It’s All Subjective
These were the questions I was asked last week and I think they open an interesting conversation. Here’s my take on it:
Yes. A photograph needs a subject. It needs something about which to be. In the same way a story or a poem or a song needs to be about something, so too does a photograph. But remember that subject need not be a tree or a person or a specific element in the photograph. That subject might be a mood or an emotion or an idea; it might be really abstract, but I can’t think of a photograph that’s not about something.
Where we get bogged down a little is in the confusion created when we assume that the elements in the photograph are the same thing as the subject of the photograph. Sometimes they are, but it’s not always so simple. An example: You’re on the streets of New York and you make a photograph of a yellow cab, because no one has ever done that. It’s a literal take on a New York Taxi. A photograph of a taxi. Note the emphasis. But is it a photograph about the taxi? It might be. In which case the subject of the photograph and the way you express that subject are the same. Move along, nothing to see here. But if you want the subject to be a little more specific, perhaps an idea or a feeling, like how the city is always in motion, a whirl of colour and movement, then that is your subject and the photograph may or may not need a taxi in it. Maybe the best way to express that is with a blue car, or several cars of different colours all blurred together.
Another example. You’re photographing a landscape. You were drawn to the scene because the light and the mist was breathtaking. As you photograph you move the camera around. Sometimes there’s a tree in the shot, sometimes not. Sometimes there are three trees. Is the tree the point of the photograph? No. Do you need it in the shot? Maybe yes, and maybe no. The tree is one element, but not the subject. The subject is the light and the mist, even perhaps the mood, the mystery, created by the way the light and the mist interact. The big challenge has always been to find the best expression of that subject.
One last example. A quick one. Like the image at the top of this post – what is the subject in this image above? Is it the specific man you see there? No, it’s devotion. Faith. Prayer. The same subject is expressed in the next two images below. Same subject, different expressions of that subject. Knowing that my subject was the idea of devotion and not, for example, the specific person, helps lead me to different creative options, like knowing that not only do I not need to see the details of the faces really clearly, but that it’s the shape of the silhouettes, or the movement in the gesture, that more powerfully communicates the idea.
This is a favourite sermon of mine, because I think understanding it helps make stronger photographs. Even though the questions are a little more sub-conscious most of the time now that I’ve been doing this for 30 years, asking myself these two questions remains a necessary part of my creative process. Try asking these two questions for every photograph you make:
What is this photograph about?
How can I give that subject its strongest expression in the photograph?
If these two questions are helpful to you, here are another two questions you might want to consider.
And if you want more conversations like this, about what makes stronger photographs, beyond the buttons and the dials and usually technical stuff, consider reading one of my books. My latest book, The Soul of the Camera, The Photographer’s Place in Picture-Making, is available now for pre-order and should be in your hands around the middle of June.
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