civilized ku # 1037 ~ on seeing
Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 10:25AM 
An alley in Plattsburgh ~ Plattsburgh, NY • click to embiggenSven W (no link provided) asked, re: civilized ku # 1032: "Another conspiracy theory: have the rocking chairs been "arranged"? ;-)
my response: the rocker arrangements were made by those who last sat in them.
In fact, I rarely (if ever) change or adjust the "arrangements" of which I make pictures. That's simply because it is the "found"/ seen natural/human-world "arrangements" which catch my eye and that is exactly what I picture. In an extraordinary number of my pictures, I have made them from almost exactly the same POV as that from which I first saw the referent they depict.
Without exaggeration, all of my non-still life pictures are of found/seen "arrangements". That is to say, my eyes are drawn to and and my brain consciously recognizes arrangements and relationships nearly everywhere I go - the arrangement of objects and things (in the natural and human-made world) and the relationship of those objects/things to each other and their surroundings as well as relationships of colors and the tonal qualities of light.
I consider that "ability" to see and recognize arrangements / relationships as a "gift" or what some might call "talent". My skill lies in being able to select and isolate those arrangements / relationships from the surrounding world in a manner that draws the viewer's attention to them in a compelling, interesting, or sometimes pleasing but most often discordant 2D visual representation.
Re: 2D visual representation - in addition to the referent depicted (the "noted") and any implied meaning(s) (the connoted) to be seen and found in my pictures - AKA: the ability of any picture to illustrate and illuminate, to my eye and sensibilities, all my pictures also can be viewed as arrangements / relationships of completely "abstract" 2D shapes, color "splotches", and tones which are totally devoid of any specific descriptive qualities. IMO, it is these abstracted "abstract" qualities which create a sense of visual energy in my pictures or, for that matter, the visual energy I see in the pictures (made by others) that I admire.
In a very real sense, I "see" those pre-existing arrangements / relationships which catch my eye and tweak my picture making sensibilities as some kind of Jackson Pollock moments.
Is there anyone out there who can see a picture in this manner?
Reader Comments (4)
What you describe is pretty much how I see, only that (a) I have a strong obsession with lines and corners, and (b) I would always throw the word balance in. Balancing images is kind of the same thing as balancing forces in the game of Go.
I once dabbled in Go and, though I can't imagine that I would have posed a challenge to anyone playing in a club, I played well enough to scare off all people whom I played with. I could have joined a club to find a challenge, but I'm no club guy and so I just stopped playing. The point is though, that I never played in a mathematical way, never played like one plays chess, never tried to imagine turns in advance. I always tried to balance forces, to see the forces on the board, and to set my stones as to slightly tip the balance in my favor.
That feeling of balance is exactly what I see in compositions that I like.
> Is there anyone out there who can see a picture in this manner?
Is there any other way to see a picture?
Most of my photos are of the "found" as well ... a scene catches my eye and I take a photo. There is some conscious filtering going on i.e I ask myself what is the main appeal and I try to emphasize it or I might ask myself if it's [too] derivative and I skip it.
But there's also a skill in being able to arrange a scene to create a photo. Because this requires more of a conscious effort [for me], I find this a greater challenge. And then the next level would be creating a scene that looks like it was "found"!
[Which neatly gets me back to the rocking chairs. I figured it was 95% found with maybe just a bit of tweaking ;]
Like Sven W, I usually "find" my subject matter, and equally usually I fail miserably when trying to arrange something. But tweaking can happen: removing a twig or a peace of rubbish that in my eyes would disturb the image, or in the case of the rockers just moving a piece trying to improve the arrangement.
What Andreas calls "Balancing" for me as well is an important aspect in framing: Balancing to create a harmony of areas, colors, lines but also the (inferred) impact of elements.