Weblink - digital photographic workflow

A very good article on the digital photographic workflow by Michael Erza:
http://photo.net/learn/digital-photography-workflow/overview/fine-art-photography/

Some quotes from the article:
"My motto is simple: efficient process allows concentrating on art while proper processing allows bringing that art to life"
"Solving the puzzle of establishing an efficient photographic studio workflow is similar to solving any other problem for process flow: it is possible to arrive to a solution efficiently only when requirements for the end result are well defined. Envisioning and understanding the end results—in our case, it can be fine art prints in a particular size, images for the web galleries, etc.—drives the selection of proper tools while the sequence and efficiency of their usage comes with experience. Bottom line: a good workflow should allow achieving desired results repeatedly, reliably, and with consistent quality".

Michael E defines  the following elements in his workflow:

• Where you shoot: Studio space
• How the image is formed: Lighting setup
• How the image is captured: Photographic cameras
• How the image is stored and retreived: Computer system
• How the image is prepared: Various software packages
• How the image is outputted: Photographic printer

It's great to read somebody else's conclusions that match your own! I agree with every single word in this article.

On planning and preparation

Dane Sanders in his 'Fast Track Photographer Business Plan' shares his approach to planning.
"After a few major mishaps in the field, I quickly understood that taking pictures professionally rarely happens in perfectly controlled conditions, especially outside the commercial studio. And even in hyper-controlled environments, there are a lot of practical humps to overcome".
He goes on to describe some challenges that a photographer is likely to encounter, and offers suggestions to systematically prepare for them.
Challenges:
The Clock - light disappearing, late bookings, limited availability of space
Equipment - failing
The Elements - the weather and the light, for example
The Physical Setting - again, lighting conditions, sound distractions, competing activities
Your Clients or Subject
The Competition
Image Loss/ Corruption
Yourself.
Dane summarises: "No one can have a contingency plan for every possible obstacle, but you can do yourself a huge favor by considering ways to deal with worst-case scenarious as well as how you plan to do your best work."
Dane's advice comes very handy for my work on the Workflow assignment. Whilst working on teh assignment, I found helpful to do some advance planning, consider best/worst case scenarious and most importantly, visualising what I want to do.

Quote - Paul Caponigro and Fil Hunter: On planning and workflow

Paul Caponigro said 'Good photographs take planning'

Fil Hunter (p.5): 'The more you accomplish with your head, the less work you have to do with your hands - you can think faster than you can move.'

These seem relevant to my recent experiments on designing my own workflow and planning my photo sessions. I found it helpful to visualise the images I am after before heading off to my location as well as visualising the actual location.
There also need to be a balance between detailed planning and leaving enough flexibility and, if possible, unstructured time and space. Both of these feed creativity and imagination. The unstructured part even more so, but having the technical elements in order (and planning is crucial for that) makes it possible to concetrate fully on the creative aspect of photography.   

Is keeping records good for creativity? On structured vs intuitive approaches and the role of records and workflows

I have spent the past few days making cyanotype prints...I found the whole process of making cyanotypes highly intuitive and based on a lot of practice. Any progress is achieved through trying all sorts of different papers, lighting conditions, chemicals and the results vary greatly depending on the combination of these conditions.
I haven't been consistently recording my sessions and I am now finding that it is the absense of any records of my previous efforts that is likely to hold me back. I have a written note on my workflows for making chemicals, digital negatives and prints. It would be impossible for me to work without this note. I also think that I will need to keep a diary of every session (notes of paper and chemicals used, lighting conditions and duration of exposure) to help achieve more consistent results.
Having diary notes would actually help my creativity and leave me free to experiment - so I don't have to worry about getting the technical part right.   

Quote - Paul Hill

"Photography in many ways escapes "the intense critical scrutiny and the frequent vigorous debates that take place in the other arts."

"Photography suffers from the fact that its multifarious facets can be neatly categorised". (Paul Hill, p. 10).

Quote - Paul Hill

Some more useful quotes from Paul Hill:

"By photographing a building or a tree, can you show more than a building or a tree?"

"Actual colour and space do not exist; the camera only records the light reflected off the subject matter that the photographer has framed."

"It is impossible to prove anything conclusively in photography, other than a photograph is an image made as a result of light reacting with light-sensitive material."

Quote - Paul Hill

"Most of us see scores of photographs each day, but do we bother to look at even one to try to find out what it 'says'?" (Paul Hill)

Whilst out photographying this week, I wondered how many people are actually present and are aware of their immediate environment. Each of us is likely to pass many different places every day, but do we bother to look at even one - simply to be aware, to be present at the moment?

Possibly the best service a photographer could do is to make people stop, to make them present, mindful and aware.

Of all the people who have passed by your yard, how many have really seen the almond tree?

