Posted by Ian Wolfenden on March 14, 2011 at 6:15 AM
There are such wonderfully varied images on Flora - flowers and trees in the landscape, portraits of wild or garden flowers, abstracts, images processed in fascinating and beautiful ways etc. - and I’m also sometimes struck by the mood a particular image seems to project.
Usually I find it difficult to pin the mood down in a critique, and I’m wondering how it happens that a flower image becomes expressive. I'm guessing most people normally shoot for, say, beauty or botanical interest, but do you sometimes sense a mood of some kind and, if so, does that happen in setting up the shot - with the lighting for example - or perhaps during post-processing ? And do you find a mood can emerge almost by chance ?
I’d be interested in others’ views or experiences.
There have been many times where the mood of the scene is magical, yet the camera (or the photographer) does not capture it. One such place for me is Winterthur in Delaware when the March Bank is blooming. Going again the end of the month to try capture the magic. There are also times when I am pleasantly surprised by the mood of a capture when it pops up on the screen. Both keep me trying to capture the ultimate shots.
Posted by Varina Patel on March 14, 2011 at 1:01 PM
Color and contrast can have a major impact on mood. Greens feel lush and fresh. Blues are cooler, and generally convey a peaceful mood. Yellows seem warm and inviting. But that's just the beginning. Complementary colors (like red and green) provide visual contrast, so the resulting image is vibrant and has a lot of impact. Analogous colors - which are located next to one another on the color wheel, like yellow and green) - are more subtle when they are used together. So a photo with those colors will seem more quiet and serene.
And then there is the use of focus. Soft focus can be soothing... even ethereal. A soft background can isolate the colors and focus the attention of the viewer on the point of interest - perhaps a single flower.
There are so many ways to create mood in floral photography - just as in any other type of art. Generally, I start by looking carefully at the flower I'm going to photograph. I look for the best angle and the best background... I think about how I want to present the image... and I think about how I can really make the most of the colors and textures. Mood is part of all that.
Posted by Pat Sampson on March 15, 2011 at 7:11 PM
Interesting set of questions Ian.
For me it varies according to the subject. In shooting a landscape, I'm always after the mood that I experienced in viewing the scene. Quite literally, If I'm not in the mood or don't feel it in the scene, I don't bother to do the photography.
Avian, wildlife and flora are different. I'm never aware of mood in shooting any of these genres. Mostly I'm concentrating on composition and technique - don't jerk the camera, let the system settle before the next shot in a stack, lock the focus and recompose, slow your breath ... No mood that I'm aware of - just concentration on the task.
For the non landscape images, the mood comes out almost entirely in the post processing and it's almost always a surprise to me. Capturing the image, aside from the composition is mostly tedious. I'm not really sure that I even like photography per se. (smile)
pat
Posted by Pat Sampson on March 19, 2011 at 6:33 AM
Ian,
I stumbled across this paragraph on the web and plan to read the following two Barthes papers: As Roland Barthes noted, Saussure’s model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and it was left to subsequent theorists (notably Barthes himself) to offer an account of this important dimension of meaning (Barthes 1967, 89ff). In ‘The Photographic Message’ (1961) and ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ (1964), Barthes argued that in photography connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation (Barthes 1977, 15-31, 32-51). As Fiske puts it ‘denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed’ (Fiske 1982, 91). However, in photography, denotation is foregrounded at the expense of connotation."
I think there's more going on with mood than is suggested in this paragraph but no claim to understanding it at this point.
Posted by Ian Wolfenden on March 19, 2011 at 11:55 AM
Pat : thanks very much for the references. I have not myself gone beyond Susan Sontag, whom I like a lot, on the philosophy of photography. I have read some of Barthes' writings but certainly not these pieces - semiotics are not my strong point !! Will look them up - I guess they focus especially on meaning but you are surely right to think that mood is implicated in the concept of connotation.
There is a book on Barthes I have never got through - The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes by Mary Bittner Wiseman ( 1989 ) - which has chapters featuring his ideas on photography. I will have a look through it to see if I can find anything which might have a bearing on the issue.
I must admit I find it especially fascinating how mood emerges in flower photography ( in landscape work it is perhaps easier to understand ), as the subjects themselves, for the most part at least, seem to offer just their beauty ( as most critiques seem to confirm ).
