Communication & Photography

Communication & Photography

by William Lulow

Most people today are communicating with smartphones and tablets as well as with laptop computers and plain old desktops. And, for most, seeing images on small screens is enough to satisfy their need for pictures. Photography, as we have come to know it since the 1800s, should not be just about fleeting and blurry images captured on video surveillance cameras all around the world. There are cameras everywhere. Even the news media are constantly asking viewers to share their photos and video so that they can broaden their coverage.

But PHOTOGRAPHY as an art form and as a means of self-expression should be quality driven. That is, we should seek to obtain the very best images possible for any given situation. We should be stopped by arresting images. We should dwell on them and discuss them. We should analyze how they were made and talk about their impact. They should be thought of as carefully crafted pictures worthy of intense scrutiny, designed to make a point – to sell something or someone, to make us look deeply into something or someone and/or to reveal something about the subject.  One cannot accomplish this with “video capture.” Even in the case of the Boston bombings, I found myself wishing that the images were somehow clearer and gave a broader picture of the surroundings. Obviously, they were enough for law enforcement to make positive identifications and eventually bring the perpetrators to justice. But this is not what photography is all about. It’s only a part of it.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the famous French photojournalist believed that in order to capture a certain reality, he had to become almost invisible inside the scene. He raised this notion to the level of art. He used quiet cameras (Leicas – rangefinder cameras with no noisy mirrors). He used black camera bodies (or put black tape on them) so that they wouldn’t be shiny. He sometimes sat in one place for hours waiting for just the right elements to come together to make a perfect image.

Philippe Halsman, the famous portrait photographer, used a relationship between himself and his famous subjects to elicit responses that became iconographic images.

Richard Avedon, the famous fashion photographer, used his studio’s plain white background to set his subjects apart and force the viewer’s eye to concentrate on the clothes.

Lee Friedlander, the famous art photographer, used perfect compositions to document the everyday world of his travels.

Walker Evens, the famous documentary photographer, used his camera to record in exquisite detail, images of the Oklahoma dustbowl of the 1930s.

One of the things that sets the work of these photographers apart from a simple recording of an event or person, is the thought and skill involved in making their images.  When a surveillance camera records something or someone, there is no thought involved. The only thought is where they should be placed. If you place a camera on a street corner and turn it on, you will capture what happens at that street corner. There will be no thought as to lighting, angles, shadows, people or person-to-person interaction.  That may be enough to let us know about that corner and to keep and “eye” on it, but nothing more.

So, my point to all this rambling is that photography should be at least a step above plain, old surveillance. When we aim our camera-phones at someone or something, we are basically recording only what happens. If we put our loved ones in front of the Statue of Liberty, we aren’t really saying anything more than “I was there.” True, artistic, self-expressionistic photographs should be way more than that.

In a sense, that’s what is so inspiring about commercial photographs. They are images made with a purpose, to sell something or someone. So, the communication has to be crystal clear between you, as the photographer and the person who will judge the pictures. As an example, the client needs to communicate the reason the photograph is being “commissioned,” and the photographer needs to listen and integrate the reasoning into his or her setup and execution in order to ensure the result is what was intended.

This is an art director’s sketch, followed by an actual execution of it on film. I always try to get a feel for what the client is looking for in an advertisement and then assemble the elements in such a way as to approximate, as best I can the original concept.

Here is another “concept piece” which involved two models and the creation of some “negative space” which kind of played a trick on the viewer’s eye: (I used it as a postcard at one time).

This is an image I made for a graphic designer’s website. It utilized lighting and black & white imagery to highlight the graphic boldness of his designs. The “light-dark-light-dark” idea was mine however and took some interesting lighting techniques to execute.

Communication is the key. The photographer has to understand what the person who commissioned the commercial photograph wanted and then use all the techniques at his possession to bring the concept to reality.