Michael Freeman in his 'The Photographer's eye' book brings attention to Zen practice and its relevance to photography. He noted that "a significant number of photographers have expressed an almost spiritual communion between their consciousness and the reality around them while shooting, and this surely is not far from the spirit of Zen" (Michael Freeman, p. 164). He refers to the opinions of some well-known photographers; I find the following quote from Cartier-Bresson particularly helpful:

"In whatever one does, there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart. One must come to one's subject in a pure spirit".

There is also a beautiful reflection from Daisetz Suzuki,a Zen scholar:

"If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough. One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an 'artless art' growing out of the Unconscious."

Freeman goes on to describe a "letting go", an emptying of the mind skill which he considers important in preparation to a photoshoot, and generally in photography. His "learn, empty, react" process appeals to me strongly. Freeman advices "to practice at maintaining a direct connection with the situation and subject, while clearing the mind of the much slower deliberations", such as the compositional and technical issues at the time of a shot. "Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out!" Eugen Harrigel, from M. Freeman (p.164).

The relationship between the eye and the heart is very important. There is a beautiful quote from "The miracles of mindfullness" written by a Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Nahn. I find it inspiring...

"When reality is experienced in its nature of ultimate perfection, an almond tree that may be in your front yard reveals its nature in perfect wholeness. The almond tree is itself truth, your own self. Of all the people who have passed by your yard, how many have really seen the almond tree? The heart of an artist may be more sensitive; hopefully he or she will be able to see the tree in a deper way than many others. Because of a more open heart, a certain communion already exists between the artist and the tree. What counts is your own heart. If your heart is not clouded by false views, you will be able to enter into a natural communion with the tree. The almond tree will be ready to reveal itself to you in complete wholeness. To see the almond tree is to see the way.
One Zen Master, when asked to explain the wonder of reality, pointed to a cypress tree and said: "Look at the cypress tree over there." (p.58).

Quote - Paul Cezzanne

"Colour is the place where our brain and universe meet"

Roland Barthes on photography

RB speaks about photography reaching down in to the religious substance out of which he is moulded. Photography has something to do with 'resurrection'.
"There is a stasis, a pause in time. The photographs transmit the point refuting its disappearance, denying and escaping death".

Quote - Vilem Flusser

"Photographs are not windows through which one may observe the symptoms of the world decoded, they are not directly "legible" and their meaning is not automatically reflected on their surface. Yet more than any other art form, photography "offers an immediate presence to the world".

Quote - Josef Sudek

"Photographs should not attempt to say everything; rather they should indicate where to look for meaning."

Quote - Alexander Rodchenko

"The new contemporary photography has a job to do. To sum up: in order to accustom people to seeing from new viewpoints it is essential to take photographs of everyday, familiar subjects from completely unexpected vantage points and in completely unexpected positions"

"We don't see what we look at. We don't see extrodinary perspectives, the foreshorternings and positions of objects. We who are accustomed to seeing the visual, the accepted, must reveal the world of sight, we must revolutionase our visual reasoning."

From Light - Science and Magic

Things I've learnt today about the ways the human brain and the eye percieve light and colours:
- 'White' light comes in the range of colours - usually an even mix of red, green and blue. Human beings perceive this combination of light colours to be colourless. The eye can detect a very slight change in the colour mixture but the brain refuses to admit the difference. As long as there is a reasonable amount of each primary colours, the brain says 'this light is white'. Digital camera makes the same automatic adjustment to colour that the brain does, but not nearly as reliable.
- The phychological image in the brain may be quite different from the photochemical one the eye actually sees. Years of programming enable our brains to edit the image of the scene. This editing minimases reflection that is distracting or trivial to the subject. At the same time, it maximises the importance of whatever light is essential to our comprehension of the scene.
- The brain cannot edit an image of an image so effectively.

Our borderless world vs the limitations of the photographic frame

Reading on the Stephen Shore's book...
"A photograph has edges; the world does not. The edges separate what is in the picture from what is not" (The Nature of Photographs, p. 54). This is an interesting theme and is worth exploring further.

"Just a monocular vision creates juxtraposition of lines and shapes within the image, edges create relationships between these lines and shapes and the frame. The relationships that the edges create are both visual and contexual" (p.56). These relationships could be used to 'tell the story', to help put a point across.

"For some pictures the frame act passively. It is where the picture ends. The structure of the picture begins within the image and works its way out of the frame.
For some pictures the frame is active. The structure of the picture begins within the frame and works inward" (p.60). I like this description of active and passive frames. It helps me understand how the frames could be used differently. There is nothing wrong with passive frames - in fact they might be necessary to communicate or emphasize the nature of the subject.

Another quote from Stephen Shore: from chaos to order, from choice to control...

"A photographer...imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus." Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs, p. 37
This is an interesting point though the language of this quote does not feel right to me. For me this process is less about imposing and more about learning to trust myself and letting my self to come through my photography, more about expressing myself and my views through the choice of vantage point, frame, exposure and a plane of focus. 