Posted by Pat Sampson on March 20, 2011 at 1:50 PM
Ian,
I managed to scan through all of 'The Rhetoric of the Image' and a couple of different synopses of 'The Photographic Message'. Didn't help much. Certainly mood is conveyed via the connotative aspects of the image - that is, it's a consequence of the viewer's connotations associated with the image. I would guess that some aspect of the trigger is personal experience, some cultural conditioning and I guess that I'm still enough of a Platonist to think that some of the trigger is universally human.
In any event, you've got me trying to figure it out. (smile)
I'll be interested in what you find in Wiseman's book and I agree with you about the process being particularly interesting as it pertains to flower photography.
Ian, et al., I have done virtually no reading on photography in my life, or on the philosophy of photography, and I can't participate in that aspect of the discussion at this moment. I can tell you that in my own mind I have much more possibility of future success at conveying mood than I do at creating beautiful floral images.
When I decide to shoot a flower or plant I want to convey a feeling that to me becomes attached to that flower or plant in my own mind while I'm observing it in preparation for shooting, even if that time period is only a minute or two. That can be a happy, perky mood or a subdued mood, a cool mood or a warm mood, a sunshiny mood or an overcast mood. I try to get the right background and lighting to convey whatever the feeling is that I have about that flower or plant at that moment, and then I try to continue the development of that feeling in post processing. Of course, I'm not always successful, but I hope to become more and more successful at doing that.
I hope that makes some sense. It might be something that's just in my own mind that I can't explain well enough.
Posted by Ian Wolfenden on March 21, 2011 at 5:57 AM
Thanks, folks, for all the comments so far.
Pat : I have now checked out the Barthes pieces and Wiseman on Barthes. I agree Barthes is not too helpful for us. Wiseman focuses to quite an extent on his ideas about photography and time, which derive from his experience of seeing an image of his mother as a child. Overall I personally find the semiotic approach somewhat laboured ( as far as I understand it - smile !! ).
Sontag in On Photography is a different matter. She has, for example, a very interesting section on different ideas about self-expression. She notes an older approach ( from the early C20 ), regarding photography as an ascetic discipline in which, according to Minor White ( don’t know him ), ` the state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank ‘. She then notes the later view of Weston that photography is a supreme opportunity for self-expression, far superior to that offered by painting. Adams, too, apparently argued that ` a great photograph `is `a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed '.
How all this plays out in floral photography I don’t know. The nature of the subject itself must have a role in an art form in which the raw data are given - the canvas, as it were, already prepared by light. Also, of course, there must be the possibility of an image being expressive without self-expression being involved. Will keep thinking !!
Barbara : thanks so much for your comments, which seem to support the later arguments mentioned above. I think I am normally in the ` blank state of mind ‘ camp ( hopefully not too blank - smile !! ) but maybe close-up work is that much different to shooting in the landscape.
Posted by Pat Sampson on March 21, 2011 at 9:07 AM
Ian,
I think I do my best captures when I'm in a blank state of mind, which is to say totally concentrating on the shot. By that point I've already decided what I want to do with the subject, after pre-visualization and technical planning. (At least when my process doesn't break down.)
The scale of the subject does affect how I relate to it. With avian, I'm always trying to get the bird's eye in focus and that requires a lot more concentration as does walking the plane of focus through a subject when creating a stack sequence.
Thanks for joining in, all. The two basically different approaches are interesting to me.
Discussion
9 repliesUsually I find it difficult to pin the mood down in a critique, and I’m wondering how it happens that a flower image becomes expressive. I'm guessing most people normally shoot for, say, beauty or botanical interest, but do you sometimes sense a mood of some kind and, if so, does that happen in setting up the shot - with the lighting for example - or perhaps during post-processing ? And do you find a mood can emerge almost by chance ?
I’d be interested in others’ views or experiences.
And then there is the use of focus. Soft focus can be soothing... even ethereal. A soft background can isolate the colors and focus the attention of the viewer on the point of interest - perhaps a single flower.
There are so many ways to create mood in floral photography - just as in any other type of art. Generally, I start by looking carefully at the flower I'm going to photograph. I look for the best angle and the best background... I think about how I want to present the image... and I think about how I can really make the most of the colors and textures. Mood is part of all that.
For me it varies according to the subject. In shooting a landscape, I'm always after the mood that I experienced in viewing the scene. Quite literally, If I'm not in the mood or don't feel it in the scene, I don't bother to do the photography.
