(embiggenable) • iPhone
(embiggenable) • iPhone / µ4/3
ON ONE HAND, GEORGE EASTMAN said (or wrote):
"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography".
On the othe hand, Brooks Jensen wrote:
"There is no such thing as "good" or "bad" photographic light. There is just light".
Obviously, these 2 ideas about light are quite contradictory. While one opinion treats light with the utmost reverence, the other treats in a rather casual manner. Nevertheless, one way or the other, in the absence of light, there is no photography.
From day one in my picture making life, I have scrupulously avoided following the "chase the light" school of picture making. That's the one described by Sally Eauclaire-in her book, THE NEW COLOR-as ...
"....many photographers consider visual and/or sentimental excesses as key to expressivity...Their lust for effect is everywhere apparent. Technical wizardry amplifies rather than recreates on-site observations. Playing to the multitude of viewers who salivate at the sight of nature (in the belief that good and god are immanent), such photographers often choose such picturesque subject matter as prodigous crags, rippling sands, or flaming sunsets. Drawing upon the Hudson River School's legacy in painting, they burden it with ever coarser effects. Rather than humbly seek out the "spirit of fact", they assume the role of God's art director making His immanence unequivocal and protrusive."
I have avoided playing the role of God's art director inasmuch as I am much more interested in seeking out the "spirit of fact". A practice which most commonly is labeled as "straight" photography.
All of that written, there are times when, as I have written in the past, that "the light" has chased me. At those times, unlike most of my picture making, it is "the light" itself which causes me to make a picture. Unlike the "light chasers", I have just been lucky enough to have been in the "right" place at the "right" time with the "right" light, presenting me with the opportunity to make an interesting picture.
In any event, this entry was instigated by the fact that I have been rummaging through my picture library looking for pictures to submit to a a juried exhibition with the theme of Finding the Light. I have narrowed it down to about 25 possibles. The real challenge is getting it down to 5-6 pictures for submission,