On photography and analysis

Stephen Shore ('The Nature of Photographs', p. 37) comments:
'Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture,a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and select a picture.'
The differences and similarities between a painting and a photograph generate many discussions. I've recenty attended a training course led by Shirley Read on exhibiting photography and during the course we touched on this subject. A view was expressed that photographers get attached to their photographs in a very particular way - there is usually an emotional story that creates the link. It was also noted that a photograph is taken in a split second whilst a painting evolves over a longer period of time.
Does this become less of a difference when we consider the whole process from pressing down the shutter release button to the final print?  

Reflection on Debuffet's quote

French painter Debuffet commented about the art(s) that "Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called."
My best photographic moments are when I remember that photography is called 'painting with light'

Quote - John Constable

"We see nothing till we trully understand it." - John Constable, from Paul Hill's 'Approaching photography'

I am a big fan of inner frames - what does it tell you about me? :-)

Michael Freeman, The Photographer's eye, Chapter 1, Frames within Frames , p. 30 -31

I am a big fan of natural frames. Inner frames can add a different dimension (making a picture more like the 3-D world we are living in), stability and direction.
It's not too far from stability to rigidity...and if this is about introducing a measure of control (telling a viewer where and how to look), what does it tell you about the photographer's personality? ;-)

Two examples of using natural frames:

  

Framing, cropping and perception

Again, reflecting on Michael Freeman's book (Chapter 1, The Image Frame, pp. 12- 31)

Framing and cropping are interesting decisions. They are connected to your perception and often seem to change with time. I've noticed that I sometime go back to my old images and change or cancel the cropping that I originally applied to them. It's always worth saving the original images in case you change your mind later! :-)   

Michael Freeman on spacial context

In his book "The Photographer's view" Michael Freeman talks about the importance of a spatial context in which photographs are created. He says that "the borders of the image...exert strong influences on what is arranged inside them" (p.9, 2007). It is the photographer who selects where and how to place the border to separate the image from the rest of real life events. The decision is complex and is based on or influenced by the photographer's perception - of the scene and of the wider world. Is it fair to say then that a photograph is a reflection of the photographer's personality or inner world?
I found the notion of 'a photographic frame representing a border' intriguing and would be interested to explore it further...

Has digital photography encouraged more analysis of images?

I am reading Michael Freeman's "The Photographer's view"...not in any particular order...

Freeman describes how the shift from film photography to digital has encouraged more study, more analysis of images and their qualities. I agree. The ability to view images straight after each shot, make adjustments and compare results have helped me to develop a much better understanding of composition and exposure. I often use my digital camera to help me judge the exposure and lighting effects before taking a single shot on 5X4 - this helps me to learn faster without wasting film sheets.
The digital post production process also offers a whole range of editing options.
None of these extra controls could replace careful framing and good composition but, in my view, digital photography offers more tools for analysis and so can help develop a better understanding of the media.   

Quote on knowledge / unknowledge

Came across this wonderful quote in Michael Freeman's book:
"If you, unknowing, are able to create masterpieces in color, then unkowledge is your way. But if you are unable to create masterpieces in color out of your unknowledge, then you ought to look for knowledge" - by Johannes Itten, who taught arts at Bauhaus in 1920s.
I agree with Michael Freeman that a good knowledge of the principles of design is helpful to photographers and is often overlooked. Should it be taught to BA students studying Photography? I would certainly find it useful.  

Just a quote: the context in which a photograph is seen effects the meaning...

"As an object, a photograph has its own life in the world. It can be saved in a shoebox or in a museum. It can be reproduced as information or as an advertisement. It can be bought and sold. It may be regarded as a utilitarian object or as a work of art. The context in which a photograph is seen effects the meanings a viewer draws from it." Stephen Shore, The Nature of Photographs, 2007.

Digital vs film workflow: Is there a greater number of steps in a digital workflow?

 

I am just starting to work on the Project A which is about establishing a workflow. It' s interesting that 'workflow' as a term only emerged in the 80s. It was first used in the software industry when Ted Smith and Ed Miller, the founders of FileNet, created a business process automation software which was named "WorkFlo".

The term is now used much more widely across different fields to describe management, administrative and other processes. The Oxford Dictionary defines workflow as "the sequence of ...processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion" (http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0960040#m_en_gb0960040).

It's quite likely that 'workflow' was first used in photography to describe digital photographic process. The OCA course manual comments that "there are now far more steps in getting from the point of shooting to the final print or web gallery that there ever were even in film photography".  This is an interesting point. Are there really more steps in digital image creation and development than in film photography?  Whilst  I agree that the digital process offers more control and choice to an individual photographer, it does not necessarily increase the number of steps. If we compare both processes step by step, it's clear that most of the film development and darkroom processes have been significantly altered. The digital workflow is faster and cheaper, but the number of steps that I have to take when shooting on 5X4 black and white film seems to be greater than when using my digital camera. This is assuming we are still looking at the entire process from "the point of shooting to the final print" - if any external photographic services are used, the process would again be different.

Film photography not only uses different processes (chemical and mechanical), it also calls for a special kind of discipline and mindfulness - partly because of the number of steps involved in creating and developing each individual image!