Writing with light above all else

Daily selection at Flickr.com/explore viewed on March 14, 2024 -screenshot-1

Of the 100 or 200 images featured today at the Flickr photosharing website, these screenshots sample only a fraction. But they may well be representative of the range in lighting, subject matter, color patterns, and geometry that gives shape to the images. Each viewer browses for different purposes and brings different responses to the world they know –and by extension to this pool of reality glimpses. So the photos that seem remarkable to one person often differ to another’s responses. Rather than to discuss individual compositions or to speak of the totality of dimensions that go into the “frozen moment” when an exposure is recorded, consider light as it defines and gives character to the diverse scenes in these two groups of photos on Flickr today.

Daily selection at Flickr.com/explore viewed on March 14, 2024 -screenshot-2

Before picking apart the images seated side by side by reason of editorial choices and not by theme, location, maker, technique, or tools used, consider only the many ways that light is present in each frame. In some the light is the main point, but in others the light is less dominant than the drama of the moment or the lines that structure the scene or the bold color patterns. In all cases, though, light (and its absence) is what makes a photographic process possible. After all, the name is Photo+Graphos, ‘writing with light’. Other visual art is also named by its medium: charcoal, oil, acrylic, pen, graphite, and so on. By savoring the many kinds of light in the screenshot thumbnails a new appreciation arises for light itself as the medium for artfully expressing a composition.

There are ways to distill general observations about this light-based way to see the world, to record and share sights with fellow viewers, and thereby to interpret the subject in the first instance, but also by reflection to know something about one’s own self according to the reactions (or lack of response) to the pictures. Either by marking up the thumbnails in the screenshot into categories, or by printing and then taking scissors to cut them into pieces for sorting, there should be a few things to say about the nature of Writing With Light. The following snapshot is one way to group the clippings made from the thumbnails combined into a single collage.

Grouping the earlier screenshot images into color-first, light-first, and muted color/light

This exercise with scissors and table for sorting could have created sets of images based on any denominator alone or in combination: monochromes, rectilinear geometry or curves, night and low-light, human-interest, interior or exterior, and so on. But for the purpose of this look into the heart of “Writing With Light” (literally, Photo+Graphy), the first set is color dominant – no matter what other elements go into the composition. The next set is light as the subject; the actual shapes that the warm or cool light, abundant or scant light falls onto is less important than the presence and quality of light itself. Light is the real subject for this second group. Pleasure derives in thrilling one’s visual cortex, that large proportion of gray matter at the back of one’s skull.

In the much smaller third set, the images are much less dominant about color elements or light for its own sake. Instead the color and/or the light is muted and plays a supporting rather than starring role in the resulting photograph. What becomes evident by sorting the sample of pictures from today’s Flickr.com/explore webpage is the large proportion of pictures featuring light for its own sake, and color for its own pleasure. A small sample size like this collection is not enough to make a general statement about the nature of photography and its foundational pleasure using light as the means to record color patterns and relationships, and also light as the subject all by itself, never mind what it shines on. But at least this small exercise makes it easy to appreciate the beauty of light, not just to write with, but to admire even without the aid of a lens and medium for recording and distributing to others.

Leaping from the world of optics and composition to the land of thinking and comprehension, the foregoing hymn of admiration for Writing With Light is analogous to the wonders and pleasures of imagining, reflecting, and reconsidering the mental activity in a good argument or keen curiosity unfettered and free to roam. In other words, just as photographers can derive happy moments in the light that is instrumental to recording a subject, so too can philosophers derive happy moments in the thinking experience that is instrumental to articulating a subject.

Did you notice anything today?

