When one creates something, the important thing is frequently not what you put in to it, but more often what you leave out.
Well … I really only make that statement to get you thinking … because of course you have to consider what gets ‘put in’ otherwise all you’d have left is bunch of what you left out!
But there is also a significant element of truth in the statement. Consider this for a moment. Imagine you are wandering along a quiet and deserted back street in a hopelessly run down and depressed area, the sky is grey and featureless and the cold wind is cutting through the thin coat you chose in preference to the heavy one which hangs next to it. There are dirty tin cans and broken bottles scattered all over the place, overfull black bin liners have spilled their contents into the shabby doorways and somebody’s discarded three piece suite, which sits partly on the pavement and partly in the road, is saturated from the previous night’s heavy rain …
… then there, parked on the other side of the road is a strikingly elegant 1962 Alvis TD21 Series 2 convertible, showing off its gleaming maroon coach work dramatically contrasting with its bleak surroundings. You cross the road towards the car, drawn towards it as it beckons you to take a closer look. As you approach you hear the ‘clicking’ of hot metal components cooling down, indicating that the owner has not long since parked it. Having arrived at the car, you start to take in the details not visible from across the street. You notice the care that the owner has taken to clean under the wheel arches and buff up the tyres. You look inside and admire the burr walnut instrument panel and the beautiful gauges contained within it. Now you’re properly drawn in, and you can’t help but notice that the leather looks nicely ‘lived in’ but not cracked, and you convince yourself that you can smell it through the closed windows. This car is used, but obviously also treasured as an object of desire.
Curiously, you have become less aware of the cold wind. The broken bottles have receded to somewhere else in a corner of your mind marked ‘not particularly bothered’ and the three piece suite has curiously been enveloped in a cloak of invisibility. What’s just happened is that a ‘focal point’ has appeared in your world. The Alvis has become the focus of your attention and this has created an entirely different equilibrium in your appreciation of the surroundings.
This happens all the time in the real world. However, this does not happen in pictures … unless the artist or the photographer makes it happen, that is.
When you look at a picture on a wall, the focal point is the picture and the room is the environment … its surroundings. You can walk into an untidy room and as your eye falls onto a captivating picture on the opposite wall, the untidiness of the room is suddenly forgotten. The room disappears as the picture becomes the focus of your attention … ‘all’ of the picture. This is important.
Imagine the picture on the wall is a photograph of that beautiful Alvis surrounded by broken bottles, discarded tin cans and a soggy sofa. The impression you are left with will be entirely different to that which you experienced when you saw it on that cold grey day. The reason is the fundamental difference between the way we see pictures and the way we see the real world. Out in the real world, when we are concentrating on something … a bird in a tree or someone approaching us who we know … all the peripheral stuff around us gets rejected. When you cease to concentrate on the bird, it all comes back again. In a picture, however, this does not happen in anything like the same way. The picture ‘is’ the point of concentration … ‘all’ of the picture. When you subsequently start to examine the picture in detail, you then becomes aware of the main focal point within it, but by that time you have already been visually polluted by all the broken bottles and sofas … and by then it’s all far too late. The damage is done. The train has left the station and the fat lady is already singing. It’s a bad picture, and that’s that.
Now, if a water colourist or a painter in oils was making a picture of the Alvis he would only paint what he felt was necessary to include. The stuff that helps. He would leave out the ‘Big Mac’ sign on the front of the building behind the car. He may even leave out the entire building and put a tree there instead, or even a different building. A photographer has a harder job on his hands in this respect. The photographer is faced with two choices. He can either put the car exactly where he wants it by going location hunting, or make the picture in the same way as his friend the water colourist does.
Now here’s a thought on the broken bottle scenario. An image may indeed benefit from some subject contrast. The Alvis could well be enhanced by the odd bashed tin can! But it is most important to get the makeup of the subject contrast just right. What is even more important is how these details are blended together. Rather like blending a good brandy or knowing just how much salt to put into a recipe. Get this wrong and all you’ll taste is the salt and you’ll be right back to not knowing where to look in the picture again. The difference between the good artist and the bad one is how he deals with this balance. At what point does this additional subject matter become merely a distraction?
One thing’s for sure though, you won’t have a picture of the Alvis you’ll want to stop and look at every time you walk past it, by just pointing a camera and pressing the shutter release button.
The question is, do you want a picture or a snapshot … ?
… you choose.