What is it about this scene that attracts my eye?

A shift in light can turn ordinary subjects into captivating ones

A powerful exercise is the habit of asking what elements of a scene, situation, or a particular image speak to you or attract your interest. The question can arise when consuming media – compositions in a movie or still images; the question can arise incidentally or accidentally while going about daily routines when a sudden change in the light or shadow, or the intersection of incongruous subjects forms a picture in your mind. Perhaps the sensation of “eye appeal” comes most readily and often when photowalking, camera at hand and eye actively seeking out appealing light, line, texture, color patterns, and shadow shapes. With one’s mind predisposed to compositions in the found streetscape or landscape, the chances are high for recognizing beauty, wonder, grace, or the many other sources of attraction.

Less physically demanding is a similar exercise that gathers up the subjects that strike an inner chord or draw one’s eye to look more closely and carefully. Instead of walking through or riding around a place, it is the stream of photo-sharing pictures or the pages in a print edition from a photographer that can provide the grist for one’s mill. By seeing many images, there may well be a pattern to the ones that personally stand out or cause you to pause and examine the composition fully. Once you have a dozen favorites from the online or print sources, then you can look for some common features that attract your eye again and again. The reverse exercise has equal value: gather up the shots that rub you the wrong way – technically annoying, compositionally irritating, or intellectually frustrating. Asking why these patterns assault your experience of good pictures can be revealing, too.

before the sunrise on the morning after early season snow, fall 2019

After reviewing the sorts of subjects in one’s own pictures, or distilling the things recurring in others’ photographs online or in print, then the big question arises: why should these things cause a person to reach for a camera and carefully compose (or more casually point and shoot) a scene? What sorts of things do you seem to notice naturally or without effort? Colors bold or muted attract some people; for others it is the play of light on various surfaces and the lines and shadow that are integral to that play. Still others hear the sound of social commentary or reverberations of humanity in an event or particular subject in its element. There are those who are drawn first to shiny or bright things, maybe in common with the infamous magpie. By contrast there are photographers who avoid HDR situations and find the richest choice of subjects in low-light at Low Dynamic Range (LDR) situations. The many categories of photography define whole groups of subjects that are suitable and most frequent: animal, flower, macro, sports, landscape, and so on.

color, light, line – so many things to savor with the eye – an impromptu bouquet

So the question of “why do I want to take a picture in this instance” is a two-layered question: (1) what elements stand out, over and over again? and (2) now that I am aware of the appeals to my own eye, then what is it about (e.g. muted light and color) that so resonates with me? The first layer can be teased out and described to others in words and illustrations. But the second layer probably has roots deep in a person’s heart and may defy description or the self-knowledge needed to fully understand why certain properties ring true to one’s particular tastes.

reading-light or reading light or reading lite?

Umami – when something tastes (or looks) delicious

In the past decade the Japanese word to describe a particular dimension of flavor, different to the salt – sour – sweet – bitter (and/or astringent) foursome, has come into pretty wide use on the airwaves, Internet, and other places where people exchange ideas. Umami refers to a buttery, protein-derived mellowness that fills the senses. The Japanese word itself simply means Umai (delicious) + Mi (flavor) and is associated with the ubiquitous Miso Soup (miso shiru) or other foods simmered, basted, or grilled with miso paste (fermented soy bean mash). In Western cooking, the umami can often come from deglazing the carmelized meat juices from pan, or when making beef stock by roasting the bones at low heat in an oven to fully cook the marrow. But how to make the leap figuratively from taste buds to the rods and cones of one’s eyeball and the impression created in one’s visual cortex?

shortly before daybreak the colors become visible

Umami is the word that first comes to mind to describe this quality of light. Sometimes the shadow details are illuminated indirectly by the overhead reflected light from the sky itself, rather from a specific source, like sun or streetlight Sometimes that skyglow comes when the sun is only just out of sight before daybreak or soon after sunset: the so-called “blue hour” that follows the low, warm light of the “golden hour.” Why should the taste of ‘buttery mellowness’ apply to this low-light situation? Perhaps it comes from the lack of harsh contrast, strong shadow or line, and colors being muted when not lit by direct, bright light. Or perhaps this “easy on the eyes” effect of mellowness comes from reduced separation of subject and background, and between one subject and the ones nearby. When things sit well together, not starkly defined by color or line, then they can relate to each other in a kind of quiet conversation that is not felt in the strong, loud light of day.

color and contrast to separate subjects on sunny late afternoon

Whatever the cause for ‘mellow, delicious’ (umami) lighting conditions, one thing is certain. After you taste this light, your appetite grows bigger and you begin to find it appearing in more and more places: in the weak light of twilight times, or in the middle of the day in the shadows that faintly glow from the illumination reflected into the dark to create an indirect light source.

Target-rich scene, but how much context should frame your subject?

So many possible subject appear to the eye of the beholder.

