The Tools We Use
August 12th, 2008After posting my interview with Stephen Shore a few months ago, I’ve received comments from several photographers along these lines:
“I’ve never seen the reasoning behind using large format laid out better than in this interview. Of course, to achieve the effect Shore talks about, today you can use a high resolution digital camera of considerably smaller format as well…”
This comment in particular made me think about how the tools we use affect our results. I’m talking about the relationship between craft and art.
There are several ways that any tool—here, a large format camera—affects the way one works and, by association, affects the way one envisions and thinks about one’s surroundings. The first, and perhaps easiest to grasp, is the physical interface required by the tool. When Shore stated that he’s “pretty much” put the 8×10 camera away because it’s a lot of work getting it out, he’s talking about the physical interface. It’s a heavy object; it requires a tripod; it’s bulky; there are a lot of attendant tools—level, loupe, dark cloth, shutter-release cord, something to stand on, large lenses and large film holders—required to make a single photograph. All of the physical activity required to make an image becomes part of the process in an intimate way and creates parameters that your body must accommodate and work within.
This physical activity bleeds into the mental activity of making an image with that particular camera (and this is the second way in which one’s tools affect the way one works). The methodical precision required by the 8×10, I’m arguing, leads to a methodical precision on the mental level. Because a relatively large amount of time is required to simply deal with the equipment, a corresponding large amount of mental time goes into the image—the type of image—that one makes. The camera physically and mentally slows you down, makes you more attentive in certain ways.
The converse is true of using a hand held camera; the different physical interface with the tool leads to a corresponding different mental interface with one’s surroundings. Walking around with a 35mm SLR is simply physically different than walking around with a tripod and an 8×10. We also mentally adapt how we look at the world based on the camera we’re using at the moment. And on an even more minute level, different types of hand held cameras make one think and view the world differently. The physical interface between a point-and-shoot (like the Ricoh* GR1, for instance) and a 35mm SLR (like the Leica* R8) is quite different.
This can also be understood when it comes to “thinking” in color or black-and-white, and represents the third way that one’s tools affect the way one works. I’ve heard (and am intimate with the experience myself) many photographers talk about “seeing” in black-and-white or color. With certain tools—in this case cameras and film/pixels—you assess the world in one way, and with different tools, you assess it another way.
The comment the photographer made that one can “achieve the effect” of Shore’s work with a high-resolution camera is false on all three of these levels. Walking around with a hand-held medium format camera is both physically and mentally different than walking around with an 8×10. The last element, which has to do with the materials of the tools, also comes into play here. The way light reacts with film and chemistry is also different than the way light is registered digitally on sensors. It’s not better, just different. Perhaps the best analogy here is the difference between oil and acrylic paint. They simply look different because they are different.
Granted, some of the differences are extremely subtle, but to the trained eye, they are just that differences. (For example, place a sheet of text printed with letterpress next to a sheet of the same paper printed with the same text from an inkjet and the majority of common folk won’t register the difference. Show any one familiar with printing presses and they will see the wide differences.)
Just as there are radical differences in the look of an albumen print and a Polaroid print, or the look between a Cartier-Bresson photograph and an Irving Penn, my argument is that not all of the difference rests on the creative vision of the artist. Some of the difference—and how we value or judge or critique those images—is because of the tools, their materials, and our physical interaction with them.
Any thoughts?
[added 8/14: I'm not concerned with placing a value judgment on any one group of tools/cameras. If anything, the 20th century has amply shown that great images and works of art can be made with the humblest of tools as well as the most complex, technologically advanced of tools. My main concern was to map out some thoughts about the mere fact that our use of certain tools will affect us in ways that are specifically relative to those certain tools. Some people will find that they are most creative with one particular tool used over and over while others will find themselves able to flow from tool to tool. Again, my point is that with each different tool and its variables, they will "picture" things slightly differently. Thanks for all the comments!]
* I’m not on the payroll of any camera manufacturers.
Photography: A Very Short Introduction
Words Without Pictures (Aperture, 2010)
Short Track, by Jake Mendel
Bird Watching, by Paula McCartney
August 13th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
The well known road of craft to art must be kept open at all costs, I would propose affixing a ball and chain to the leg of anyone with a digital camera in order that their eyes be trained properly.
August 13th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
[...] 13, 2008 · No Comments After reading not one, but two recent posts about format, and thinking about my own internal debates on the subject this weekend, [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I agree with the comment that our “physical interaction” with the different mediums affects the way we produce photos. I’ve been wondering about this for a while, a more so lately after Liz Kuball (http://www.lizkuball.com/blog/2008/08/on-format.html) wrote on her blog about whether or not to change camera format and upgrade so to speak from 35mm format to medium or large because of how it affects the way we produce images.
Since swapping between digital and 35mm and finding that I often produce better images with the film camera than I do with the digital, despite them both being roughly the same size and handled in the same way, whether or not there are subconscious influences over how we produce images depending on the format we choose?
Going on your point about the physical interaction with the equipment, I have wondered if I ‘downgrade’ my digital camera by replacing my auto-focus zoom lens with a fix manual focus lens similar to what I have on my film camera if the images I produce will be different and closer to what I’m after?