Noticing the light on surfaces and casting shadow patterns (March 2024 Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park)

Noticing the patterns of light and the relationship (spatial or symbolic) between subjects motivates some of life’s passers by to pause and admire the view presenting itself for any who cares to see. At times the person will consider how a picture (photographed or recorded by hand) could be composed, if one were so inclined: holding up fingers to form an imaginary frame, or shifting left or right to bring elements into alignment. These days, with seemingly ubiquitous cellphones carrying high-quality camera lens and apps, that same person may well be accustomed to snap a photo and mull it over later, either to refine it or perhaps as a prompt to write about or to make into visual art. But in all these cases, the first step is noticing things.

When the days are full or burdens are many, perhaps the mind is preoccupied with too much to spare the attention or intention of seeing what is within sight – either visible physically, or something more intangible that can be interpreted and extracted from the scene by induction, experience, or deduction. The reverse frame of mind is most conducive to noticing things small or large in one’s surroundings, whether it is a familiar route in one’s routines, or it is the first time to see a particular place. Setting off with a mind to spot geometry, texture, parody or irony, color combinations or patterns and so forth does predispose one’s eye and attention to noticing things unobserved by others. And the custom of photowalking also provides a similarly semi-structured occasion to take a picture-recording device for a stroll for no other purpose than the joy of looking (and sharing with others the treasures that reveal themselves). In other words, when one’s heart is not filled with preoccupations and time is not pressing, even if it means just an hour carved out, or comes like a breath of air for a moment in an otherwise tense day, then in that creative space the light and everything bathed in it (or shadowed from it) can present a potential composition.

By reading authors who reflect on the making and meaning of photographs, as photographer or art critic or social observer, the titles of classic books and essays, as well as published books of images come up. It was in an article about a documentary photographer observing uneven development in Chinese cities and outskirts published online at Trans Asia Photography that the work of Stephen Shore came up. After seeing his oversize book of USA images made with 8×10 view camera, Uncommon Places (1982), I looked for other titles of his, not only images but also photography writings relating to his years teaching in New York at Bard College. In The Nature of Photographs: A Primer (1998) he has a few words to say about ‘noticing’.

^{The quality and intensity of a photographer’s attention leave their imprint on the mental level of the photograph. This does not happen by magic. A photographer’s basic formal tools for defining the content and organization of a picture are vantage point, frame, focus, and time. What a photographer pays attention to governs these decisions (be they conscious, intuitive, or automatic). These decisions resonate with the clarity of the attention. They conform to the photographer’s mental organization –the visual gestalt– of the picture.} [page 65]

Turning to the photos at the top of this blogpost, the Sunday morning light on this unseasonably mild day early in March, invited unhurried looking around the botanical garden and sculpture park. Had the wind been blowing or the normal winter weather been attacking anybody outdoors, then attention would be focused on minimizing exposure to the cold rather than lingering over the halo on the smooth bronze cow and the way that the wooden bench backs cast their patterned shadows onto the pavement. What Stephen Shore writes about attention seems equally true of noticing things: what fills the photographer’s mind affects what looks significant or worth trying out compositions from the scene. And by extension from seeing to knowing (thinking) that characterizes this blog, what a person is thinking about affects what he or she notices. What the person notices affects what he or she is thinking about, too: environment that is perceived > views seen > thinking > perceived environment.

See also The Art of Noticing, 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday by Rob Walker (2019).

Music for the eye, pictures for the ear

Using the High-Dynamic-Range setting of iPod to record added shadow detail and bright space outside.

At first glance this picture shows a roofing crew putting new asphalt shingles on the garage and house of the backyard neighbor’s property. But in this article it is an illustration of light values that speak to the eye. Perhaps some photos rise to the level of “singing” rather than speaking to the eye and visual cortex that together process light in the back of the brain and thereby engage the mind’s eye, too.

