all photos (embiggenable) ~ Me and Teddy, aka: Theodore Roosevelt
“Here's a secret tip for making better photographs—look for great light….You gotta get used to looking at light rather than at the thingy-ness of the world. It's not those things you're photographing—it's those things in that light.” ~ Michael Johnston
THE PHOTOGRAPHY WORLD IS AWASH IN, to be kind, “questionable” picture-making advice. But every once in awhile one comes across a notion so blatantly ignorant as to be awarded the all-time Best Ever Worst Advice award. As a candidate for that honorarium, I give you the above quote from Michael Johnston.
The idea that you gotta get used to looking at light rather than at the thingy-ness of the world flies in the face of the medium’s bedrock, inexorable and intrinsic relationship with the real, aka: in this context, thingy-ness things. Every time one points their picture making device at something, that something is a thingy-ness of the world thing. Hell, it could reasonably be argued that light itself is a thingy-ness thing.
As for the idea that it’s not those things you are photographing, I can write only, ”Balderdash!!!!” Those things are exactly–i.e. one of the medium’s unique characteristics–what you are photographing.
That written, while most serious amateur picture makers are primarily concerned with making pictures of things–i.e. in a technically “perfect”, now-you-see-it depiction thereof–the real challenge in making “better” photographs is to create an image / picture that expresses something beyond the literalness of the thing depicted.
John Szarkowski had something to say about that:
“Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible.”
iMo, it takes much more than “great light” to make a great photograph. That. is to write, if one is enamored by the light and does not recognize the visual characteristics of the thingy-ness thing, well the words “ flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless” come to mind.