Photography Tip Tuesday: The Blind Monkey Factor
Feb 10, 2009
There’s an interesting essay in The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography about how much of photography is a leap of faith. Rowell compares photography to a type of cortical blindness that creates a situation in which your eyes function, but your brain is unable to process the image.
Monkeys with this blindness can be taught that though they don’t actually see consciously, they can fully function just like any other monkey. Running around obstacles, reaching and successfully grabbing objects, etc. But humans are too self-conscious to reach for things that they only *think* might be there and they therefore never regain the same level of functionality that a monkey can be taught.
What does this have to do with photography? A lot.
When we try to capture a scene, many times we are just blind monkeys reaching for something that we sense will show up on our computer screens after the image is captured by the camera sensor and we post-process it. This is especially true with wedding photographers, where you are often reacting to a moment on instinct.
Often times at weddings I won’t know exactly what I was seeing until I start proofing the images. Like this shot that is one of my favorite getting ready photos from the year:
I adore that Belinda is completely surrounded by layers of wedding dress/underskirt. I love the texture and composition, but in the moment that I was taking the image, I didn’t consciously realize that THAT was the image I was taking. And you can tell, because here is the original:
As you can tell, the original is not so good. There’s a bunch of extra STUFF going on in the background. So we crop it to get to the GREAT shot.
One of the great parts of proofing is discovering images like this. Where you couldn’t tell at the time exactly what the shot was, but when you get working on the image it’s obvious what the photo was supposed to be.
So the tip of the week is to be a blind monkey, not a blind human. Don’t worry if you don’t know exactly the shot you’re taking at the time you take it. Snap that shutter anyway. You might only see what your subconcious saw after you download the image!
Posted in Photographer Tips
