Attending to light fosters deep perception and appreciation I was nineteen and majoring in photography at Rochester Institute of Technology when I made a commitment to the regular practice of black & white photography as a medium of personal growth. Prompted by insights gained from some images I’d made, I sat alone in my car […]
Chapter 14: Pattern (The final in this series) Through repetition, patterns create visual harmony, rhythm and order, all of which can contribute to meaning and create a sense of stability and symmetry which is pleasing to the eye. Patterns are apparent in the energy fields within atoms, the immensity of the cosmos and the way […]
Chapter 11: Key The terms “low key” and “high key” are often used in photography. They refer to photographs that are overall bright or dark. “High Key” images are predominately light or white, like a white cat sitting on a white sofa. “Low Key” is dark and somber, a black dog in a dark tunnel. […]
Chapter 10: Gradation Aesthetically speaking, “gradation” refers to a gradual or graded change of tone over a surface. Artists refer to it as a grading of “values.” In color photography, gradation can be a transition from one hue to another or to a different level of saturation or brightness. In black and white, it’s the […]
Chapter 7: Depth of Field “Depth of field” (DOF) is the optical property of a photographic lens that determines the degree of sharpness between objects close to the camera and those farther away. When both distances, near and far, are sharp the DOF is said to be “long” or “deep.” When only the point of […]
Chapter 6: Contrast In photography, “contrast” is the ratio between the darkest dark and the lightest light within a frame. It’s said to be “soft” when there’s very little difference between the lights and darks, “medium” in what we regard as normal, and “high” when an image has both maximum blacks and brightest whites.” Contrast […]
Chapter 3: Color as Subject Objectively speaking, the world is colorless. So is the sun. Our brains construct the sensation of color from various radiating wavelengths of photons, depending on how they’re absorbed in and reflected from various surfaces. Visible light occupies just a tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, constituted of wavelengths that stimulate […]
Invitations This is the final posting in The Soul of Photography series. Next week begins the follow-on practical series, The Aesthetic Dimensions in Art and Society, which for 13 weeks characterizes the many dimensions—abstraction, atmosphere, contrast, form, key, geometry and so on—with an emphasis on technique. The series is intended to increase one’s aesthetic awareness […]
Chapter 7: The Transcendent Approach I asked ChatGPT (AI) to introduce this subject with a short poetic reflection on photography as an ideal medium for seeing beyond the senses. A Photographic Invocation Light is the oldest language. Before words, before memory—there was light falling on form. The camera does not invent beauty; it recognizes […]
Chapter 3: Fine Art, Expression, Contemplation In the early 1950s, when I was introduced to photography, the debate was raging as to whether or not photography could be considered an art form. In January 1955 Edward Steichen launched an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled, The Family of Man. […]
Contemplative Photography 