13.08.10
Martin Middlebrook: 5 Great Lies of Photography
Photography comes with a set of prescribed rules so great and unwieldy that it might be easier to qualify as a doctor. Many are created by necessity and physics, some to enhance creativity, others to enforce quality. But many exist simply to keep you out. And they are changing all the time, usually just as you might be getting the knack of things.
To give an example, for many years stock libraries were the definitive arbiter of image quality. If it wasn’t shot in medium format and scanned on a drum scanner with the resulting image being above 50mb, then you were obviously not a professional and they wouldn’t accept your files. I recall when I got my first 6.5MP digital, anything under 10MP was considered not good enough. So when I got a 10MP camera imagine my surprise when the same reviewer said that 13MP was the minimum requirement. So I got one of those, but soon enough it wasn’t adequate. Now I have a 21MP camera but I am not holding my breath. Rules to keep you out is how I see it.
And yet month after month, the magazines of this country are full of images that are created by the unaware on consumer-level DSLRs, old-fashioned film cameras and, doubtless, mobile phones. And lots of them are beyond the ordinary and a pleasure to look at. Because a good picture is a good picture, whatever the resolution. So here are the five great lies of photography.
1. Exposure
There is no such thing as the perfect exposure, it’s a lie – you decide.I have had my images critiqued by pros and amateurs alike, and each will feel connected or not, in their own way. Professionals always make technical remarks first, amateurs just look atthe picture. Which, of course, is how it should be. If we consider some of the iconic images of the past 40 years, we don’t recall if they are under or overexposed, focused correctly, or composed according to agreed rules.
We simply like it or not, we connect with the subject, we are transported or repelled. But we never think, what a great image it would have been if the photographer had retained just a little more detail in the shadows.
There are two aspects to this. First and foremost, photography is visual communication, we are creating an image that expresses something interpretive. Management of exposure is a pretty fundamental part of producing great images; I am as rigorous as can be, but I know when to ignore it and concentrate on getting the shot.
Over several years I chronicled the Camarguaise bullfighting in the Provence region of France (see p80). The raseteurs (bullfighters) wear white, the bulls are black, and the sun beats down relentlessly. Something has to give. There is no point exposing for a midtone, the contrast range of the scene is so vast, you just have to pick your spot and accept what you lose. If you expose for the bulls, the raseteurs are blown out completely. Most importantly, however, the dynamic and sinister dimensions of the bull are far better preserved when they are pared back to an iconic black shape. I tried everything, underexpose, overexpose, but what always worked best was to underexpose the whole thing by at leasttwo stops. The bulls assume a sinister symbolic presence and the raseteursare exposed perfectly.
There are times when your exposure decisions are forced upon you by nature and physics. But on other occasions we may choose to ignore our readings and just go with our own style. This is the second aspect I referred to. It may not be an accurate representation of reality, but maybe we are not trying to replicate someone else’s truth, maybe we are simply divining our own sense of the moment. And who are we to charge you as guilty for adding your creative instinct to the resulting image?
2.The Rule of Thirds
Abstraction
Sometimes you want to create an abstract form from something that is real and tangible. Traditional composition suggests I would have photographed this mute swan (above) slightly wider, with the eye sitting neatly on an axis of one-thirds. Doing so, I would have lost the fundamental opportunity that nature and form had provided me with. Not all wildlife photography has to be ’illustrative’ in nature. We can apply a painter’s eye if we choose. You have a frame to use as you wish, don’t be constrained.
Creating Scale
When photographing landscapes, watch for unexpected moments such as a person or animal appearing suddenly from out of frame. They can be the perfect mechanism for adding a grander sense of scale to the whole scene. If this happens to me, I might recompose, perhaps crop in slightly tighter to position the new element in a place that adds a dynamic of expanse and makes the landscape feel more majestic.
Structure and StoryTelling
When photographing this matador in the Arles Arena in Provence (left), he briefly sat down. Instead of placing him traditionally, I rested him against the edge of the frame like a big L-shape. It provided two things, a repose for his weary figure and a dynamic space between his gaze and the target to the left of the frame. This visual space creates the tension the image needs. We don’t need to see the bull to know that it is there, its presence is caughtin the space in between.
3. Image Quality is King
No it isn’t, compromise on quality to get the image you want.
When I first started as a photographer, I had a fridge stocked full of Fuji Velvia and Provia, ISO 50 and 100. Just occasionally I felt very brave and I would uprate my Provia to ISO 200. Everything I had ever read said that quality and detailwere everything, it should never be compromised. It meant, of course, that unless I put my camera on a tripod(and I never did), then I would be restricted to three days’ photography a year in the UK.
