diptych # 32 (civilized ku # 2524-25) ~ my thoughts on taking or making

A sign of things to come ~ Peggy's Cove - Nova Scotia, Canada • click to embiggenIn a recent blog entry, Termin -al -ology on TOP, Mike Johnston wrote about the concept of the taking v. the making of pictures. For the most part, the entry and subsequent comments revolved around the idea that depressing the shutter button constituted the taking of a picture and that the making of something (for display of some kind) from the raw material is, by definition, the act of making a picture.

I disagree.

Not that, at least in one sense, Mike's assertion is wrong. However, IMO, while the act of taking may be limited to the mere pressing of the button, the making of a picture - as opposed to the making of a print or viewable jpg file - starts and essentially begins and ends in the head of a picture maker. That is not to write that various printing techniques which might be employed in the making of a viewable presentation plays no part in the making of a picture. No, not at all. However, what I am writing is that the choice of referent and the technique employed in realizing that vision at the moment of image capture is where any subsequent making is primarily determined.

To wit, if a person with a camera does not apply considerable attention to Jon Szarkowski's 5 elements (as proffered in his seminal book The Photographer's Eye) of photographic vocabulary - The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point - the resultant pictures will indeed be merely taken and not made. And regardless of how much time and attention is employed in the making of a picture's presentation, I don't think that it's possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, or, in more crude terms, turn shit into shine-ola.

Consider this from the way-back machine:

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by it. As this principle is observed or neglected, our profession becomes either a liberal art or a mechanical trade. In the hands of one man it makes the highest pretensions, as it is addressed to the noblest faculties: in those of another it is reduced to a mere matter of ornament ... ~ Sir Joshua Reynolds Director / Royal Academy, c. 1768

Could not have written it better myself.

Comments

[John Linn]

First of all, the diptych attached works particularly well for me. Perhaps it is the color, or the relationship of the referents (to use your term), or the contrasting plains.

Which brings me to the text. By assembling these two images into one picture did you not make an image after taking it? I believe the making (assembling) has created a stronger picture than either of the pictures separated.