More About “Previsualization” In Photography

More About “Previsualization” In Photography

by William Lulow

I wrote an article a few weeks ago about what we call “previsualization.” This simply means that a photographer or other visual artist has an idea about what a piece of artwork, be it a film, painted canvas, scupture or photograph will look like based on a sketch or other pre-conceived image. And this is not an uncommon thing. Even film makers like Sergei Eisenstein (Battleship Potemkin) way back in the 1920s made extensive drawings of what each scene would look like. I have also published pieces before about how photographers can bring their advertising images very close to what art directors’ sketches look like.

Here is that example:

As a note, whenever there is a concept presented by an art director as a sketch, the photographer then has to assemble the props, wardrobe and lighting to bring the drawing to reality in the form of an image.

There have been times when I have made sketches of what I wanted a particular image to look like. It happens when you have an image in mind and know enough about what you want to show from the beginning. It takes a strong, visual idea to make an equally strong picture in your mind before you can actually put something down on paper. In the advertising world, this is why there are art director’s sketches and concept pieces in the first place. Somebody has a vision and the artist is then called upon to bring that vision to a reality in one form or another. Sometimes it’s an illustration, sometimes it’s a photograph. Many artists make sketches before they actually begin a painting. They need to get a “feel” for the space of the canvas. Or in the case of a sculpture, they might need to start with an overall concept of the physical size of the piece. My dad was a sculptor and would often go to Vermont looking for pieces of marble from which he would eventually chisel away a form. Often, he would look for a particular size hunk of stone. This presupposed that he had some initial idea of the size of the piece he wished to create. I remember him telling me that Michaelangelo referred to sculpting in marble as “releasing a pent up form from the stone.”

In creating any piece of art, there is always the element of surprise, even for the artist. There are spontaneous happenings that simply occur by accident. There are epiphanies and creative bursts of energy that just seem to happen. Mostly, though, art is an intentional, deliberate creation by someone who has studied the particular craft and knows all the possibilities that can be made from previsualizing what the final outcome would be. That’s when the most success occurs.

I have also written before about the creative process even without sketches. An artist can often get an idea simply from seeing a subject under a specific lighting:

Sometimes inspiration can come from the subject material itself:

These two people walking on the beach holding hands I actually previsualized even though there were other folks on the beach with them. So I had to eliminate the extraneous people using Photoshop.

Other times inspiration can come from just an idea:

This was created simply from the idea of stopping motion.

But even this image was previsualized in a way. I knew I wanted to stop the motion and I set up the camera and chose a telephoto lens so that I would be able to capture the action from somewhat of a distance. So the act of previsualizing an image is probably something we all do anyway when we are thinking of creating something being it a simple drawing or a complex piece of sculpture. But we need to be aware of the process and be prepared to use it when necessary.

The artist’s sketch is just another way of THINKING about what you want your image to look like rather than simply to click the shutter and hope for the best.