Originally posted by normhead So was my mom. How come she didn't take pictures like Ansel Adams?
Perhaps she had no visual sense.
It's true that it took Adams a long time to develop his technique, at a time when there was very little formal literature on the topic. But then he went further than most and created a formal literature. Yet what made him great, and what made him choose photography, was only supported by technique, it wasn't the technique itself.
But there is a lot that is written today, so self-study is a lot more available than it used to be.
It's a little like music. Some musicians at age 18 are ready for the big time. All the fundamentals came naturally to them, and in many ways their teachers learned from them more than taught them, and helped them to avoid the seductive pitfalls. None of the kids on Americon Idol had voice lessons, but then they are singing pop tunes, not opera.
Then, there are many who have a "performance" DMA (Doctor of Musical Arts, aka Didn't Make the Audition), and struggle to become minor professionals despite having deep personal training, extensive education, vast amount of directed practice, and the resulting superb technique. But there is something that is still not quite there.
I once asked my music teacher (a symphony pro) which was more important, technique or musicality? His answer: "Yes."
You made the distinction between craft and art. Professional photography (or, more appropriately, commercial photography) is more about craft than art. Adams called it "assignments from without rather than assignments from within." A proper training program can cover a lot of ground in a short time--it is a very efficient way to obtain a basic craft (i.e., technique). But it's not the only way. Those who are self-directed can find the literature out there to master the craft, especially if they have the luxury of working slowly and carefully. Part of the skills learned to become a professional is how to work quickly without experimentation--time is money for both the photographer and the client. But this can be obtained through self-study, too. It's just harder and it takes longer
But then there's the art thing. What the eye sees and how the mind interprets that into an image is much more difficult to teach. Why do some seemingly haphazard compositions work, while others never rise above chaos? There are only a few formal reasons for the difference, but mostly it's because the photographer saw an interesting aesthetic relationship and had both the vision and the craft to bring it out. That is much harder to teach, and much harder to learn.
The distinction you have made between your program at Ryerson and many art/photography programs is largely the distinction between training and education. The joke goes that if your kid comes home from school and announces enrollment in a sex education class, you might be mildly concerned or mildly amused. If the kids announces enrollment in a sex
training class, you might be considerably more alarmed.
I suspect that interning with a successful pro is as good as most training programs, for those who already have a good basic technique under their belts.
Now, as to terms. There is really no reason why "compression" should be freighted with all sorts of "science". It's strictly a descriptive word used to describe a visual effect, not a technical term of art. It means that the farther the main subject is from the camera, the smaller it will appear in relation to the background. It's obvious: As the main subject moves away, it gets smaller, but the background remains the same. Thus, when that now-small subject is magnified (using a long lens), a smaller portion of the background gets magnified with it, and appears closer to the main subject than would otherwise be the case. Artists call that "foreshortening", but "compression" is a perfectly descriptive word, too.
It has lots of value in real photography. If I have a problem background, I can use a long lens and my feet to make a photo of the subject with a lot less background behind it. That way, I can choose that part of the background that is not a problem. With a short lens, I have to make the background part of the story, which is why portrait/reportage photographers use short lenses for "environmental" portraits and long lenses for "subject" portraits. Selective focus (what lack of depth of field achieves) is just one tool for managing the background--perspective is another and more important tool.
The other mental image I get from "compression" is that the subject and background has more of a two-dimensional appearance. I think that "flattening" is probably more descriptive.
Of course, if I moved the camera back to use a long lens to isolate the subject, and then put a short lens on the camera, that small piece of the resulting image that contains the subject will have the same flattening as what was seen by the long lens. To make that work, I have to apply the magnification
after the photo is made, whereas the long lens provides the magnification
before the photo is made.
I'm a professional trainer/educator, and terms are important, but they are only important to conveying underlying meaning. I'm also an engineer, so I understand jargon, and how technical jargon may have specific meaning far removed from the common definition of the word used in the general language.
My beef with the video is that it brings the argument about jargon in front of any useful discussion of the meaning. That generates buzz more than illumination.
Rick "in a branch of engineering where most practitioners are (supposedly) self-taught" Denney