Avian, wildlife and flora are different. I'm never aware of mood in shooting any of these genres. Mostly I'm concentrating on composition and technique - don't jerk the camera, let the system settle before the next shot in a stack, lock the focus and recompose, slow your breath ... No mood that I'm aware of - just concentration on the task.
For the non landscape images, the mood comes out almost entirely in the post processing and it's almost always a surprise to me. Capturing the image, aside from the composition is mostly tedious. I'm not really sure that I even like photography per se. (smile)
pat
I stumbled across this paragraph on the web and plan to read the following two Barthes papers: As Roland Barthes noted, Saussure’s model of the sign focused on denotation at the expense of connotation and it was left to subsequent theorists (notably Barthes himself) to offer an account of this important dimension of meaning (Barthes 1967, 89ff). In ‘The Photographic Message’ (1961) and ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ (1964), Barthes argued that in photography connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation (Barthes 1977, 15-31, 32-51). As Fiske puts it ‘denotation is what is photographed, connotation is how it is photographed’ (Fiske 1982, 91). However, in photography, denotation is foregrounded at the expense of connotation."
I think there's more going on with mood than is suggested in this paragraph but no claim to understanding it at this point.
There is a book on Barthes I have never got through - The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes by Mary Bittner Wiseman ( 1989 ) - which has chapters featuring his ideas on photography. I will have a look through it to see if I can find anything which might have a bearing on the issue.
I must admit I find it especially fascinating how mood emerges in flower photography ( in landscape work it is perhaps easier to understand ), as the subjects themselves, for the most part at least, seem to offer just their beauty ( as most critiques seem to confirm ).
I managed to scan through all of 'The Rhetoric of the Image' and a couple of different synopses of 'The Photographic Message'. Didn't help much. Certainly mood is conveyed via the connotative aspects of the image - that is, it's a consequence of the viewer's connotations associated with the image. I would guess that some aspect of the trigger is personal experience, some cultural conditioning and I guess that I'm still enough of a Platonist to think that some of the trigger is universally human.
In any event, you've got me trying to figure it out. (smile)
I'll be interested in what you find in Wiseman's book and I agree with you about the process being particularly interesting as it pertains to flower photography.
pat
When I decide to shoot a flower or plant I want to convey a feeling that to me becomes attached to that flower or plant in my own mind while I'm observing it in preparation for shooting, even if that time period is only a minute or two. That can be a happy, perky mood or a subdued mood, a cool mood or a warm mood, a sunshiny mood or an overcast mood. I try to get the right background and lighting to convey whatever the feeling is that I have about that flower or plant at that moment, and then I try to continue the development of that feeling in post processing. Of course, I'm not always successful, but I hope to become more and more successful at doing that.
I hope that makes some sense. It might be something that's just in my own mind that I can't explain well enough.
Pat : I have now checked out the Barthes pieces and Wiseman on Barthes. I agree Barthes is not too helpful for us. Wiseman focuses to quite an extent on his ideas about photography and time, which derive from his experience of seeing an image of his mother as a child. Overall I personally find the semiotic approach somewhat laboured ( as far as I understand it - smile !! ).
Sontag in On Photography is a different matter. She has, for example, a very interesting section on different ideas about self-expression. She notes an older approach ( from the early C20 ), regarding photography as an ascetic discipline in which, according to Minor White ( don’t know him ), ` the state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank ‘. She then notes the later view of Weston that photography is a supreme opportunity for self-expression, far superior to that offered by painting. Adams, too, apparently argued that ` a great photograph `is `a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed '.
How all this plays out in floral photography I don’t know. The nature of the subject itself must have a role in an art form in which the raw data are given - the canvas, as it were, already prepared by light. Also, of course, there must be the possibility of an image being expressive without self-expression being involved. Will keep thinking !!
Barbara : thanks so much for your comments, which seem to support the later arguments mentioned above. I think I am normally in the ` blank state of mind ‘ camp ( hopefully not too blank - smile !! ) but maybe close-up work is that much different to shooting in the landscape.
I think I do my best captures when I'm in a blank state of mind, which is to say totally concentrating on the shot. By that point I've already decided what I want to do with the subject, after pre-visualization and technical planning. (At least when my process doesn't break down.)
The scale of the subject does affect how I relate to it. With avian, I'm always trying to get the bird's eye in focus and that requires a lot more concentration as does walking the plane of focus through a subject when creating a stack sequence.
Thanks for joining in, all. The two basically different approaches are interesting to me.
pat