-The important insights about the composition homework: first, which issues are the biggest dealbreakers, we’ll find that you can perhaps better achieve the compositional structure you want not by additively including the right decisions as much as subtractively making sure there are no dealbreakers in the shot. Static traits are dominant, dynamic traits are recessive.  If the two are competing in the same image, static wins. That tells us that dynamic traits have to be alone in order to work, and further tells us the human eye will use any excuse to stop moving, so if you want you image dynamic you can’t give any excuse. Why static? For emphasis of one thing, or stoic archetype. Why image B? For hierarchy of information, never archetype. Why dynamic? To give the impression of activity or movement. The method of COMPETING strategies. If we want “activity” and we shoot something that IS active but with a static composition and then co pare it to something not moving but with dynamic composition, composition wins. Same if we try motion blur vs dynamic composition, composition wins. So composition is immensely important. Finally, most important insight is that these constructs can be combined and reinforced with sister technical strategies (static composition WITH static depth of field, or dynamic composition WITH motion blur, and those images will create a clear, reinforced, consensus in the mind of the viewer, whereas strategies that CONTRADICT each other can lead to complexity, multiple themes and emphasis within the same image. This is a huge theme in Photo2. Most important of all here, we respond to the structure first, and content second. That one beat head start the photographer has on the viewer is crucial. The structure colors or influences how we are going to receive and perceive the information in the shot. If we see an active construct, we assume something is “happening,” if we see a stoic construct we assume it’s something important we should connect with.

-warmup discussion on art theory. What value does art have, what does it do. Transparency vs embodiment theory. Modern vs classical. What separates them? In 1910-1920 several things happen, Clive Bell rages agains the “tyranny of representation” in art, why should art have to mimic other things that already exist, mimic the forms of “greater things,” why can’t art have its own form, why can’t it reference itself, rather than something else that already exists, forcing art to refer to OTHER things that are presumably greater than itself subjugated art to a lower class of existence. Duchamp. Forcing T vs E to the forefront. 1) exposing a lack in our definition of art, 2) proving aesthetics aren’t part of arts definition, 3) enlightenment art in that instead of bending the world or art piece to our fixed perceptions of beauty, we bend our perceptions to something fixed in the world. But can an embodiment theorIst reconcile his work?  Homerun ball or Lincoln’s pistol.  Finally, modern art is more duchampian. Damien Hirst’s shark. If he replaces the shark is it still worth $15m? This forces people to be less diplomatic when you ground this concept in a practical real world context. In an art theory class, people’s minds are very open, when they just purchased a homerun ball, their minds become very concrete. Most art gets to play with these ideas without consequence, as abstract thought experiments, but photography is subject to every theory and abstraction we just discussed, but photography is also INTEGRAL to real life consequences in ways that poetry, symphony, and painting aren’t. Photography is used as evidence to convict people in court. It is used to inform people about what’s going on in other parts of the world. It’s used for education. On a daily basis it is integral in influencing people’s understanding of the factual world in ways those other art forms aren’t. Yet photography can be subjected to each and every one of these abstract art theories. So which is it, a record of reality, or an abstract art form. Photographers like to dwell in that gray area, it defines most art photographers. Susan Sontag once said photography is the most abstract art form, because painters and sculptors take something opaque and it’s very difficult for the, to make their medium transparent, photographers start with something transparent and it takes effort to abstract. But we’re all abstracting from what was there in reality, we only vary in how much.

-analysis of Coburn’s Notre Dame.  First, recite every light and space decision he made, how we know the exposure, the aperture, the focal length. Then ask why he contradicted his technique.  Focus on foreground, exposure and focal length on background. First, consider that if he did put all emphasis on foreground you’d ONLY see that, if he put all emphasis on background you’d ONLY see that. This construct forces you to notice both, and to compare the relationship. It adds complexity and emphasis of multiple subjects. Before 1901, photographers didn’t think this way at all, it was taken for granted that you exposed for and focused on the same thing...because people didn’t see the physics of photography as being structurally useful, they saw them as barriers to REVEALING the subject or getting the subject to “come out.” So you had to “get the exposure” and “focus it correctly.” But Coburn is seeing the physics not as a barrier that needs to be nullified, but as something that is structurally useful, a way to split the viewer’s attention between two different points of emphasis. 50 years later, every Life Magazine photographer will be doing this, and 100 years later every NatGeo photographer will DEPEND on it. When Coburn first does it as an artist, like all new art, it rubs people the wrong way (they rioted, hipster eye roll, you’re just trying to be different and annoying) because it defies what they were routinely expecting. Then a generation or two later everyone’s doing it because once you get passed the gut reaction of the image not fitting your expectations, we find that it has a lot of logical, useful value. The other value to what he’s done is that photographers HAD been shooting soft focus Pictorialism for the past two decades, and when they simply unfocus the image it doesn’t in any way call attention to HOW focus works, but sticking something relatively meaningless in the plane of focus makes the softened picture a visible CONSEQUENCE of where the photographer chose to focus. It connects those dots in the viewer’s mind. So now we’re not HIDING our technique, or the properties of the medium, we’re including them, we’re declaring that things like depth of field or silhouetting are OUR BRUSH STROKES, they are what make our medium unique, so why hide them?  In doing so he takes that popular aesthetic and lifts it from being borrowed or mimicked painting syntax, and he makes it PHOTOGRAPHY syntax in its own right. We may NOW see painters use depth of field or overexposure, etc. in 2020, because they’ve now got the idea from photography, but you wouldn’t have in 1890. Painters were far more limited to what the human eye could see or what the human brain can imagine, but photographers were dealing with the optical limitations of their cameras and lenses, and were finding they could get effects that diverged for how the human eye might see things, and thus they can now start building aesthetic and syntax around those properties, instead of mimicking painting or mimicking the human imagination. This image represents no less than the birth of consciousness of our medium, as it detaches from painting and other art paradigms.

-Cataloging all decisions that can be made after an image has been framed. Remember that no one of these decisions on its own is profound, but combining them will be profound. Consider that these photographers were not “one trick ponies,” so much as dissertation photographers. They spent their careers collecting data on what happens when you apply this one particular technique, and now we ALL get to benefit from what they learned. Artists CAN now use what they taught us but often they don’t, they want to pioneer a new method with a dissertation of their own. So in the book of How Photography Works, artists are often picking a blank chapter and filling it in so as to add to the book. Occupational photographers are more likely to take the book, take what’s already been discovered and proven reliable, and the USE it very reliably. This puts a spin on art photographers having a “unique voice.” What that really means is that they devoted their shooting to concentrating on one type of shooting habit, almost a control and variation. Other artists don’t want to mimic it, they want to do one of their own. Occupational industries such as commercial photographers and photojournalists don’t use a more single, unique voice, they all tend to use an industry wide voice that has been proven effective.

-Homework is control frame vary technique. Remember there are two components to technique, there’s the internal camera mechanics, and there’s the external LIGHTSPACETIME. This will prove which matters more one last time. ALIGNMENT OF DIFFERENTIALS is the most important part of the entire photographic process. Most importantly, this exercise builds vision. We’ll look at each assignment with a fine tooth comb at first, see how each alignment forced students to hit a wall with their technique, but after we see students hitting the same walls over and over, it will become redundant and ad nauseum. Then we’ll lay down one image and from the alignment you can all tell me what’s coming. What they could and COULDN’T do. But if you’ve trained your brain to be able to see everything that can and can’t be done just by looking at one photograph, then why can’t you stand in the middle of a scene and from one position know everything that can and can’t be done...and if you need to change what CAN be done you’ll know how to realign the scene. So does everyone see what skill is being developed here?