 

Oftentimes a location offers multiple subjects to feature in a composition. Use too wide of a frame and the main subject is lost among the other elements of the picture. Use too tight of a frame to isolate the main subject and what may be integrally related to the visual point of interest gets left out, possibly giving a false representation to the viewer of the true nature of the subject or setting. When faced with more than one visual attraction, each person seizes on different points of significance in the subjects to frame, some more abstract or conceptual than others.

One photographer could see the world of potential photographs in terms of simple, bold design with just a few colors and strong lines to make the best resulting picture. Another person might not find those strong lines and colors to be significant and instead focus on personalities or events that visually communicate drama or its emotional complement, tranquility. Still others may hunt for subjects that tell a story or suggest processes and changes that are only momentarily frozen by the click of a shutter. Depending on the person’s interests, the favorite view could come from a macro lens for the world up close, or maybe it is a telephoto lens for cropping tightly around a central subject, or else perhaps it is a wide-angle lens that most often shapes the person’s eye for framing a subject with a wide context.

The process by which humans make meaning, recognize meaning, or find meaning involves connections: an item is seen in relationship to similar items, or by strange incongruity that item stands in contrast to the other one. Connections can be made with nearby things, or tied to other items more abstractly (figuratively, conceptually, symbolically). By controlling the composition frame and juxtaposing a main subject it is possible for the photographer to emphasize certain connections (or to obscure, block, or disregard other connections)  above and beyond other possible relationships.

The above photo shows an ordinary scene at the edge of the parking lot for the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan in November. The strong light, clear air, and clearly defined shapes offer a variety of possible subjects to foreground and to frame. Rather than to compare the merits of one compositional frame against another, the point of this essay is to suggest some of the consequences that come from imposing one size frame instead of another. Put another way, how much context is needed when presenting a subject? This may not be something suited to a rule, but this ability to judge the right frame certainly does grow sharper through experience.

Undoubtedly there are merits to each of the overlain crop lines used in this illustration to trace each of the many possible ways to engage with the scene and to capture one or more compositions. Even the different aspect ratios (square versus 16:9 versus 3:2 versus 4:3) and orientation (portrait versus landscape) contribute something to the subjects within this larger scene. But above all else, what happens when the borders are drawn around a subject tightly (little context) versus more broadly (wider context), possibly to include meaningful juxtaposition of foreground, middle, and background in relationship with the main subject?

A tightly framed shot will fill the viewer’s attention with the main subject, inviting close scrutiny of the surface, texture and color, line and mass. And the nature of still photos to freeze the subject allows something moving to be studied endlessly, although the essential aspect of dynamism, diachronic process, and behavior or response is downplayed by freezing the subject to view its structure or design. There is a lot that is gained by such a clear and tangle-free portrait of the subject. At the same time much is excluded or omitted, too: the motion/longitudinal interaction of the subject with its surroundings is one absence. Another is the tendency to abstract or distill the subject, treating as a type, a symbol, a thing freed of (developmental) past or future and timelessly existing in that frozen moment. The subject taken out of context becomes objectified and impersonal; more (inert) object than (autonomous) subject.

Taking the opposite approach and framing a subject in wide context, what are the consequences for people who view the picture? In all compositions, tight or loose, there is always an edge of the frame that leads the viewer to wonder what lies just outside of view. But with a shot that gives generous context to the main subject, some of the immediately adjacent space and subjects can be seen surrounding the main subject. In other words, there is less guessing for the viewer, because the contiguous space around the subject is given in wider views.

Suppose for a moment that a dozen photographers faced the same scene (above photo, for instance), and that each one seized upon a different significance than the others. Taken individually, some pictures might appeal to one viewer, but less so to the eyes of another viewer. More interestingly, though, when all 12 resulting photos are viewed all together, a few insights emerge. (1) Each shot has integrity to itself – it is a true likeness and faithful representation of a moment and framing of a particular subject. (2) The universe of other compositions is missed or overlooked as a consequence of capturing that photographer’s own specific engagement with the subject; sort of an “opportunity cost” (the price of committing to one picture is the many other shots that could have been taken instead). (3) Synthesizing the diverse compositions, it becomes clear that no single framing or articulation of the scene is the whole truth or complete essence of the subject. (4) No matter how tightly or loosely framed the composition, there will forever be something that lies outside the frame; out of view. In other words, (5) a larger context of meaning can infinitely be expanded around any given composition.

Summing up, when you come upon a scene or subject to photograph, consider the context just beyond the boundaries of your selected framing of the composition. Then ask if the significance more or less fits into the frame, or importantly exceeds the boundaries of that frame. By recognizing how very different the resulting photos of a given place can be, according to the eye and experiences of the photographer, this simple question opens up your perspective so that the eventual shutter release will enjoy a momentary delay for reflection, and possibly also result in a second variation on the composition that lets just a little more context and meaning into the picture.