The purpose of photography is to create pictures that are “in your mind”. Yet some photographers, including myself, often have a strong visual sense. To create a visual image, I often feel I must first take a “mental” assessment of the scene. I often have no idea what I am really experiencing, and this makes for a “negative” photograph.
What’s the difference between a bad photograph and negative photography? It would be easy to assume that negative photography is simply the opposite of good photography because it has no good qualities. Yet I have seen a lot of bad pictures in my time. Usually, when the photographer has a strong idea of what they are trying to capture, they take the best pictures that they can. The worst ones are not the best pictures.
This is because negative photography is based on the idea that a camera is a neutral device which can be used to capture various types of images. In this case, the photographer is trying to capture a sense of wonder in his photograph. It’s like when someone is trying to capture the emotion behind a shot. In negative photography, the camera is used solely for the purpose of capturing that emotion. It cannot capture any other purpose.
This is why I find that, in the case of negative photography, the best pictures are often the ones which don’t feel right. They aren’t the ones which feel right. They feel as though the photographer has no right to the picture at all. They are the ones which capture the emotion in the photograph and nothing more.
I think this is a very valid point. The photographer has no right to their photograph at all, because the emotion in said photograph has no right to it. When a photograph is captured in this way, it is purely an expression of the emotion behind it. It is completely outside of the photographer’s right to the photograph.
The photographer has no right to the photograph because the emotional state of the object in the photograph is completely irrelevant. It is the photographer’s emotion which is the sole reason why they captured the object in the photograph in the first place. While this is true, this also means that the emotion is not the reason why the photographer took the photograph in the first place.
When we see an image of a face, we only see the face. We do not see the person. When we see an image of a face, we see the person in the photograph. When we see an image of an object, we see the object as it is in the moment of the photograph. When we see an image of a person, we are seeing the person in the moment of the photograph. It is the same with photography.
In the world of impressionistic photography, we see the face, the person, but not the object. The image is not so much as a recording of the object as it is a record of the moment. The object is only a representation of the moment. The experience of photography is not the same as seeing an image of an object. A photograph does not look like the object. It is not the same as seeing the object.
When we take a photograph the camera does not just focus on something. We are seeing the person, just as in photo-shopping we buy the image that is the same as the object. It is the same with photography. You can buy the image that is the same as the object, but it does not really look like the object.
Photography is a representation of the moment. The experience of photography is not the same as seeing an object. It is not the same as seeing the object. When we take a photograph the camera does not just focus on something. We are seeing the person, just as in photo-shopping we buy the image that is the same as the object. It is the same with photography.