眠不休是什么意思:Taking Your Photography To The Next Level

By: George Barr
Part One of a Three Part Series

Introduction
Photographers go through stages of development,and while we don’t all follow the same path, an understanding ofour current level of skill, creativity and artisty is, I think, an importantexercise. If we know where we are and we have an idea of where we wantto be, it becomes a lot easier to determine the path from here to thereand to take steps to get us there.  Most of us have never given muchthought to where we are in terms of skill, creativity and artistry, andeven if we did, are not necessarily good judges of our own skills and levelsso this is not a trivial process. While gradually and continuously strivingto improve does in the end result in progress, I propose that we find abetter and perhaps more direct route to becoming better photographic artists.
So, how do you assess your current level?What are the levels? Do all photographers go through the same levels inthe same sequence? Is it a sequential process or can you skip steps andgo back to a previous level? All good questions!
Even if you do understand your level, doesthat automatically imply you will move to the next level or is there somemagic involved, or heaven forbid, some sweat equity to moving on? I hopeto answer these questions in a series of articles, starting with this firstarticle on discussing what are the different levels, in the second articlediscussing how to assess which level is yours, and in the third now touse this information to move to the next level.
Before describing the various levels, letme make clear that in fact I don‘t think this is a linear sequence fromneophyte to grand old master, not for an individual photographer and certainlynot for all. Depending on how you come into photography there can be hugedifferences in the sequence of steps, and at any point steps can be skippedonly to be visited later on. That said though, here‘s a breakdown of thesteps photographers often go through.
Rather than define levels by the equipmentyou use (which has more to do with style, habits, budget and the desirefor toys, I will instead look at the quality of images you produce. Perhapsthis doesn‘t address the photographer who only publishes to the web andnever makes prints, but let‘s define their level by the kind of printsthey are able to make (even if they don‘t normally make them).

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Measuring Print Quality
Quality of prints can be measured in twobasic ways, by the technical quality and the aesthetic quality. I thinkthese two levels definitely do not go hand in hand. I am therefore goingto describe them separately and fully anticipate that any photographeris likely to find himself at different positions down the two lists.
Right, time to make the lists. Let‘s startwith the list that is almost certainly going to be the easier, that ofdefining one‘s technical level. Note that it‘s possible to be at two differentlevels of technical ability at the same time since they sometimes describedifferent technical issues.

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Technical Levels
Level 1 Technical
4X6 drugstore prints are frequently flawed.Many are blurred, others are underexposed, horizons aren‘t level, headsare cut off, trees stick out of people‘s heads, prints look muddy or sootand chalk. People and mountains look miniscule. These are the kind of imageswhich even beginners recognize as flawed. In a set of 20 prints, 12 – 15are rejected by the photographer as duds. It’s actually hard to be thisbad in the age of auto focus and auto exposure but some find a way.
Level 2 Technical
Drug store prints are starting to look technicallyok if not great. Self made 8X10 prints however show technical flaws – poorfocussing, camera movement, colour balance issues, contrast problems. Thephotographer is sometimes disappointed in the results and other photographersspot the flaws easily. Any print adjustments made are not helpful.
Level 3 Technical
The prints look o.k. to your friends, youare starting to garner some nice comments, but when someone with experiencelooks at them, they note highlights that are blocked or muddy, shadowsthat are either solid black or unrelieved gray. Prints often show sharpeningartifacts or colour saturation that is ‘over the top‘. Print controls areapplied with a ‘six inch brush’ and the images show it. There remain smallissues of sharpness and resolution.
Level 4 Technical
The prints are basically o.k.– focused,camera steady, overall right tonality, yet don‘t have that rich three dimensionallook that expert prints seem to have. It‘s getting harder to describe thedefects but when viewed next to good prints, definitely lack a certainsomething. Highlights are still not rich, shadows lack depth. Local printmanipulation is fairly effective although sometimes too much or too little.They are adequate for a photo album but not to hang on the wall.
