Photography Theory

Early photography appeared as an alternative technique of painting, which is inextricably linked with painting. Such as composition, artistic conception, light and shadow, etc. But the biggest difference between photography and painting is that painting is addition and photography is subtraction.

Painting apprentices spend a long time learning how to mix pigments, while photographers don't.

Painting begins with a blank canvas, which is a typical process from simple to complex. Photography starts from complexity, starts from the world around us, and finally processes it into simplicity.

Painters are always tempted to add extra fees. For a painter, the skill of painting is to know where to stop writing and where to finish writing.

For photographers, the most important decision is of course where to stop cutting scenes and objects.

Simple is difficult, and it is a process from concrete to abstract. Conciseness enables the audience to quickly discover the theme of the work.

Modern photography technology can store and digitize all kinds of images, and everything can be displayed in detail.

In modern times, many painters draw inspiration from photographic works, or simply use painting techniques to reproduce photographic works, which is beside the point.

Simplification is more likely to produce artistic conception and association.

Photographs lack visible evidence to prove their technique and difficulty. For example, a good advertising work needs the photographer's exquisite lighting and various shooting techniques (light control) to be produced.

A good landscape work needs to use all kinds of filters to calculate the exposure at the right time and place (often inaccessible, getting up early and getting greedy for the dark) (such as Adams' partition exposure method).

So the process of photography is not simple, but the development of modern industrial design digital technology makes the cost of pressing the shutter almost zero, which is relatively easier than making a good picture.

Good photographic works are the essence of condensed scenes, which are created by photographers through long-term training, keen vision and diligence.

Compared with painting, it is more difficult for photographers to struggle between optional scene elements, while painters can adjust the layout, appropriately increase or decrease elements, and keep consistent with imagination.

Another difficulty in simplifying the process is that in the process of photography, the perfect combination of light and shadow and composition is often only a moment (except studio photography).

If you need to shoot more meaningful works, you need to find out its inherent simplicity from the complicated scenery. Most people think that the scenery has the value of pressing the shutter before pressing the shutter.

But by pressing the shutter without thinking, it is easy to get a very complicated scene, so complicated that the photographer himself doesn't know what he wants to express. This is actually a lack of insight.

Don't rush to delete those poorly shot or plain works (except technical mistakes), you should look for the reason of failure from the failed works, whether it is too many colors or messy lines, and what was the motivation of shooting at that time?

What would you do if you filmed it again?

At present, domestic photography circles, including various photography forums and magazines, discuss photography technology more and rarely at the artistic level. This makes it impossible for us to go any further.

Do you have the urge to put more lights when shooting product lights? But this often confuses the image. So if a lamp with a reflector can clearly express an object, why complicate it?

What we take is often different from what we see, because reality is multidimensional and photos are two-dimensional. This is a process of compression, which compresses the three-dimensional sense, space sense and time sense, and what you see is what you get.

However, this compression can also be used. For example, a long exposure with a slow shutter can shoot an empty picture in the subway where people come and go, and can shoot a silky waterfall. You can photograph calm seas, lakes and moving skies.

The high-speed shutter can solidify the flowing water in the waterfall, and flash film is added in advertising photography to create the effect of splashing all kinds of liquids. You can make the milk drop into a crown shape.

Long exposure to slow doors can simplify the complexity caused by sports.

How to make a simplified work, in addition to the slow shutter long exposure mentioned above. You can also close one eye before shooting to produce a two-dimensional plane effect to help you predict the shooting effect in advance.

A telephoto lens can simplify the scene, compress the space, and leave a long street or the depth of roads, lanes, mountains and rivers in a photo.

I am used to taking pictures with my eyes when there is no viewfinder and imagining them in my mind. When using the viewfinder, all elements unrelated to composition should be removed.

Seeing the essence through the phenomenon is the simplification of photography.