civilized ku # 760 ~ gifted / on seeing
Friday, November 5, 2010 at 10:18AM 
Reflections • click to embiggenLast evening as I was chatting up (some might say, "chattering up") some folks at the North Country Chamber of Commerce Board Members Annual Retreat, I came across a retired teacher. To be more specific, a retired art teacher.
Naturally, I raised the idea of my on seeing endeavor which, rightfully so, I consider to be a form of teaching. After explaining to her what it is I am attempting to accomplish, I asked the question, "Can art be taught?" Her answer was an immediate and rather resounding, "No."
She went on to explain that, in her experience, some people have a "god-given" gift, whereas, some people just weren't in that line when the gifts were being doled out. My response was that I concurred but with the caveat that saying so in the art world was tantamount to asking to be crucified on the cross of effete elitism because, as we all know, in the words of Bob Dylan, "It's all good".
In the world of sports, managers and coaches have a phrase that is used whenever they come across an athlete with exceptional abilities - since I'm in Canada I'll use Mario Lemieux as an example. Such athletes, in addition to their outstanding skill set, are said to possess an intangible "something that you just can coach/teach". After all, if it were coachable / teachable, then every team in every sport would be made up of superstars. The rest of us, hockey-wise, would be relegated to the cheap seats where we would suck beer and eat nachos covered in near-toxic cheese-like goo - and, it's worth mentioning that, IMO, we'd all be quite delighted to be there.
I mention all of this because I am still not certain that what I have to teach can be taught. I'm still going to try like hell to find out but, as an example, consider the idea in yesterday's entry about over all / carpet composition.
Now that that idea has been explained to you, it's quite possible that some of you, perhaps even all of you, can actually see it in my pictures (and those of Benoit Aquin, if you took the time to check out his work). However, even though I make pictures with an over all / carpet compositional form, I doubt whether I can explain exactly how I do it. For me, creating such pictures are a nearly preternatural ability that is embedded somewhere in my sub-consciousness.
To wit, I see things that prick my unthought known and a considerable part of that pricking is my rather immediate and subconscious recognition of patterns and relationships of colors, shapes, forms, tones, and the like in the world around me. When I put a camera to my eye, it doesn't take much effort to isolate and fix those qualities onto the camera memory card.
All of that ethereal malarkey said, the teachable moment in all of that may just be found in the act of putting the camera to my eye, which in fact, is not exactly the case - I actually bring the camera's rather 2D LCD screen close (semi-folded arm's length) to my eye wherein I see those aforementioned qualities as a miniature flat-plane representation of the eventual flat plane of the the photographic print.
What I see on the LCD screen, as opposed to seeing the same thing through the viewfinder of a DSLR, is not the world in front of me, but rather the representation of a picture (which itself is a representation) of the world in front of me. This about as close as I get to the idea of "pre-visualization".
If I were to suggest an approach to developing an ability to seeing a representation of a picture during the act of picturing, it would be to spend a considerable about of time under the focusing cloth of an 8×10 view camera - a 4×5 vc or even the viewing screen of a TLR will do in an 8×10 vc-deprived pinch - looking at what you are about to picture. What you will see on the focusing screen is the image upside down and reversed. At that point, patterns and relationships on a flat plane are just about all that you see.
Once you are acclimated to that way of seeing a representation of a picture, it is quite easy to see a representation of a picture in nearly the same manner when looking at an LCD screen or even through the viewfinder of a DSLR.
Reader Comments (3)
Those with real eyes realize…
"From the 'LOOKING' comes the 'SEEING'."
A long time ago Mark M. said this blog was either silly or insane. I say its both and very, very funny.
What kind of a person starts his tome "on seeing" by calling other professional photographers talentless hacks but then claims he is so sensitive (to corrupting your own personal vision dear and gentle reader) that he is afraid to explain his own photographic process to you?
What kind of person spends multiple blog posts blessing you with his wisdom on seeing and rants about how dangerous it is to make pretty pictures, look at pretty pictures, or take advice advice from pretty picture makers - then - after all of the drama queen ranting - finally gets around to telling you dear and gentle budding photographer that all along he ultimately believed that unless you were born with the artist's eye (like he was) that you are just wasting your time listening to anything he or anyone else has to say about the how or why of the art of photography?
What kind of a person takes the foreword from another photographer's monograph and uses it as a way to congratulate himself about what an amazing artist he is?
What kind of person introduces his own blog post with a self congratulatory nod for being able to see great pictures at 65 miles an hour?
I would keep going but I am laughing too hard now to keep typing.
Mark - why don't you try making good on all of your narcissism and self aggrandizement by having a show of your work at a major gallery or getting a monograph of your fine art work published by someone besides Shutterfly?
Or why don't you post some testimonials from all of the students you have inspired at your Picturin' Chautauquas?
Anyone with two brain cells in their head to put together knows whats going on here:)
Anyone else that takes anything written here seriously deserves whatever they get.
I can't thank you enough for all the laughs!
Considering all of the above I have one suggestion. If you ever change the name of the blog I think either - The Feedback Escapist - or - The Hobson Quote Mining Company - would work just great.
Oh and here a couple of requests. Even though I know now you think we are all hopeless from birth and I know now that I will probably never be able to see at even 30 miles an hour - please, please, please don't ever quit your heroic efforts to protect me and all of the other little photographers from the big pretty picture boogie man.
And please keep quoting out of context as much as possible. I love that!
Thank you again.
Zed E.
@Zed: I have to agree with all the points you raised, to varying degrees. Except the opening sentence. Also, you didn't mention whether or not you like Mark's pictures? I guess you do otherwise you wouldn't have gone to all that trouble to vent your frustration (for want of a better word) with Mark's writing "style".
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As I've commented before, I like Mark's pictures but in the writing department there's a lot of chaff before you get to the kernels. Maybe Mark wrote commercials in a past life? ;-)
Perhaps teaching is a also gift (like seeing) and Mark should get some credit for at least making an effort:
"I mention all of this because I am still not certain that what I have to teach can be taught. I'm still going to try like hell to find out..."
In the current post, the notion of explicitly treating a photograph as a 2D representation -- not to be confused with the real world scene in front of us -- is a good one. Worth expanding on. I can see (no pun intended) that if you start your photography with a view type camera (rather than an SLR / LCD) then this notion would be very apparent.
PS: Keep those out-of-context quotes coming. There's some learning to had by us trying to restore the context!