Level 5 Technical
8X10 prints look terrific and can‘t be criticizedon a technical basis. There are some presentation issues – high gloss plasticprints, unattractive borders, borderless prints, prints too large forthe equipment used to make them. Photographers at this level often insiston printing larger than the image can bear, relying on trick uprezing andsharpening algorithms to save them – they don’t!
Level 6 Technical
There‘s nothing to criticize about eitherthe image itself or its presentation. Print manipulation is competentand invisible. Prints show subtleties and have depth. Tones are rich andabsolutely nothing is overdone. Unfortunately that just leaves the aestheticissues, a much more challenging problem to solve.

So to the aesthetic levels. Again levelsare not necessarily in sequence and more than one level can apply.
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Aesthetic Levels
Level A Aesthetic
Images don‘t seem to have a point, theydon‘t show things to advantage, they don‘t capture the peak action or thebest pose and are the kind of pictures that only a generous person wouldcomplement. It takes no photographic skill or artistic experience to knowthese don‘t shine. We‘re talking the typical snapshot here that disappointseven the photographer and doesn‘t often make it into an album. The photographerwonders why he bothered to take the picture.
Level B Aesthetic
Images make decent shapshots – as memoriesof events and people and places they serve well even though they don‘texcite. No wow factor. The photographer is comfortable showing the printsaround to friends who want to know what your holiday was like but he’dnot likely take them to other photographers and the images don’t reflectthe excitement at the time of taking the image.
Level C Aesthetic
Images do generate admiration by friendsbut perhaps not photographers or artists. They capture peak action, bestposes, dramatic lighting. They begin to show some awareness of compositionand are almost good enough for the "New SareptaTire And Girdle Company‘annual calendar. They have no artistic merit at this point and can be generallydescribed as ‘pretty pictures’.
Level D Aesthetic
Images are starting to show value in andof themselves rather than as a reminder of something or someone special.It‘s easy to see that some effort has been made to compose the picturein ways that are interesting and that the photographer is being creative.There are elements of the image which don‘t quite work and it‘s the kindof image which makes you think that this would have been a great imageif only I could reshoot it and fix X and Y. Some of the compositional elementswork but not all. The photographer is within a few feet of the right place,a few hours from the right time. The image isn’t strong however and it’smessage is not clear.  There are elements in the image which distractfrom it’s power.
Level E Aesthetic
Images are generally admirable and mostphotographers would react with ‘wish I had takenthat picture‘. Compositionis spot on, the subject interesting, the presentation of the subject effective.
The only thing missing is an emotional responseto the image. You‘re inclined to say ‘well done‘ rather than ‘oh my god...‘or ‘wow‘ or ‘that disturbs me‘,  or some kind of emotional expletive.Images are starting to work on more than one level. Composition shows carefulattention to detail, things are lined up exactly right in several planes.It takes more than 30 seconds to take in all that the image has to offer.
Level F Aesthetic
These images are very strong – they generateemotional responses. You might not mortgage the house to get one and theydon‘t leave you weak kneed but they are wonderful. Most of us would bedelighted to get a handful of images a year into this category.  Theseimages show us things we didn‘t know, they make a point, they illustrateand elucidate. Most of the images of the great photographers fall intothis category. Responses to these images are ‘awesome’, ‘right on’, ‘great’,‘damn that’s good’ and like. it’s possible to spend 20 minutes lookingat a single image and still find new things worth seeing, new connections,new messages.
Level G Aesthetic
These are the great images of history –the ones, that make you weep or cry out or swear. These are the handfulof images so exceptional that even the best photographers in history haveonly able to make a few at best. Here lies ‘PepperNumber 30‘, but notmany other Edward Weston images, this includes the best of Ansel Adamsbut not all. It doesn‘t mean that we mortals can‘t create an image thatfits this category, we’d count ourselves lucky if it happened once.These are the magical images, the ones that glow, that so perfectly getthe message across they become icons of photography.  They might be‘Migrant Mother‘ by Dorothea Lange or the Steve McCurry Afghan girl portrait,the ‘napalmed girl running‘ image, Winter Storm Clearing by Ansel Adams,and several Henri Cartier Bresson images.