One would assume that this would address the physical interaction issue with the formats, but I think it will take a little more to address the mental state that arises when “I’m shooting digital”, “I’m shooting 35mm film”, “I’m shooting medium format” and so on, especially considering the cost implications when we select these formats.
I’m keen to hear other views on this.
August 13th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
hi, this is an interesting topic about which photographers (like on http://www.rangefinderforum.com) talk about often, due to some extent to the popularity of digital photography. But, for philosophers, the topic – the influence of tools on the brain – is much older. See e.g. Vilem Flussers “On photography”, which has nice insights on this topic. E.g. the simplicity of an 8×10, but the complexity in use, versus the modern digital SLR’s which are vastly more complex machines, yet easy to use.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:42 am
[...] Himes takes issue (here) with a comment that I made some time ago (here) on his excellent interview with Stephen Shore, and [...]
August 14th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Hello Darius,
You have nicely put together the talk I give at my workshops called “Tool Management”. I always wanted to have the tolerance and energy required by an 8×10, but alas I found out in graduate school that I simply could not abide by having a car be an accessory to the photographic act. So what did I end up doing? Using the car as an accessory to the photographic act as transporting me not so much as my gear. The look and feel and presence and connection when using an medium format camera was in keeping with what became my voice, but then my involvement with the picture (elements) is much more of a drive-by shooting.
With your permission I will copy and distribute “The Tools We Use” to my students.
best to,
kj
August 14th, 2008 at 6:33 am
That argument comes up alot in alot of photography forums. A novice will ask “What kind of camera should I get” and no doubt someone with little more experience will say “It’s not the camera it’s the photographer”. This post really brings to light good reasons why the camera does matter because it affects not only the picture but the photographer.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
One point that many people skip over in this discussion is that physical format size will always matter, regardless of a camera’s image quality, working method, etc. It is a matter of physics. Take a 300mm lens with a large f-stop and place a digital SLR sensor behind it and you get a tiny crop of the lens’ potential with very shallow depth of field. Stick an 8×10″ ‘sensor’ (or sheet of film), and it gives the photographer a much, much wider view with the exact same depth of field. The lens and it’s characteristics have not changed, only the amount of it’s image you are utilizing. As your sensor gets physically smaller, all you can do is lower your focal length to an approximately equivalent focal length, as well as increase the aperture size to try and achieve a similar depth of field effect.
This is why HD video operators go to great lengths to make or buy 35mm adapters. The HD sensors are generally small and most cameras have a non-interchangeable lens (resulting in a ‘video’ look to their footage, ie. everything’s in focus). This makes it difficult to produce footage with the shallow depth of field you see at the cinema. As a compromise, they make an adapter which utilizes standard 35mm type still camera lenses (like a 50mm f1.4) that project an image onto a ground glass inside a dark box. Their HD camera attaches to the other side and simply films this image directly off of the ground glass. Then you must vibrate or spin the ground glass to eliminate the grain visibility. Regardless of quality, if the HD sensor was physically larger, this problem would be completely eliminated.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
[...] Here’s a lovely essay on how equipment is related to the way we work. It is a finer articulation that I can manage, not least because it effectively raises the question: Which came first–the gearhead or the disease? [...]
August 15th, 2008 at 3:01 am
And didn’t Garry Winogrand say something to the effect that “An artist is someone who plays with the materials.”
August 15th, 2008 at 8:22 am
I’ve heard this whole “slow down” argument even since digital came along. I agree with some it, but not all of it. I just found that, when I shot 8×10 and 4×5, it took so much effort and time to set everything up, that when I got back and ran the film, I placed much more value on that image, thinking it might have been better than it actually was, due solely to the effort and memory of that effort. Is that good? Absolutely not.
I also found that I was much less prone to search around, and find various different views of the same scene. Not good. It was something about “setting up the camera and finding that one right spot”, as if there were no other acceptable (and maybe better) angles. That is bullshit.
I suggest try every camera. See what fits for you. But don’t get sucked in to that whole zen crap of 8×10. A beautiful Deardorff with the most excellent lens pointed at a boring scene will make the most excellent boring photograph. It takes forever to shoot a frame with the 8×10 and 4×5, but if that’s your cup of tea, then do it. But it’s not the gear, and it’s certainly not about the hype about the gear. In the end, the image must stand on its own. If you have to tell the viewer some long boring story about how you had to drag the Deardorff up that hill, and it was raining, blah blah blah, then that’s a pretty good indication that you’ve got yourself a pretty half-ass image.
4×5 is good. 8×10 is good. Phase One is good. Leaf is good. Holga is good.
Don’t get sucked into this navel-gazing, airy-fairy argument. This is just one opinion.
September 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I photograph using many different camera formats, both digital and analog. I consistently find that I prefer the images made with my 4×5. I agree with many of the things said by others here–that the physicality of the process forces one to slow down’ and so on. I think what really makes the difference for me is that with a 4×5 you view the world upside down and reversed. This forces me to see the world in a way that my eyes are not used to and that seems to make a difference to how I compose the image. I find myself being more rigorous about how things fit into the frame.
December 4th, 2009 at 10:10 pm
[...] post by Darius Himes really captured this concept beautifully. As a response to comments made in his interview with [...]