Made vs found photographs

rutt

[This was originally a PM to Sid. He suggested I post publicly, so here it is. He wrote an interesting reply, but I'll leave it up to him to post that.]

I didn't want to hijack Shay's WP thread and I felt like I just owed him a pure thumbs up after my nit picking (well it is the WP, isn't it. I was looking for something to take issue with, however small.)

I do want to say something about "made" vs "found" pictures. Weegee is a great example of someone who was distinctly a photographic "man" and not a "boy". I guess he could make a picture when he wanted to, but by far his best work is found. Of course, in his case, it was a way of life, an entire calling. Jeez, the guy was just one step above homeless, living across from the police HQ with his police radio. He was "making" a portfolio, but more importantly, he was scratching out a living, trying to get on or two shots each night to sell.

BTW, please do comment once you get Weegee's World. I'm very curious about what you think.

I guess it's just another instance of how very hard it is to make generalizations about good art.

ginger_55

Oh Rutt, you are so right re made vs found!
and of course I would take that stand since, for the most part, my stuff is found. however.....as you point out, we can find our mentors, too.

and I will never stop appreciating those who "make" their art. I try to copy them sometimes, not often successfully, but it is fun! If I go looking for a photograph, as you also pointed out somewhere else, I often find something else entirely, often gold, for silver, or silver instead of gold!

To see the "silver" is also art. Yes, we know I have Weegee's world on order!

However, just the photo of the front of the old large plantation house yesterday, well, I would have made it if I could have. That was god's light, whether divine or not.

And you are working hard to learn the art of photojournalism. Not only do you have to be there, you have to make instantaneous decisions. We are watching you work and grow in this, as Sid mentioned in another thread. It is an art, a craft, so to speak, something to be learned.

On the other hand, to make something like Shay did takes thought beyond my imagining.

I like both! We know that I have Weegee's World on order, but there are so many artists I appreciate................including the ones who "make" the superbowl ads tomorrow. I think really good things are found in advertising.

So much art, all around.

ginger

wxwax

And here's my response.

I do believe in the power of "being there" for most good photos that are not made in the studio.

Your post made me think about it a bit. Here's what I've concluded. The best "being there" photographers still know what they want their shot to look like. HCB for sure wasn't shooting and hoping - he knew what he was trying to get. Same for Weegee, who apparently wasn't above posing and faking his shots a bit (I'm thinking about the classic "Lady and the tramp" pic, which was staged.)

rutt

Weegee wasn't above "recaptioning" his shots, either, according to Weegee's World. I.e., he would take pretty extreme liberties with their captions. And certainly he got people to pose for him sometimes. He shot with a very intrusive style, almost guaranteed to make his subjects notice him. (He used a huge press camera and always used a flash.) And sure, he, like HCB, was a master technician probably had a much better idea what he was getting each time he pushed the button that I do. None of that actually matters to my point.

Good photojournalism requires an open mind. When you "know" what you are going to find, you won't find what is actually there. On each of my handful of real PJ outings, I didn't find what I expected to, not at all. Of course, I'm not Weegee, but in this particular aspect, I'm probably more like him than not. He was vastly more experienced than I am, but these kinds of situations aren't bridges and buildings or even birds. On the way to a fire or the site of a murder, it would have been impossible for Weegee to know what to expect. Once there he had to find a shot to capture what he actually found.

Andy had a great quotation as his signature a while ago. Something about organizing a picture. Great photojournalists do that and do it fast. And just to prove there are no hard and fast rules about what's going to work, some of my favorite of Weegee's work is imperfect because it was better to get a shot than than hold out for a perfect made shot. On page 121 of Weegee's World there's a shot of two women watching a fire kill some family members. Could that image win the "Strong Emotion" dgrin challenge? I don't know. The focus is soft. Fleshtones blown on faces. Horizon not perfectly level. Centered composition. Distracting background elements. Yet, this is an amazing photograph, a clear winner for my own personal contest for all time strongest emotion shown by any photographer at any time.

Sid mentioned Henri Cartier-Bresson. As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of his. Two of my all time favorite of his images were taken at Ghandi's funeral. I'm referring to the first two images of this post. These are not HCB's most perfect images, but I think they are his most momentous and dramatic. The first shot is a beautiful composition, but how could HCB have foreseen it? How much time did he have to "crop with his feet"? If you'd been there (which all by itself was a huge accomplishment) could you have gotten that shot? The composition of the second shot is hardly HCB at his best. Portrait orientation and a lower angle would have worked better. But the moment of Nehru's crushing grief and sense of inadequacy to the task of leading India without Ghandi, well that moment wasn't a set up and no reshoot was possible and there was only the briefest time to capture it. I know of no other great picture with a higher degree of difficulty. Push the shutter button at that moment, Henri! Yes, yes, get the rest as right as you can, but push the shutter button NOW.

ginger_55

I agree with both of you!

I was all set to "argue" with Sid when I realized that, yes, I push the button on my way to being able to at least arrange something, like where I stand or getting closer, or lens change.

But if one sees a dead body, bloody, one then usually consciously decides how to include the body and the blood in the photo: I do it every which way from Sunday. In the old days, with their cameras, I don't think they had that luxury.

