The Setting Comes First

MEG member Fred Zafran shares some teachings that have helped him become more patient, open and and receptive whenever he's behind the lens. 

We all begin the same way.

We first pick up a camera because we want to “take pictures of things that interest us” … most often of family, friends, events and places we have been.  We take pictures to create a record.  We want a nice memory of what we have seen.

Sometimes, however, having been moved by a particular image, we begin to wonder why… and begin to think that perhaps there can be more to our photography.  As our interest grows and sensibility deepens, we move beyond taking pictures of interesting things to making images about subjects that intrigue us.

With newfound energy, we set out in hopes of making wonderful images. We search for subjects to capture… to create beautiful images, compelling images, truthful images, all emotionally moving.

“Pears in Window, Moscow” Sam Abell.  © National Geographic Society, 50 Greatest Photographs.

After much shooting and too many uninspired pictures, we begin to realize… this really isn’t so easy.  Yet we continue, we push through, and we reach a threshold of serious pursuit and commitment to our photography. 

But what now?  Where to turn?  Does anyone have a roadmap?  Putting aside the many technical aspects of our craft for the moment, let me consider the more “creative-expressive” aspects of our art.

It is at this point in our journey, if we listen carefully, many of photography’s greatest teachers quietly guide us.  As I listen, I hear them say… let our pursuit of the subject fall away and allow the setting to come first.  Compelling images come to visit more often when we are patient, open, receptive.

With this in mind, I wanted to share a few insights from a number of wonderful photographers who have influenced my work and continue to challenge and guide my efforts.  

Sam Abell
“I take photographs from the back to the front, and that’s different from most people, who approach the act of photography from subject first.”

“When I teach photography, I teach not seeking the picture, but seeking the setting. There’s always a subject, but there’s always a setting… and the two have to harmonize or work in some dynamic way.”

“The world is highly chaotic in visual terms. It’s out of control, really, visually. I don’t know how you can take pictures without composing and waiting.”

Alex Webb                                                                                                         
“My most basic process as a photographer is to wander, allowing the camera and my experiences to lead me where they will.”

“I try to arrive initially in a situation, or a place, with as few rational preconceptions as possible…  I make an effort to be as open as possible to alternative possibilities, possibilities that may contradict what I rationally might expect.”

Joel Meyerowitz
“My interest all along has not been in identifying a single thing, but in photographing the relationship between things.”

“If you choose to only make objects out of singular things, you get copies of objects in space.  I didn’t want copies of objects.  I wanted the ephemeral connections between unrelated things to vibrate.”

Yusuf Karsh
"My quest in making a photograph is for a quality that I know exists in the personality before me.”

“I'm looking for what I sometimes call 'the inward power,' and I am more anxious to capture that, or at least interpret it to my own satisfaction, than I am to create the facsimile of an interesting figure with no depth of soul."

Henri Cartier-Bresson
“I craved to seize, in the confines of one single photograph, the whole essence of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.”

These are insightful and motivating writings!  But how best to bring these teachings to life in our own work?  Best guidance perhaps, is to get out and photograph, do it again, and then as often as possible.  But still, is there a common thread, a way of working, and can we dig deeper?

One of Minor White’s greatest achievements, according to Ansel Adams, was to demonstrate that photographs “can point beyond themselves.”  For Minor White, the photographer is able to convey and evoke feelings about things and situations and events which “for some reason or other…cannot be photographed.”  

This was startling to me (…and the veil began to lift a little)!  I’ll close this Blog post with my humble attempt to tie it together.

Extraordinary images emerge from an (intuitive) awareness of the symbolic possibilities of the subject matter, and this becomes possible only, when we don’t pursue the subject.  Instead, might it not be better to proceed without preconception and remain open to the unforeseen?

That’s it for now.  I leave you with this nice quote from Walker Evans in 1974:

“The thing itself is such a secret… and so unapproachable.”