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Finding Your Level
Perhaps by now you have an idea of yourlevel both technically and artistically and if so the next step is to usethat information to move on to the next level. Since you can look at thedefinitions of the two levels, you can quickly get an idea of what it isyou need to acquire, practice, learn, improve and generally brush up on.On the other hand, you might be kidding yourself or you may simply notbe sure and so next time I’m going to discuss the ways and means to cometo an accurate understanding of ‘where you’re at’.

George Barr
January, 2007
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Part Two of a Three Part Series

Assessing Your Technical And Aesthetic Skills
Welcome back to part 2 of a three partseries on finding your skill level and developing a strategy to move upto higher levels. The premise is that if you know how good you are; andby inference what it would take to be better,  then you can come upwith a plan to make that move.Last time we discussed the various technicaland aesthetic levels which we tend to move through. It would not have beendifficult to come up with different definitions for the levels, but I feltthat the descriptions were both useful and realistic for many amateur  photographersworking through the ranks.
Perhaps you already know what level youare based on the descriptions in the previous article. Just as a quickreminder here’s the Readers Digest condensed version.
Technical
1.4X6 prints often have noticeable technicalflaws - focussing, steadiness, framing.
2.8X10 prints show flaws, print manipulationis either absent or flawed.
3. Prints look good to non photographersbut not to experienced observers.
4. Prints have no obvious flaws but aren’trich, deep, subtle, three dimensional.
5. Prints look great though presentationlacks.
6. Prints look perfect.
Aesthetic
A. Prints don’t seem to have apoint, and don’t make good snapshots.
B. Decent snapshots.
C. Friends are admiring your ‘snapshots’
D. Prints starting to have artistic valuefor themselves.
E. Prints are admirable but not wonderful- lacking emotional impact.
F. Strong images, great composition, makingthe point, lovely!
G. The handful of the very best images evermade - the icons of photography.
I have been asked how I would select imagesupon which to base one’s level.  I would suggest selecting a ‘portfolio’of your best one to three dozen images and use those as a guideline. Inaddition, you could look at all the images from a single shoot to see howconsistent is the quality of your images. If you can consistently produceone strong image from a day’s shooting, you are doing very well and thequality of that image tells us more than anything.
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Self Assessment
So you have gathered together a portfolioof your images and you are trying to see if you can assess your own levelof skill. You have a rough idea from the descriptions of the previous article,but you are not sure. How about finding some published images in a magazineof good reproduction and holding them up next to yours. It might be worth$10 to rip up a copy of Lenswork, Phot’Art, Focus, B&W or whateverso you can get a better comparison. Alternatively compare your images onthe web to those of better known photographers of similar interests. Youmay not be able to assess things like resolution on the web, but you surecan look at the more important issues of impact, composition, and overalltonality.
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Getting Help
I would suggest that even if you have afairly good idea which of the above categories best describe your skillsyou would benefit from checking with outside sources to see if your self-evaluationis on the mark.
In this part of the series I’m going todiscuss some ways you might be able to do that. This could be perceivedas a little bit scary because in asking others about how good is our work,we run the risk they may actually tell us, and heaven forbid, we mightnot like the answer.
I think a lot of photographers have a splitpersonality – on the one hand we are extremely proud of the images we createand can be overly confident of their value. At the same time, manyof us have that nagging doubt about our abilities and are convinced weare going to wake up one of these days to the realization we are ‘crap’photographers who should find another hobby – say beer bottle cap collecting.Unfortunately what this dichotomy translates into is that we seem to bouncefrom one view to the other. We make a good image and we think we are thenext Ansel Adams, but receive one valid negative comment and we are devastatedand ready to give up the hobby. A few good shoots and we are on top ofthe world, one bad one and out come the bottle caps. Maybe I’m theonly neurotic one on the block, but I suspect not.
There are discussions on the net currentlyabout the destructive value of negative criticism, and no doubt it‘s true,but how else are we  going to get the feedback and evaluation we need.We are going to have to gird our loins and not only take the feedback butlearn from it. Hey, I said this might be faster, I didn’t say anythingabout it being painless. The good news though is that it doesn’thave to be and shouldn’t be an ongoing process – we don’tneed regular flogging – just occasional, interspersed with lots of positivefeedback.