Then one day I had the good fortune to meet the picture editor of a large daily newspaper. He was also a press photographer and frequently talked of shooting at ’thirty-two hundred’. It seemed like a very large number indeed, which, of course, it was. For someone who had never shot beyond ISO 400, ISO 3200 assumed the proportions of heresy. He talked of photographing a warehouse fire at 2am, or a Monday night penalty at St James’s Park in Newcastle, when the light had left the building but the story still needed to be covered.He went on to talk about shootingwith very high ISOs, even in perfect light because of the wonderful grain thatit added and all the speed you garneredas a result.
I digress; the point is that ISO 100, perfect saturation and no grain is not everything, not by a long shot. It fundamentally restricts your opportunities to get out with your camera, and when you are out doing what you love most it’s fairly pointless producing lots of blurred shots ofmoving objects because of restrictive attitude to image quality.
There is another fundamental point here. We can miss our chance in lots of ways, too slow shutter speeds being one. However, sometimes we need front-to-back focus to tell the whole story, so we might need to dial in f/16. It’s a very rare day indeed that you can dial in f/16 at ISO 50. Modern digitals can shoot at such high ISOs and still retain real integrity in the image. Of course there is grain, but grain is your friend, embrace it and cherish it.Absolute focus is not everything, out of focus is equally good.
4. Focus
Absolute focus is not everything, out of focus is equally good.
I was always astounded when I started how badly I focused. I would read of photographers talking of ’absolute focus’ as though it was some kind of holy grail – and indeed so it turned out to be for me.I would chance upon this amazing unfolding moment, click away and await with clammy hands for the day thatthe lab brought my slides back.
Then, if you listened carefully you could hear me quietly sobbing, my headheld in my hands, as it slowly dawned on me that somehow I had messed upagain. I grew to hate my lightbox and loupe. I resolved that I would not letthis blight my picture taking and I worked tirelessly until I could achieve absolute focus each and every time. No sooner had I found my holy grail, though, than I dispensed with focus altogether, and concentrated on ’out of focus’.
I started to look at everyday objects that we recognised and shot them out of focus to see how far you could go before they lost their identity. In doing so I discovered such a rich and rewarding photographic process that I built whole portfolios of out-of-focus images. I still love them to this day, because the abstraction turns the mundane into art.
The key is that we should not restrict ourselves to one style, or one set of processes. Cameras are a liberating thing, you can do almost anything with them, we are limited only by our understanding and our imagination.
5. Shutter Speeds
Minimums – the truth about shooting handheld.
This is quite a broad subject, but I mention it because I so often talk to people who refuse to shoot at less than 1/100th for fear of camera shake and movement blur. The rule used to be that the shutter speed should not be less than the focal length – so that if you were shooting at 400mm you would need a shutter speed of 1/400th. That little concept is an anachronism that will hold you back. I will often hand hold at 1/10th of a second, confident that one in three will be perfectly sharp. Most of the time movement is introduced by the photographer, not the subject, so that once you apply some basic skills you can shoot in all sorts of conditions that you never thought possible.
The image above was shot hand held at 1/6th of a second. I wanted movement in the model but the dumbbells to be sharp and focused. I don’t always have time to work with tripods on commercial shoots, but I am confident that I can hand hold at very low speeds. This image was taken with a Tamron 90mm Macro, so I did not even have the benefit of image stabilisation. I simply leant against a wall and braced myself. Often people don’t finish taking the shot. What I mean by that is that they press the shutter and then start to compose for the next shot before the last one has been finished. I see it constantly – the presumption that once the shutter has been released the shot is over. But in doing so movement is being introduced into the shot.
The image is more vibrant and animated as a result of the decisions made and yet where required I have distilled the elements sharply.
This image above was hand held at 1/12th of a second, yet the subject has not moved during the exposure and neither have I – it’s crystal clear. I could not use flash to give me a little more speed, because experience tells me that indoing so the green and pink lighting would have bleached out, which is the least desirable result.
However, I very often use flash at 1/15th of a second, simply to distila moving subject. The technique of second curtain flash synchronisation is invaluable in this situation. You can shoot hand held in even the darkest of conditions and guarantee that your subject is perfectly still and in focus.
In Conclusion:
When you work commercially, you have no control over your environment, the weather, the time you have and a multitude of other complex factors. In an ideal world we take photographs only when we have ’sunny f/16’ conditions.
Working commercially often means that I have to produce great images in less than perfect conditions, and I have taught myself many methods to allow me tomake the most of ’dog days’. In doing so I learned techniques that I can apply to my personal work, which broadens my opportunity to get out with my camera. I am happy to go out in any conditions, becauseI would rather get a compromised image than none at all. And when you return soaked through witha camera full of great images, you won’t be put off ever again.
If we ignore many of the anachronisms, the rules set out that simply constrain us, we will have before us a large canvas, a blank white page, just waiting for us to stamp our mark on it!
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