An Explanation of Photography as Compared to Painting
by: Michel Ditlove
In some ways, photography and painting are very similar, in other ways they are very different. Both have their inherent challenges, but photography can be as difficult as painting and sometimes more so. Each is a two dimensional creation, each uses composition and design and each takes varying amounts of time to create. Like painting, photography is a very lonely, solitary profession, only one person at a time can create a photograph, only one person at a time can look through the viewfinder, only one person at a time can make the final print with all the decisions that entails.
Painting starts with a blank canvas, a pallete of paints, a brush, and the artist's skill. Painting requires the artist to create or copy from life, or from their imagination. A painter is free to choose which elements in the world excite them, and which they will use or discard from their paintings.
The photographer is challenged by the entire world. Photography is a process of selection and elimination much more than painting. One cannot move a tree that is in the way, so one has to use the viewfinder to find and select the best composition to include the tree in the picture. It's also a process of waiting for the right thing to happen, as in reportage, for the animal to make himself seen as in wildlife, waiting for just the right light as in nature.
Photography is a process of creating the light with artificial means
if it's too dark or when shooting in the studio. It's a process of interacting
with models and actors to achieve a look, a feeling, an emotion. It's
a process of looking for the unusual, from point of view to detail, of
being aware of all the things in life that we pass by every day and making
the viewer notice them. A wall is not a wall, it's brick and mortar, it's
stucco and graffiti, it's tiny insects who make their homes in the nooks
and crevices, it's the mountain for a vine to climb, it's the prop for
a man to lean on… and on and on.
All aspects are inter-dependent on each other. A teacher of mine once
said, "photography is one thousand little easy things, but you have
to be on top of all of them at the same time, miss one and there goes
the shot."
Just like in painting, only the imagination limits the scope.
Painting requires technical dexterity to draw with a pencil, paint with
a brush, mix the colors so that they emulate the ones from real life,
or to form a shape on the canvas. Photography requires technical expertise
in a more technological manner, chemistry, physics, as well as manual
dexterity for focusing, camera angle, changing aperture, etc.
Responsibilities are different as well, photography is perceived as reality,
the cliché: "the camera does not lie", gives people expectations
that the photographer must deal with. Painters are expected to "invent"
or create the world in which they work.
Photography should be considered as a three phased process:
1. Taking or "making" the picture.
I want to emphasize the credo that "Amateurs TAKE pictures, pros MAKE them", particularly in the arts. Unless the photographer makes his own prints hands on, he is not an artist, but a commercial photographer.
2. Developing the film.
There is much control in chemistry, it is agreed that the technology of color film processing is so refined as to require most photographers to have color film developed by labs, but there is more variety of film/developer combinations in black and white that require the photographer to keep control of that aspect of the work. For example, contrast, tonality and grain are affected not only by the chemistry, but by the temperature of the chemistry, the amount of time in the developer, the agitation during development, etc. Many photographers can't control some of these aspects in their private labs.
3. Printing.
There is no question that whether black and white or color, an artist MUST print his/her own work. Only in commercial photography is the use of a lab or assistant acceptable. The decisions as to what and where to dodge and burn in, crop, color filtrations, whether overall or selective, all must be made by the photographer. When printed by the photographer, each print, no matter how careful the photographer is, will have subtle differences which make each an "original" image.
There are many mechanical devices that make processing the color print as simple as inserting the paper at one end and taking it out dry at the other. With these new technologies, such as the various computerized printing processes, it's possible to make a first print with all the decisions named above, then save the results in a file and print as many as desired with each print being "identical". The result is no longer an original or multiple print, but falls under the category of reproduction. The criteria for "reproduction" being that the work has been done once, sealed and delivered, and each succeeding print is nothing more than a duplicate of the first one. There is no more creative input from the photographer.
The same reproduction issue can be said for the use of labs. Up to the point where the photographer "OKs" the final print, the prints can be considered originals. The moment he "OKs" the final print, the moment the information is recorded and sealed on disk or in a file, the succeeding prints will be duplicates or reproductions. The comparison analogy to other printing processes is that the negative or transparency (slide) is considered as the "plate", and the print is the finished product. Without the print, the negative is useless, cannot be read or interpreted by the eye, is too small to see properly and cannot be sold… how would it be viewed? Therefore, the negative is one half of the photograph, the other half being the print. Once there is an original, all copies of it are reproductions.
One must not forget that as much creativity, and as many decisions go into the films development and the printing process as in the taking of the original negative. Ansel Adams put it another way, relating it to music: "The negative is the score, the print the performance".
Email: michel@ditlove.com
Website: www.ditlove.com
Copyright Michel Ditlove 2002. All rights reserved