But I do change lenses, etc. After I push the button once or twice, I try to organize my thoughts, or actions.

So, I guess, to some degree, we ARE, most of us, making our photos (unless we do that thing like holding the camera at waist level with indiscrimnate shooting). Even snap shooters are often "making" their photos, so that would not be the distinction, not that one should be made, IMO.

Maybe it is in the degree of one or the other..............it is certainly in more things than I want to think about right now.

ginger

rutt

ginger_55 wrote:

In the old days, with their cameras, I don't think they had that luxury.

Weegee especially, since he almost always used a flash and in his day that meant a changing a bulb after every shot.

ginger_55

Annie Liebowitz (sp?) shoots outside. Does she make her shots? Yes. To the degree of the NYC lights and skyline photo, not that I know of.

She, to me, is a good example of something in the middle. She has a subject, takes what she finds, even arranges it a bit......... I read an article, in Vanity Fair, I think, a while back, that described one of her shoots.

It was amazing, and the photos from the shoot are so good. However she does "arrange' more than I would, and I no longer thought there was any possibility that my shots would look like hers. But her style is peculiar to her, IMO, not made, not entirely "as found" either.

ginger

Seamus

I'm going to tentatively dip my toe into this thread. I read, and enjoyed, the thread on bession-cartier (sp) and I thought that this link to Deanne Fitzmaurice, pulitzer prize winner 2005, might be of interest:

I couldn't link directly to the 2005 award but go to 2005 to read the citation and see the photos:

http://www.pulitzer.org/

The story and photos from the SF Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/saleh/

There is a link to Fitzmaurice winning the pulitzer on Sports Shooter:

http://www.sportsshooter.com/special_feature/pulitzer/celebrate/index.html


I linked to these images because they are recent and because one of the photos on SportsShooter shows Fitzmaurice talking on the phone to Joe Rosenthal.

I'm sure you know the 1945 winning photo was Joe Rosenthal's photo of the flag being raised at Iwo Jima. In my very humble opinion this is the best example of a photograph being "found" and epitomises photo-journalism.

1987 pulitzer prize winner Kim Komenich is also shown in the SportsShooter photos.

Ramble over , ignore me if I didn't make sense ,

Seamus.

rutt

Thanks, Seamus. More great pictures to look at and think about.

Seamus

Another example of "made v found":

http://www.worldpressphoto.nl/index.php?option=com_photogallery&task=view&id=170&Itemid=115&bandwidth=high

Shay Stephens

Make or find
There is no need to choose one path or the other. Keep yourself open to both possibilities. Make that which does not readily present opportunities for, and find those that do.

In my line of work, I mostly have to rely on the found photo. But I also have to be ready to make a photo. When it comes time for formal wedding portraits, those usually have to be made, like this one (from a small wedding I did on Saturday):


As Sid might say, you don't just have the Brooklyn drop in your lap as a backdrop. And I would add, on a rainy mucky day, it's not easy to make it look cheery either. But by being prepared for certain situations, you can "make" the best of it.

But most of my day is spent looking for photos. But even there, there is an amount of making that goes on as the following shot sequence show. These photos are sequential out of the camera, I have marked in the lower right corner the frames I will keep and deliver to the client and which ones will get tossed:




Although these are found photos, I was working the shot to get what I wanted. When I felt I had something that would work (or just feel I have spent too much time on this particular scene) I move on to find something else that catches my attention. Sometimes a scene just doesn't work, sometimes it does.

If you can see a moment in the making, you try what you can to be ready for it. Anticipation is key. Experience helps, preparation helps, empathy helps, fortune helps.

I enjoy finding the photos more than I do 100% making them, much as prefer to eat out rather than do my own cooking. But sometimes what you want is just not on the menu, and if you have a particularly strong craving, well, putting on the chefs hat is sometimes the only solution :-)

rutt

Great post, Shay. I really really love the bride and groom standing beside the river with bridge in the background. That location looks like it gets a lot of use. Do you have to take a place in line?

Good points about searching for the shot. Imagine the degree of difficulty Weegee's bulb flash would have added to that process. You probably could have handled it, but not me.

wxwax

Shay Stephens wrote:

But most of my day is spent looking for photos. But even there, there is an amount of making that goes on as the following shot sequence show.
Although these are found photos, I was working the shot to get what I wanted.

I think that's my point. That even "found" photos are not really found, in the hands of a talented photographer. They may not be set-up, but nevertheless the photographer has a concept of what they want the final image to look like.

There's no elaborate set-up. There's little or no artificial lighting. But there's still a thought process and a visualization before the finger caresses the button.

It all happens a whole lot quicker than it does with a set piece. But it still happens.

And that preshot thought process and visualization, as I said in the other thread, is what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the monarchs from the pretenders to the throne.

rutt

wxwax wrote:

And that preshot thought process and visualization, as I said in the other thread, is what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, the monarchs from the pretenders to the throne.

Certainly I'm a boy, a girl, and a pretender. But that wasn't true of Weegee or Cartier-Bresson. I gave examples where I think it was impossible to have that preshoot thought process. My best guess is that experience is what worked for them. They had so much experience and talent that they could get great pictures even when they had almost no time to plan.