photographic manipulation that a significant part of his ouvre uses his "rayograph" technique or solarization. Other examples of the use of effects can be found in the work of eminent photographers past and present.

So, why are effects not widely used? Well, it depends on what you're trying to achieve with your images. Brandt is also known for his "documentary" style photographs of the working class in England's northern cities. In those images he mainly used traditionally exposed black and white photography of "normal" dynamic range. But, he's also known for pictures that lean towards the artistic side of photography, and here is where he uses high contrast - almost pure black and pure white in some instances. Man Ray come from the tradition of Dada, and painted as well as taking photographs. Consequently his portraits of notable people tend to be recognisably "normal" photographs, whereas his artistic abstracts use more unusual effects. Both photographers used effects where it contributed to what they wanted to achieve.

There is clearly a place for effects, though I tend to agree that over-use soon becomes tiresome, and makes you wonder why photography is the chosen medium as opposed to painting. I don't use such effects too often, but sometimes a subject tips me in that direction, as did this grove of bone-like silver birches. I've applied two effects to copies of the shot I took. I can't decide whether I prefer the "halo" effect" in colour, or the high contrast black and white. Each adds something to the original image that I find attractive. How about you?

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.7 EV
Image Stabilisation: On