El Salvador 1991 Dennis Dunleavy
Many years ago I discovered that the difference between so-called professionals and amateurs is the ability to read and capture light in order to tell a story. Professionals understand that it takes tremendous patience to compose an image. I am not sure if the stories about Ansel Adams waiting three weeks for the light to change in Yosemite to make the picture he wanted are true, but if so this would be an extreme example of patience. For most of us mortals, there seems to be an eternity between seconds and minutes or minutes and hours.
I have great empathy with students when they come back after making pictures of an event with only a marginal feeling of satisfaction. I wish I could wave a magic wand to fix it for them -- I wish I could encourage them to be more at peace with the process of seeing and understanding what is being seen.
Light, I would suggest, is the key to making compelling pictures in photojournalism. Through light, the photojournalist communicate the mood, tone, intention and purpose of the communication. This almost sounds too simple, but with our tendency to rely on auto-everything in a digital age, I sense that many students abdicate control over light as a compositional element to the technology. Today's mantra in photojournalism seems to be, for some people, Point, Shoot, Chimp... Point, Shoot, Chimp.
With the camera's capacity to produce significantly more images without stopping to change film, as well as the immediacy of reviewing images afterward, the ability to understand, read, anticipate, and capture light as communicative tool seems to be an afterthought for many developing photojournalists. The instant gratification of digital photography makes it easier for students to react rather than reflect on what it is they are seeing. I imagine the same thing has been said of film, but there is a difference. Some students and professionals try to tape off the back of the camera so that they are not tempted to check the progress of their picture-making. They try to avoid using the immediacy of reviewing images on-camera as a crutch, which may be fine. At the same time, if the photographer shows little improvement in the quality of his or her images over time then there is something else going on. I would suggest that the issue resides in the personality and behavior of the image maker and not the tool one uses.
We know that there are two main properties photographers must concern themselves with -- intensity and direction. If we visually encounter something that interests us, we are usually drawn to the something because of light. Understanding the subtle changes light renders on a subject is the essence of what we do.
I believe the difference is all in our heads. We seem to be so focused on what comes next for us, that we tend to be remiss in paying greater attention to the details and nuances of life. When we start thinking about making pictures as part of a process of understanding light instead of a product -- getting the picture -- I think things can change for us. The key to reading light is to have a picture in our head as to exactly what it is we are trying to communicate with the intended audience. I think we sometimes forget about this with a digital camera because it is too easy to be satisfied with first results. At the same time, it seems to easy to be satisfied with shifted the intended audience from an unknown viewer to ourselves.
Recently, a friend gave me a copy of The Tao of Teaching by Greta Nagel. In the beginning of the book, there is a quote attributed to an Ancient Chinese Saying:
When I hear, I forget
When I see, I remember
When I do, I understand