NWHPC Program by Sylvia Cameron

The Northwest Houston Photo Club enjoyed a presentation tonight by Sylvia Cameron a watercolorist. Ms Cameron travels extensively and takes photographs during her travels to serve as guides for her painting. When I got home I wrote a "review" of the program but was unable to post it to the club meet up site since comments are limited to 1000 characters. I can't catch my breath in 1000 characters to I am posting the review here where I can have my say. 

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Opinion Piece: Okay, everyone’s tired of my opinions but here goes anyway. LOL Just wanted to comment on tonight’s program. There wasn’t much commentary on photography but Ms Cameron did mention a number of things that are as equally important to photography as they are to painting. She talked about lines, diagonals, balance, basic compositional shapes, contrast of light and dark, contrast of color, contrast of warm and cool. These are things that are not talked about enough in our usual discussions of photographs. Are they rules? Absolutely not. But they are principles that need to be understood. I know that eyes glaze over at the mention of message, at the mention of Gestalt—or at the mention of reading a book that goes a little deeper than the usual one size fits all how to books on technique with glossy photos.

Those that are reading the book reviews and commentary on Photography Speaking are at least familiar with these concepts—they are all discussed, maybe not in great detail since I am hoping you will buy the book because I think it is well worth the price if it is studied, not just read through and stuck on a shelf [all of the book reviews are posted to the meet up site under MORE/FILES in the January through August Focus Newsletters]. I wish there had been time for a little deeper discussion tonight but there wasn’t.

Even thought I personally believe that photography is much closer to the discipline of poetry than it is to painting, painting and photography do share a visual language structure. Tonight’s lecture clearly demonstrated probably the most critical difference between painting and photography. Painters add; photographers subtract. A painter starts with a blank canvas and must add the essential elements to tell the story. Photographers start with a canvas that is rich with elements and MUST subtract all but the essential elements to tell the story.

Ms Cameron mentioned several times to simplify, to exclude distracting elements—that is much easier for a painter since they simply can choose to not paint the distracting elements. Even though it is more difficult for the photographer it is no less necessary. Photography is for a great part an art of exclusion and what is excluded is as important as what is included. We exclude first by not including it within the frame. We can do that by changing our point of view, selecting a different focal length lens, throwing it out of focus. If it must be included we can downplay or completely hide the distraction behind something that should be included or by hiding the distraction in shadows (black is the most important color in any photograph, monochrome or color)—or by cloning it out in post processing.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, The Linked Ring in England, The Vienna Amateur Photographers’ Club and later in America, the Pictorlist firmly believed that to create “art” with a camera required that the photograph emulate the painting style of the day. Alfred Stieglitz, a Pictorialist, did more than any other single person in this country to advance the concept of photography being an equal with painting. By the 1920’s/30's Pictorialism, even for Stieglitz,  had pretty much ran it course. Photography that took advantage of the unique qualities of the medium of photography began to become acceptable. Photography gradually became accepted as a unique and separate art form.

Ms Cameron mentioned many times tonight that she constructed certain of her watercolors with images from more than one photograph. Less anyone think that combining photographs came with the invention of Photoshop, it didn’t. In the 1850’s, Carl Gustaf Rejlander experimented with multiple image printing—using glass plates. In 1857 he exhibited The Two Ways of Life, a montage of thirty-two images. In the 1960's, Jerry Uelsmann, well before Photoshop, set up an arrangement of multiple photographic enlargers that he used in assembly line manner, moving the easel with the printing paper down the line of enlargers. For over a century and a half photographers have been combining elements from more than one original image. Hardly a photographer exists that has not tinkered with multiple image printing.

I am not suggesting that you start combining your images. I am saying that photographers should not be discouraged because the painter seems to have it so easy. Photography is a different art even though there is considerable kinship with painting. A watercolor is not an oil, it is not approached in the same way as an oil. Photography, like the watercolor, or the sculpture, is simply a different medium with its own limitations and its own advantages, its own uniqueness. There is much good information in Ms Cameron’s presentation as well as in the handouts she supplied, they need little to be translated to photography.  I hope that the presentation tonight will inspire you to reach a little deeper into the art of photography not by learning rules but by understanding visual principles. Thanks.