Finesse and misdirection

Finesse and misdirection

Thanks to George for asking me a couple of very worthwhile questions about my picture of Rachelle in yesterday’s blog. He made me look hard at the image, and think equally hard about what I do when I’m taking pictures.

My first reaction was that his questions were much deeper than my picture-taking, and that he was attributing more intentionality to me than I have ever had. He asked how I’d processed the image to get a diffusion effect, because the picture appears to defy expectations about depth of field and focus. As I never introduce selective softness in processing (technically, I don’t know how to), there had to be something else to explain the appearance.

Looking hard, there was. One of the things I sometimes do when I’m photographing a person near glass or a mirror is ask them to breathe on the surface to mist it up a bit. I’d then shot a couple of frames, as the effect faded. I had not known exactly how the shots would turn out, but I had hoped that they would be interesting.



And that’s an important point: there may be a few photographers with supernatural levels of perception and reasoning who can say, with complete assurance, that by doing THIS, and THIS, and THAT they will achieve a very specific preplanned effect. There are many more who will claim that they’ve done this after the event – and I don’t believe them.

Part of what I love is childlike (sometimes childish) playfulness. Children ask the most difficult and fundamental questions because they haven’t yet learnt that some answers are off limits, like the reason time never goes backwards. As they grow up, they stop asking, unless they have the intellect and curiosity of a Stephen Hawking. Children also attempt the impossible because they don’t know they can’t succeed. And they poke wasp nests to see what happens.

Serious grown-ups don’t like the unpredictable, and they stop playing. When someone asks them how they do something, their dignity demands that they explain in a rational series of steps. It’s generally considered bad form to say ‘I guessed’ or ‘I don’t really know’ – the honest answers.



That’s why great practitioners are often poor teachers: they explain what they know they do, and they explain the process they follow – I suspect that’s why Ansel Adams’ books on technique are so impenetrable. They explain how he exposed, processed and printed in great detail, but they never go beyond the surface and dare to say that he loved the American landscape, and his pictures depict that love.

In other words, teachers are often guilty of unconscious misdirection. They explain what they know, the technical nuts and bolts, and do not realise that what they feel about the subject matters…But it does. Think back to school and academic learning: the teacher who ignited your interest was the one who was passionate about her subject, was visibly excited and animated by telling you about it.

So, often, a successful image, one that has life and excitement and excellence will have started with a formula. (Be at the top of the ridge at sunrise. Compose using the rule of thirds. Keep going back until there’s an inversion in the valley.) But that only makes the result possible – a necessary but not sufficient condition. What happens next is in the realm of mysticism, paradox and love.

And playing.