The Photographer's Dilemma

I’d like to share a story about Ansel Adams, relayed to me by one of his assistants, the talented John Sexton. Here goes: A man writes Ansel Adams a letter (condensed here): Dear Mr. Adams, I have your books. Your beautiful pictures of Yosemite inspired me to visit this National Park. However, when I got there I was disappointed. The park does not look like that.

Rick Sammon in an Essay

“Photography and the Death of Reality”

A photographer exercises all of her technical skill and artistic flair to produce an image she is proud of and often the first response she gets when she displays her work is, “Did you Photoshop that? Did it really look like that?” As the story above illustrates, this is not a response which has emerged in the digital age.

Implied in the question “Did it really look like that?” is the implication that any manipulation undermines the value of the image. This arises from the view among many people, mainly casual or non-photographers I suspect, that the function of photography is to present an accurate, faithful reproduction of the world in front of the lens. This narrow view leaves no room to value photography as an art form, as a means of visual expression. The question demeans the skills, technical and artistic, that is required to produce an exceptional image. I have found that as photographers grow in their craft and technical skill their thinking and effort are increasingly directed toward the artistic elements of their work. The question also ignores the fact that even before the shutter is pressed the photographer makes a series of decisions, what lens to use, what angle to shoot from, camera setting that determine what areas of the image will be sharp and which will be blurred, where to position herself in relation to the light and subject, and importantly what in include and what to exclude from the frame. Each of these decisions influences the ultimate “look” of the image.

My own images serve a variety of purposes. At times my goal is to reproduce a scene with fair accuracy. More often it is to show the scene as I experienced it. At other times my goal is to produce an essentially abstract image that evokes some emotional or intellectual response in the viewer.

I included the image of the lily appearing to float in space to illustrate one aspect of this issue. A large print of this image hung in my office and elicited many comments from people seeing it. The assumption of most people is that the image was heavily “photoshopped.” In fact, only subtle adjustments were made in post-processing. The effect was achieved by shooting against a black background and masking the vase and stem with black cloth. Most importantly, it was shot with two lights, one from behind and below the flower to impart the luminous quality. It took a few trial shots to get the balance of the two lights where I wanted them. Did it really look that way? You can decide, but that’s the way it was captured by the camera.

Some days I envy the painters, especially painters like Picasso, Van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock. I bet no one ever asked, “Mr. Picasso, did it really look like that?”