Psychologist, philosopher, tinker, spy

Borrowing the title reference from the John le Carre novel and (later) movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – I think nicely encapsulates the multitude of hats the modern photographer must be comfortable wearing in order to be a producer of compelling images. I’ve said before that photography is both a dialog between photographer and audience and that the process of photographing is really an exercise in curating and excluding elements of the world according to one’s own personal biases, then sharing the results with an audience such that they might be interpreted in the desired way. The technical process of capture, and the creative one of composition, are no more than enablers to that translation: the capture allows recording and sharing; composition is arrangement with the intention of direction and influence over the audience. The whole photographic process – vision, composition, capture, presentation, viewing – is really simultaneously as much and as little as the sharing of an idea inspired by already extant objects.

In this essay, I’m not so much trying to pigeonhole photography into a series of objective tasks as trying to figure out what it is we need to do in order to make more impactful images. The challenge for most people tends to be getting over the perception that one has to aim the camera at one’s intended target and hit the button – and beyond that, know which buttons must be hit, and beyond that further – follow a series of prescribed rules to achieve a predictable result. There is simply no such thing. The whole idea of fixed photographic laws of composition or process – rule of thirds, for instance, or always expose to the right – is simply nonsensical. How can we put a restriction on creative interpretation and communication of an idea that should always result in the desired outcome, when the idea itself is fluid?

Beyond being clear about what it is we want to communicate, and mastering the necessary toolkit  – in a way, The Four Things* but expanded to include familiarity with the technical operator portion – I’ve always felt that photography has required much more of the practitioner in order for one to excel. I suppose the same can be said of many jobs – anything that deals with humans benefits from an understanding of psychology since the outcome is contingent on other humans. However, the outcome in an extremely subjective field such as marketing or photography or entertainment is much more heavily skewed towards understanding one’s audience.

*Note that The Four Things is not a set of rules: it’s necessarily vague and subject-independent. It’s a logical guideline and mnemonic to the psychology of seeing more than anything: one can’t have an image at all without light, there are only a few ways in which an object can break camouflage with its background, and one must know what the subject is to arrange the scene around it – etc.

Mere understanding of the audience isn’t enough, though. You have to be able to know which buttons to push to get the desired response – and I don’t mean this in a manipulative sort of way, but something more fundamental. For instance, we respond more strongly to a red object on a black background than a grey one – for reasons of pattern recognition and the way our optical senses are wired. Our eyes follow lines, and expect something inside a frame. These are almost hard coded rules of vision that apply to all people; call it operating logic or whatever you wish. One level higher than that, there are psychological rules that are not so much the result of our visual cortex as societal conditioning and collective social memory; this includes pattern recognition of familiar objects such as people, trees, cars, etc. It is somewhat contextual and dependent on the individual and society in question, but there are still commonalities across the globe, and certainly for the majority of audiences. One level higher than this, we reach the a much more specific contextual bias – the specific associations of the subject may not necessarily resonate with more than a small audience that has a personal connection to said subject beyond the genus or category. A photograph of your child will always mean more to you than one of somebody else’s  – even if the latter may be technically better and aesthetically preferable.

Assuming we now understand the way in which visual elements will be interpreted – we must now wear the philosopher hat. I think the very best images are ones in which the audience is drawn into providing some interpretation and thought of their own – contemplation increases active share of mind, and in turn provokes memorability. This means that a photograph must either be a very profound statement of some kind, or a question – not every image is capable of this, of course. But if we don’t even ask the question as the creator – there’s simply no way we can take one step further to translate that idea into an interpretation consisting of visual elements. Since most of the time there isn’t even a direct translation, we must be open to metaphor and allegory to cover the bases; individual subjects should be considered both as specific and generic, i.e. a person in a photograph might represent that individual, or the expression/emotion they portray, or simply the idea of an interchangeable human – or all three.

Since we don’t always have the luxury of moving things around to perfect positions – this process is usually bidirectional. We fixate on one key anchor element and then build a story or philosophy around it whilst looking for other relevant elements; or we may be inspired by what’s in front of us to curate a story from the scene and eliminate other irrelevant elements. The two result in the same thing, but one is additive and one is distillatory – and both approaches can be equally fruitful.

However, both methods of composition are contingent one one key thing: we must be observant. Hyper observant, in fact – you cannot create a considered and deliberate question or statement around something if you did not see it; but what you didn’t see can certainly ruin your idea if it turns out to be the first thing that’s noticed by your audience! Though it is physically impossible to notice and register everything in a scene – and it isn’t always required since it may be rendered invisible by depth of field or exposure or resolution anyway – we merely need to be more observant than the majority of our audience. We should be the ones noticing more in the scene and our images; that way, we can be sure that the idea translates without distraction. We can share a vision of the world that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Here the photographer must wear the hat of spy: we are always looking, always observant, and always asking the question of ‘is there something interesting going on here?’

The last role is a bit out of order to the title, and I admit that simply so I could fit the literary reference. Firstly, the tinker is the one messing around with the gear to try and make things work in a pinch – jury rigging ND filters from sunglasses, cinematic foreground from bottles etc. But more importantly, the tinker is the experimenter: we can’t always be sure of what the outcome might be, but if we don’t try it, we’ll definitely never know. The process of experimentation is an iterative one: to break from our literal interpretation of the world, and tendency to follow our eyes’ normal perspective – we have to try different things, like reflection, height, perspective change, motion, exposure differences etc. Eventually, these alternative ways of seeing become something we can previsualize – so in a sense we are expanding our ability to envision what a scene might look like, or how an idea might be better conveyed from a perspective that we might not be able to natively see – but can instead imagine. If we leave behind the process of experimentation, then we simply make the same pictures again and again – they might get technically better, or aesthetically more refined, but our way of seeing the world doesn’t change – and there’s only so many new worlds you can see before you run out of things to shoot.

Perhaps the process of continual improvement as a photographer doesn’t necessarily appeal to all – that’s fine, too; if you’ve found that you can make images you’re fully happy with, then you’re reached a nirvana most of us can only ever dream of. I always believe there’s something more that one can add to an image – at least from a philosophical perspective, if not also a wimmelbilding one. Perhaps this malcontent is bad for one’s own personal happiness, but I’ve always found that other non-creative pursuits tend to result in a dead end pretty quickly; there’s only so many things you can collect, buy or use before the consumption becomes too much, and with too little return. It’s only in creating something that we both understand ourselves better, and can find an unending source of satisfaction. M (not 007).

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