Music by Claude Debussy (Impressionist) and “programmatic music” like Camille Saint-Saens (Carnival of the Animals) presents visual spaces and social contexts in musical language, giving listeners and musicians hints of scenes that trigger personal associations and visual memories, too, along with imagined experiences of visiting a particular place. In this way the mind’s eye is touched by the ear. Different to direct correspondence of crisscrossing sensory sources, synesthesia (sounds that trigger taste, flavor that triggers sound, numbers that trigger color), this use of music to paint a picture is a curious experience. Just as each reader pictures the scenes in literary passages differently, so do some music listeners occasionally form images while others do not, each person’s vision different to the other’s.

Functional MRI brain studies of musicians producing music inside the imaging machine, as well as studies of brains of people who are listening to recorded music show multiple sites around the brain lighting up with electrical activity. Unlike some other conscious activity that is associated with a specific site in the brain, music triggers many parts at the same time. Perhaps there is a corollary or a mirror-image to the phenomenon of music that causes a picture to form in a listener’s mind; that is, maybe some visual compositions lead to melody or harmony or related kind of resonance in the eye of the viewer. In other words, perhaps reading the pattern of light values in a composition by a person’s visual cortex can mimic the experience of playing or listening to music.

Returning to the photo illustration at the top of this page, the elements and the ostensible subject are unremarkable; noise of daily life rather than a musical moment that stands out of the ordinary. However, the wide range in light values (using HDR to expand the contrasty extremes of light and dark) is still something to admire in quiet beauty. Thinking of a musical analogy, such wide-ranging “writing with light” corresponds with the listening experience in a cathedral or another space that has an extended decay time for the waves of sound to fade. This auditory experience enhances feelings of depth and gravity. Likewise, when a complex chord is sustained by voices or an instrumental ensemble, very often an “overtone” or fifth voice (added to the four-part harmony as a ghost) appears. The effect is to extend the experience of spaciousness and separation, adding depth and gravity. Just so, also, in the case of this HDR picture, the extended range in light values produces a viewing experience that is out of the normal, everyday snapshot, visual impression.

So the next time that a particular location or visual composition sings out or speaks to you, consider if something musical is going on in your imagination; your mind’s eye. Cultivating this musical sensibility when stopping to look at a subject calling our for a photograph may well lead to “hearing” the rhythm and harmonies of light and color and geometry and texture all around.

Seeing patterns of visual basso ostinato

neatly spaced sycamores catch the warm light of the May 12 evening

Patterns and relationships are the superpowers humans have that AI does not. Being able to leap from a word to a symbol to an image to a melody works well if you have a poetic streak, enjoy humor, can follow political persuasion in speeches, or are touched by emotional displays or religious glories. So this photo of a residential development from the 1950s and 1960s with mature trees lining the street at regular intervals is very eye catching, indeed. The effect is of a living, seasonally dressed colonnade; a sort of Greek temple by made of living wood instead of marble columns.

Since visual experience is so keyed to look for patterns are relationships, recurring shapes, colors, shadows, textures, and so on almost certainly call out for attention. Not to notice them is harder than just letting one’s attention be drawn to a scene so the eyes can wander across the composition as it presents itself in search of patterns.

the cloudless day at noon places the sun almost directly overhead to make these shadows

The bright light and contrasting door to houseside make this ordinary structure stand out boldly from the blue sky and green foreground and background. But, as with the repeating pattern of the tree-lined street earlier, here again the eye cannot avert itself from the pulse of repeating pattern here. Oddly, the measurement of the cladding is a thickness of perhaps 9mm (1/2 inch) or so, but the sun’s overhead position elongates and exaggerates the shadow to produce this view of shadows measuring maybe 2″ (about 45-50mm).

In summary, eyes and minds work together to notice patterns and relationships. Very often meaning is attributed to the moment of recognition or the sensation of significance: aha! here is something interesting, beautiful, rare, or worth sharing on social media! In both illustrations, above, it is the repeating pattern that seems remarkable. And even if the thrill of discovery is not life-changing among the many important things in the world, at least for the fraction of a second to compose a photo, everything falls into place and the moment is captured: it really is life-changing, if only for the briefest moment in the eyes of one person.

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.