Preconceptions and Negative Space – Alex Bond
Photographing with an Open Mind
What are you photographing? It is an innocent enough question. People see you with a camera and tripod and immediately look around for what they think they might have missed.
But to be honest it is a question I struggle to answer. If I answer honestly that I am photographing the light on that rock, or the texture of some bark, it sounds evasive. Sometimes I am so immersed in my subject I can’t even think of a timely answer. Truth be told, I am not even sure when I set out with my camera exactly what I am going to photograph. That is quite deliberate on my part. I avoid going out with fixed ideas. For me, going out to photograph something specifically could mean returning home with an average image rather than one that I am excited about printing. Fixating on a preconceived image may prevent me from being receptive to exploring better potential images.
Planning versus Preconceptions
Trip planning, especially on longer excursions is still required. When visiting locations I need to consider how to get there. Consideration must also be given to seasonal variations and restrictions. Time and direction of light, plants in season, food, water, shelter, and safety are all factors. But trip planning is not the same as approaching your subject with a fixed mindset.
I often will return to photograph places I have previously visited. Sometimes these visits may be months or even years apart. It never ceases to amaze me the new images that present themselves to me. I often wonder how I missed such good subjects from my earlier visits.
So, not holding too many preconceived ideas about my potential subject may serve to increase my awareness of better compositions. It is not so much the subject, but my feelings towards the subject, which matters most in photography. To make a pleasing photograph requires an awareness, comprising of an understanding, and sensitivity towards the subject.I think awareness is the key creative factor. It helps you be in the moment.
Ground Glass Advantage
It never ceases to amaze me what a difference composing an image onto a ground glass makes, rather than looking through a viewfinder. With a viewfinder camera, I set up the camera’s position to where I think is the best composition. Looking through the viewfinder I am guided by recognisable shapes and forms.
However, composing on my 4×5 wooden field camera with a ground glass focus screen is very different. As soon as I peer under the focusing cloth, everything is upside down and back to front to what I am seeing in front of me. I am no longer seeing a subject that is easily recognisable but as anonymous shapes contained within a rectangular frame. More importantly, I am aware of the relationship between the negative space between these shapes create on the ground glass in a very two-dimensional way.
Negative Space
This apparent anonymity of the shapes and their negative space allows me to compose more critically. Panning the camera left or right, up or down, creates compositional tensions and balances between the negative space and objects. By comparison, when I am looking through a viewfinder, I find it much harder to be aware of negative space.
Undoubtedly, the ability to compose with negative space is one of the big advantages for me and why I choose to work with a 4×5 field camera. So often I am surprised at how much better a composition on a ground glass appears compared to what I originally had in my mind’s eye.
The greatest joy I get from my photography is completing a finished print that makes me feel how I felt when I made the exposure. Now and then I get lucky and am delighted with the result. But something else strange happens. There are wonderful qualities in the print that I didn’t see and could not anticipate at the time of exposure. So much so, as to leave me doubting if I had anything to do with the making of the image.
This brings me back to my opening paragraphs about awareness and being open to the unexpected. Leave your preconceived ideas at home you never know what you might see.
Alex Bond
Alex Bond is a photographer who personally hand prints his silver gelatin photographs in his darkroom. Since 1989 he has published cards, calendars, books, and posters showcasing the West Australian environment under his imprint Stormlight Publishing.
Alex, thank you, a great article and beautiful photographs. Yes, there is something very special about composing an image on the ground glass of a large format camera.
Thank you David
Some excellent images Alex and you make some great points in your article. I too have wondered why we sometimes find unexpected layers to our compositions after their capture, not always at the time of their making. Perhaps our landscape exists on multiple levels and we need time and maybe a two dimensional representation for that complexity to be revealed?
I certainly agree with your observation Murray that there are layers to our compositions. When I am looking at a screen with the image upside down and back to front, I seem to be less conscious of what it is I’m looking at and more aware of the relationship between shapes. This negative space becomes the dominant feature as I compose. It is almost like the negative space is my subject and I need to arrange it within the rectangular frame. That’s not a reaction I get when I am using an eye-level viewfinder camera. I wonder if other photographers experience something similar to this?
Thank you for your article and superb photographs, Alex. I completely agree with your sentiments about keeping an open mind and eyes, being receptive to what we see and feel when we are immersed in the landscape. I’ve also found working with a reversed, inverted image on the ground glass helps me to see impartially what the film actually records rather what our eyes and minds sometimes think we see. As one large format photographer of many decades told me, “the ground glass doesn’t lie”.
Thanks for your comments Mark, I agree that keeping an open mind and being receptive to your subject is certainly one of the key factors in creative works.
Magic Alex.
Thanks Ellie
Two points:
“I often wonder how I missed such good subjects from my earlier visits.”
It could be that the places have changed between visits or that the light, plants in season, the presence of water etc are different.
“To make a pleasing photograph requires an awareness, comprising of an understanding, and sensitivity towards the subject.I think awareness is the key creative factor. It helps you be in the moment.”
Some say that this an embodied awareness –a tactile form of perception– that suggests a haptic aesthetics rather than an optical one premised on the eye. A haptic visuality premised on close vision is centred around an embodied relationship to the image (in the ground glass).
Photographing nature with a view camera does reinforce the idea of haptic space and embodied seeing and it often acts to undermine the separation between subject and object.
Gary, you raise some interesting points and gave me some new terms I had to look up! I would agree that landscapes are constantly changing, so revisiting a location is never going to be exactly the same each time. Not only that, but your knowledge and understanding of the area also changes, with each visit. Awareness is a term I use to try and describe my optimal mental space when photographing. Another term I use is immersion. I want to experience more than just the surface.