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Obtaining Feedback
Useful feedback can come from a number ofsources. Handiest would be our families. As guides to our levels in theart of photography they almost certainly aren’t ideal. They are biased,are in a bind if they really think it’s crap, and are usually uneducatedin the art of photography (assuming they didn’t listen to all ourboring dinner conversations). That said, I  frequently have my wifelook at prints for me. Responses range from silence to ‘Notone of your better ones’ to ‘I likethat one better’ to ‘Wonderful’.Though she has no photographic skills and wouldn’t know a good dodgingeffort from a poor sharpening one, her immediate emotional response isstill useful. Still, helping sort out your better images isn’t what’sneeded here  – we need to know ouroverall level (and it wouldn’t hurt to stay married – you may thinkbeing married puts a crimp on your spending on photographic gear, waittill you pay for a divorce – your lawyer will certainly be able to afforda new camera).
Next most convenient is to ask our photographicfriends. A friend may not be an Ansel Adams but many at least know whata great print looks like and can point out the flaws of our images. Wecan tell a sour note even if we can’t play the violin. Typically friendsdon’t want to hurt your feelings so the information may not work as wellas you hope, but the price is right. It is however, a lot to ask of yourfriends and perhaps isn’t fair.
Consider joining a local camera club. Theyoften have contests and print critiques with guest experts. Friends whowould be reluctant to criticize your photography individually, become moreopen at a critique and will offer useful comments.  The feedback fromfellow members reflects the quality of their work and usually is in thelower to middle levels, the quality of critiques depends on the skill ofthe reviewer.
What we need is to invite Ansel’sghost over for a good haunting. Barring the supernatural however, we couldgo looking for a photographer who’s skill we know to be higher thanours. This could take the form of a local successful fine art photographer.Since we don’t actually need his advice on how to get to the nextlevel, the person doesn’t even have to be a photographer – they justneed to know a lot about fine images. This would open it up to galleryand museum curators, photographic book publishers, editors and the like.I remember years ago the late Fred Picker offering to perform this servicefor a very reasonable price per print, all of which went to charity. Hehad very few takers – what a waste. For the price of a few boxes of paper,you could have had the opinion of an expert. Fred wasn’t famous forhis photographs but he was certainly competent and he loved and collectedphotography and would have made a superb reviewer (don’t ask if Iever sent some prints for review – I didn’t – dumb huh?).
It takes nerve to ask someone you respector in authority to take the time to not only look at your photographs butprovide some insightful feedback. Doing so is a skill in itself and beinga good photographer doesn’t necessarily make you good at providingfeedback – you might be able to play that violin but it doesn’tnecessarily make you a good teacher.
The single best source of feedback is toattend a workshop which includes print reviews (most do). Workshop instructorswho have a track record have learned to provide useful feedback. For myselfI attended a Fred Picker Zone VI workshop back in the 80’s. Fred had someexcellent instructors at the workshop and you received a variety of viewpointsand by the end of the workshop had a pretty darn good idea of where youstood.
Smaller workshops with one or two instructorscan also be helpful however and you don’t have to fly to the Antarcticto do so. Three weekend workshops I attended were Bruce Barnbaum, CraigRichards and Michael Reichmann himself, the latter being a Luminous-Landscapeweekend in Algonquin in the Fall.
Typically the students at workshops showa variety of levels of skill, some bring drug store 4X6es while othershave already been published. Some are excellent technicians while othersbring an artistic background. It was the lady with the 4X6es that had awonderful eye and had some of the strongest images of the entire workshop,and some useful feedback on others’ images - beyond ‘I’d like it a bitdarker’.
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But I Don’t Know Anyone
O.K., your budget and schedule or your locationpreclude finding a local gallery owner or attending a good workshop, whatare your options?
Actually, they aren’t bad. A number of websitesoffer the ability to not only upload images that others can see but areorganized around critiques and supplying feedback.
