A Walk in the Park
Seeing the Photograph before you Click the Shutter
Fall in Confederation Park. This lovely spot is only a five minute walk from our house.
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”. This was said by Dorothea Lange, a very famous photographer in the United States in the 1930’s and 40’s. Over the years it has surprised me how true this statement is. When you get into the habit of taking pictures and then looking at them critically you become aware of what works in a picture and what doesn’t. But more than that, you develop a habit, no matter where you are, of watching what is around you in terms of a photograph. You search for details and think about how the object or scene would look hanging on your wall. You analyze composition, you look for light and
shadow and contrasting colors, always framing them, in your mind, with a matte and gilded or black frame. But the result is that you see more than other people do. You see everything.
When you learn to “see” you look in all directions. If you want to see the beauty in the trees you look down at the leaves but you look up to the tops of the trees as well. How beautiful is this view of the leaves in the tree tops!
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Once this habit develops you never stop doing it. You begin to see details differently, colors stand out, shapes and shadows become alive, and you seem to drill into the scene before you in ways that others don’t. I imagine this is true for painters and other graphics artists as well who must rely on observation. Anyone who exercises this muscle in the mind becomes an acute observer with or without a camera in hand.
“It’s not what you look at that matters; it’s what you see.”
Author Unknown
Looking up into the trees I could see leaves highlighted by the sun that made them shine as if gold. Red stems and still green leaves finished the pictures perfectly.
Being human, everything in our minds is connected. Our previous experiences color everything we do and when we come to an activity we bring that experience of life to it. This is true, too, of the act of “seeing”. We are seeing not only with our eyes but with our hearts and our imaginations. The depth of your vision depends on the depth of your experience. Let me try to explain that better.
We have a park around our house. Our neighborhood is surrounded on three sides by mature trees and bush with trails and pathways through them. We are into the fall now and this past week I went for a walk with my camera into this landscape. The first picture above is typical of this park. Our West Coast does not get the brilliant colors that the forests of eastern North America do but we do get color. And I wanted to take some pictures that spoke of the season.
It was a beautiful cool day with the golden fall sun moving through in a blue sky. There were leaves on the ground but the trees were still full as well, some foliage green but most mottled with browns and yellows. And as I walked beneath the branches the leaves were falling to the ground around me. And there were colors. Amazing colors if you looked for them. But they were muted browns with yellows and the odd dash of orange and a little red.
This is my eighty first autumn and as I walked under the trees other autumns intruded on my mind. When I was a boy we lived in Etobicoke which then lay on the outskirts of Toronto. This was in the 1950’s, before burning bans, and home owners would rake their leaves to the edge of the road and burn them. And for weeks there would be dozens of smouldering fires giving off clouds of sweet smoke and and a wonderful aroma of fall. It was a time of highschool, and friends, and girls and dances. And walking in the park brought it back.
And in the flood of memory were the days of Indian Summer at Queen’s University. The campus was covered in a forest of tall elm trees that dropped their leaves copiously across the lawns. Those were times of football as we cheered on the Golden Gaels. As I walked the other day memories played on every leaf that fell, memories of midnight escapades, singing folk songs at the Queen’s Tea Room, dining at the Student’s Union and, of course, more girls.
I remember raking the sticky leaves from the butternut trees in our front yard in Port Moody for my children to jump in. All of these recollections, conscious or not, were in my mind as I aimed my camera. I was not trying to create pictures of what was in front of me but of what was in front of me in all of those other autumns as well. I was not looking for this autumn. My goal was to capture my feelings for autumn. But I was doing it with these trees, these leaves, this autumn.
When you see correctly, when you see as an artist, it is not just the eyes that are engaged. The photographer brings his whole life full of experiences to interpret what his eyes see. He brings very soul. (Well, maybe a little dramatic but you get the idea.) This way of seeing does not come easily. It takes practice and examining thousands of your pictures. You have to learn what works and what does not. And your camera does not record perfectly what is placed before it. You have to learn to see as the camera does. So much goes into it that only by practice can you develop this skill.
I read what people say about the rules of composition and how you should take a good picture. Be wary of such advice. There is no easy way to take good pictures consistently. It comes with hard work and experience.
“Everyone looks but it takes a long time to see.”
David Bailey
And so that was my afternoon in the park. I found the pictures I was after. They please me and they remind me of my autumns past. But are they “art”? That is not for me to decide. The artist does not get to say if his work is “art”. That is for his audience and for history. However, I would be happy to have any of these images on canvas in a gilt frame hanging on my wall. Well, hanging on my wall if Susan would allow me any more space on the walls of our home and I think that is not likely to happen.
Yes, we do get some red leaves here on the Coast.
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