You have to ask yourself, what is photography? If it isn't the equipment, if it isn't the technology or the digital manipulation, what is it? Since the beginning days of photography, we have recorded the light, or to put it another way, we have recorded how we see light and its effects on our surroundings. In this way, we communicate not only what we are looking at, but what we see and how it feels. When we take a photograph, we are creating an image by recording light (and its conjoined twin shadow). The way light falls on an object, the shadows it creates, make a two dimensional image seem like it has texture, that it has depth, that it has substance. How we position ourselves in relation to this light creates the forms we see, can give us a sense of movement, of direction. We can lead a viewers eye by the way we place lines and shape, how we manipulate both positive and negative space in an image, and in that way we form the moods and interpretations of what we have photographed. We go beyond simple recording of a subject, endeavoring to place more into our images by how we record and interpret a scene. All of this is through the control of light. Without light, we don't have a photograph. Photography, after all, means light drawing. If we strip away the technology and our notions of what we think we are supposed to be doing, we are left with light as the image making component. We do have to think about shutter speeds and exposures, apertures and depth of field, all the technical bits, but in the end, all we really have is light. And if we can train ourselves to actually "see" light, not just accept it as an illumination, to actually see how it falls on an object, how it shapes it, forms it, and in so doing, how it moves us, we can be truly successful in our photographic image making. But to see light is incredibly difficult. That can't be true, can it? What I mean by "see light" is not just to "look" at light, but to actually see what it is doing to a scene. A cloudy diffuse light illuminates in a very different way than does the sharp contrast of full sun. The colors of a sunrise are very different from those at high noon, or those in the rain. Seasons can change the way light hits an object or the colors you see, and the lights direction changes how a shadow falls on the ground to form shapes and negative space. We are in essence blind to light because it is everywhere and we take it for granted, thinking of it only as a thing that illuminates what we are looking at. We have to train ourselves not just to look at a scene, but to see how light has helped us interpret what is there. Light is everything. It is shape and form and texture. It is color or the lack thereof. It makes things smooth and soft or sharp and harsh. Once we begin to really see this, once we begin this process of seeing and not just looking, we begin to get a feel for the light and how it changes everything. Back in the late 1800s, the painter Claude Monet created a series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral in France. He painted it at different times of the day, at different times of the year. Each painting, always from the same perspective, is very different from the next because Monet wasn't painting the Rouen Cathedral at all. He was painting light. He captured the colors, the textures, the atmosphere present in that scene because he saw light instead of taking it for granted as an illumination source. The effects of the light were what was important, and that is what makes these paintings what they are... the capture of light in all its variety. When we photograph, we are doing the same thing, and in my view, even more so. – Our paint is not made up of an emulsion of minerals, but is the light itself. – Our palette is formed not by mixing colors, but by the shapes, textures, forms and colors light creates in a scene. – Each decision we make, each angle we choose to shoot from, each time we point our lens, changes how light affects what we see. As did Monet, when we take a photograph, we have to do more than just look at a scene. We must see it as light, and then choose how we are to interpret that light through our photographic practice. In this way, we go beyond recording. We create something new, something greater than before. We imbue perceptions, reactions, the sensations of light and feeling. In a way, we capture the light, a moment in time that will never be the same again, and bring it to life through the lens of our view.
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