For some time I submitted images toPhotosig. I would submit a photoand over the next few days while it remained near the top of the ‘in’ stackI would get comments. For a start, the number of comments gives you someidea of how you are doing. The comments themselves vary from the overlynice to detailed and thoughtful, from outright rejection for no apparentreason, to pointed but ‘on the mark’ comments worth a lot.
There are limitations to Photosig (and I’massuming other similar sites). First off people decide to look at yourimage based on it’s thumbnail – and not all good photographs makeeye catchingthumbnails.
Secondly, top ranked images tend to be dramatic,very colourful and a bit calendar like. Even the black and white imageswhich are popular tend to be very graphic and bold. Subtle just doesn’tcut it.
The third concern is that the feedback oneobtains is most useful moving from beginner to intermediate, or in otherwords, for people who find themselves in the first few levels. Technicalflaws are easier to deal with and get the most attention and the most usefulfeedback. Advice about creativity is much harder to give. Still, we werelooking to identify our level more than looking for advice so give it ashot.
Other sites work a similar way, such asphoto.net. Onesite that offers daily critiques of  select images isRadiantVista. While the odds of gettingeven one of your images critiqued in this way isn’t great – lookingthrough critiques of others work will give you a sense of the problems withyour own work. After listening to a couple dozen critiques, it isn’tthat hard to apply the same kind of thinking to your own images.
Submitting work for publication while notusually generating any feedback other than ‘yes, we will publish it’ or‘no, please try again’, at least can give you some idea of your positionif you are in one of the higher levels but not quite sure which one. Asingle image published on a ‘Readers Gallery’ suggests you are on the righttrack.
There are formal reviews of work available.One of the most prominent is Review Santa Fe in which hundreds of photographerssubmit 20 images each and 90 are selected to come to Santa Fe (at the photographersexpense, plus a hefty review fee of $595) and receive 9 formal reviewsover 2 days from a mix of publishers, gallery owners and museum curators.I understand there are a number of other similar reviews. Clearly you needto be fairly high up the scale for this to be an option. While expensive,feedback from people who have attended indicates that it is a tremendousexperience.
For most photographers I still have to stronglyrecommend the workshop as the single best way to get a sense of your positionon the scale.
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How To Translate Feedback Into Levels
Chances are, no matter who provides thefeedback, they aren’t going to point to level 3D, say, ‘that’s you buddy’see you around’ and walk off. I think you’d be a bit upset if that’s allthey did, even though the premise of this series of articles is that thiswould be very useful information. No, you are going to have to interpretthe comments made to determine your level.
I think it’s fairly simple to interpretthe technical comments and determine your level so I’m going to concentrateon interpreting the artistic merit comments.
Reviewers are looking for something goodto say and what is said can tell you a lot about the strengths and weeknessesof the print. A comment that an image has a really nice matte is not agood start. If the work is original, interesting or strong, it’s likelythe reviewer is going to comment on those elements. A lack of such commentsshould frankly be interpreted as ‘needs work’.
‘What were you tryingto say?" translatesinto I don’t see a point to your picture and if I knew what it was I mightbe able to help you express it.
If the reviewer ‘gets’ why you took thepicture then the message is fairly clear.
A good reviewer is not likely to put a lotof emphasis on what’s wrong with your image. Rather they will talkabout how to make it better. Reviewers often look at one image at a timeand may not make any comments about the whole collection and almost certainlywon’t make any comments about you and your work in general. Thatsaid, they can often be cornered later for a more frank discussion of yourstrengths and weaknesses – while driving for example (not looking at images,please), or at lunch. In my experience, workshop leaders presume that theyare at your beck and call the whole workshop except for a little sleep.  Somepeople have very fragile egos and workshop leaders learn to tread carefully,but if you ask for them to be frank, they will try to level with you.
Look to the comments of the other students– do they ‘get it’? It doesn’t take long to learnthat some of the participant are very observant and can offer insightfulfeedback, regardless of the prints they show.
Listening To Your Fellow Participant’s Critiques
You might find yourself listening to highpraise for an image by another participant and you can’t see it –the image is out of focus or badly printed, yet the instructor seems excited- it can be difficult to look past the obvious and see the value in thework, yet recognizing it in the work of others is preliminary to finding,selecting, and making images of artistic value for ourselves.
