Taking and Making

Back in the day, pictures cost more--what with film and developing--than they do in the digital age.  Amateur photographers had to be very careful to get it as right as they could on the first shot--no eyes closed, no shadows on the faces.  Besides, we had to choose a certain film speed and use it for the whole roll, not going back and forth from one ISO to another.

Few people owned professional-quality cameras.  My daddy took lots of pictures with his borrowed-from-work camera, and from time to time, one of us had a little Brownie point-and-shoot.  Many  times he'd line us up for a picture and say, "Stop being silly, Bob" or "Stand up straight" and then, "I'm fixing to mash the button."   Once the button was "mashed," the deed was done.

He never said "take" a picture; he always said "make" a picture.  He was right.  Ansel Adams, no less, said exactly the same thing.  "You don't take a photograph, you make it."

I've always loved taking pictures, but now--after hours and hours of online classes--it finally clicked how true that is!

Looking back over my huge collection of photos, there are some I still like, but many many more I can now see were Takes, not Makes: a picture of a barn or a sunset or a person, sometimes snapped out of the car window or hurriedly snapped, hoping that what I saw with my eyes would come through.

The human eye can see a much higher range of colors and textures than a camera can see--which is why professionals use manual controls: to create a scene or a portrait that reflects what they see with their complex human eyes.

Even if a picture is not great quality, I rarely throw away photographs of people.  I do if the person doesn't like it or if his or her eyes are closed--or if the person is a former boyfriend, say.

But landscapes are different.  I've ditched lots of landscapes tonight now that I understand the ones I've taken so often are no more interesting than those of a point-and-shoot photo. Maybe I should keep a few--to remind myself later of how far I'll have moved from Then (taking) to Now (making) images.

For example: the photograph of the clothes hanging on the line.  I loved seeing those clothes on the line, but now that I look at the picture, I see that the landscape behind them--which was part of the beauty of the scene--is out of focus and blah.

To make a picture requires understanding certain principles of how we see, how light affects what we see, the impact of color, and how all the components in the picture relate to each other.

My goal is to learn to make pictures more like composing an essay than stopping in the gift shop and buying a souvenir or postcard.