The other aspect of a print critique isthat of seeing the work of others and comparing it to your own. This isevery bit as valuable as the feedback you get about your own prints. It’snot difficult to see the flaws in your own prints when the stand up againstthose of others, both technically and aesthetically. Do your prints lookmuddy and gray compared to those of other participants - or too contrasty- too dark - or too colourful? Do their images seem to have a point,  acentre of interest,  a reason for being taken while it’s hard to seethese in your own images? Often images are put up one photographer at atime but during a break you could lean some of your work on the wall nextto that of someone whose work you liked.
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The Virtual Workshop
You can help yourself without even goingto a workshop by asking yourself some of the typical workshop questions.
What was I trying to say?
Did I say it in the strongest way possible?
Was there a different way to compose thepicture to make it stronger?
Did I eliminate all extraneous features?
Did I find the best position, the best timeto take the photograph?
Did I make a print which showed the subjectto best advantage?
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Conclusion
It’s really challenging to assess one’slevel of ability in isolation. We need to look at the work of others, weneed to receive feedback about our own work. If you use some of the above‘tools’ it shouldn’t be too hard to assess your level of skill. And thatbrings us to actually using this information to move up a level, to makea quantum leap, to take a ‘giant step’ upwards in our work, and of course,that’s the topic for next time.
George Barr
March, 2007
Part Three of a Three Part Series

In thefirst of the three partseries on ‘Finding Your Level And Moving On’ we defined the levels. Inthesecond part we discussed how to get the feedback that would help youassess your own level, both technically and aesthetically. Now comes thepayoff. It’s time to do something with this information.
It would be presumptuous to suggestthat I can give you everything you need to know to improve your photography,all in one easy lesson. I’m neither the ideal person to tell you everythingyou need to do, nor is this the venue to do so. Entire photographic universitycourses are not sufficient to do that.
If that’s the case though, justwhat the hell use am I to you? I decided that some changes are difficult,others are slow and more are not powerful enough to make fundamental changesto one’s work. Some strategies and exercises could be both practical andproduce significant results. I started by asking myself ‘what is the onething a photographer at a given level could do to improve his or her photography.
Initially I was fixated on gettingto the next level, but it became clear that there was nothing wrong withsuggesting something which could leap frog levels and produce big changes.I didn’t think you’d complain.
Some fixes are simple - for example,holding the camera steadier - that can be done with practice. You can testjust what shutter speed is your minimum, with and without coffee, at thebeginning of a shoot and at the end. You can read any of a number of technicalbooks which will teach you how to squeeze off a shot rather than stabbingthe shutter release.
On the other hand, if what yourimages lack is emotional impact, not only is the source of the answer harderto find, it might take years of studying good images to figure out howto give your photographs impact. That sounds downright discouraging, buttruth is, if what your images lack is impact, switching cameras, addingpixels, changing raw processors and trying harder are none of them goingto help one bit.
How soon looking at good imageswill improve your photography is going to be a function of how hard youwork at it, inherent talent, artistic background, and even more important,finding something to photograph that actually means something to you. Somecan make fundamental leaps within months, for others it takes many years,but the point is that I think there are a lot of photographers who arefrustrated because they have considerable experience but seem stalled intheir photography.
At first I felt that readers would have to scroll downto the appropriate level and ignore advice offered at other levels. Ifeel now this is incorrect, that in fact all photographers shoot at morethan one level. All one needs to do is look at your thumbnails or proofsheets to see that there is a clear variation in the skill applied to eachimage - some are better technically, others show stronger composition,etc. I would argue therefore that studying the tools to improve all levelsof photography can be useful. Maybe you don’t stab the shutter button mostof the time, but what about when you are excited? Do you check the cornersof every single image?
Too many photographers practice what they are goodat and avoid confronting their weaknesses - it‘s human nature to go withour strengths, but you can see that such a strategy is hardly likely toresult in rapid progress. For example, there are many experienced hobbyphotographers who are quite expert at many of the technical aspects ofphotography and could even teach it, yet are weak at the aesthetic partsof photography - guess which they study and practice more!

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The Technical Levels
In general, the technical levels are cleaner to define,simpler to evaluate and much easier to find the necessary information toimprove. There are many websites (such as LuminousLandscape) which discussa variety of issues. There are dozens of books available to give you acomplete course on photography. Fewer books have been written about thecreative aspects of the art of photography and the advice given is morevague and harder to follow. That said, Michael has published a number ofarticles on the creative side of photography byAlainBriot which I canrecommend. But back to the technical levels.
Level One (snapshotsare technically flawed) - in thesedays of auto focus auto exposure cameras, a whole roll of terrible photographsis unlikely. That said, here’s three suggestions to dramatically improvesnapshots.
i) Check the background before taking the picture.
ii) Move in closer. More snapshots could be improvedby moving in closer than just about any other trick. It’s not helped byinaccurate optical viewfinders which give the impression you did move in,when in fact the film or sensor actually covers much more and the subjectappears smaller in the print than anticipated.
iii) Master the skill of the shutter half press. Thismeans you can meter from something equivalent to what you want to record(eg. the person instead of the bright background sky which fills the frame)and also to focus on one of the two people in the group then while keepingthe shutter half pressed, reframe as desired. A few new cameras claim tohave this problem licked with face recognition, but what about pets, lilies,rocks, fences and all manner of other objects which need to be in focusbut are not in fact in the centre of the frame.
Level Two (snapshotslook good but larger prints show significant flaws) Trust me, this isn’t about improving your camera equipment,even an inexpensive 5 MP digital consumer camera can create a lovely 5X7print on 8.5X11 paper. Here’s a few suggestions for making good prints.
i) Use a tripod whenever possible and use the selftimer or a cable release.
ii) read about depth of field and then go out and testit with your equipment - know what will and won’t be in focus before youmake the print. Make yourself a depth of field table or at the very leasta set of hyperfocal distances on a card.
Depth Of Field Calculator:http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html
iii) find out what the diffraction limit is for yourcamera - ie. how far you can stop down before diffraction degrades theimage more than increased depth of field improves it. Don’t read aboutit, don’t ask, actually go out and test your equipment and see what worksfor you - is f22 really better than f16 for adding depth of field?
iv) learn to routinely make good exposures. With histogramsand LCD screens, this is much easier with digital cameras, but it wouldhelp to read Michael’s article on ‘exposingto the right’. Give the poorsucker who makes the prints (you) the best possible negative or digitalfile from which to work. Don’t even know what a good negative lookslike? - then head for a workshop or show your negs to someone who makesgood prints.
v) experiment, but keep the experiments simple. Ifyou change more than one variable, then how do you know which one causedany observed changes. Make sure the experiment is even capable of answeringthe question you asked. Make notes, so three years later you won’t haveto rely on memory for the details - which folder did I place that experimentalPhotoshop curve and what did I call it? Don’t experiment too much though,no film or developer is going to be the ultimate miracle, no raw developeris perfect in every way - spend your time learning to make better printsrather than testing your 13th new paper.

Level Three (friendsadmire but photographers see lots of flaws) - it’s about making quality prints, with good shadows and highlights,appropriate colour balance and saturation and not too dark.
i) take your prints to someone who is good and getsome feedback - because at this level the prints probably look o.k. toyou. The same people who helped you figure out you are a level 3 are theones to point out what deficiencies there are in your prints. Even betterwould be if you had the opportunity to take their advice, work on the issuesand get some feedback on how well you have solved the problems. More experiencedcamera club members and workshop instructors can be particularly helpful.
ii) consider purchasing good prints. The late FredPicker made available a relatively inexpensive set of prints to use asexamples. Even if you are a wet darkroom printer, purchasing inkjet printscan be well worth while as a guide.
iii) Use magazines with top reproduction quality asguides to decent prints - Lenswork and Phot’Art come to mind as heads andshoulders above the others.
iv) visit the websites of respected photographers tolook at their images. Here’s a very small list of photographers who makegood prints and have decent websites illustrating their work.
Brett Weston:http://brettwestonarchive.com/index.php
Michael Kenna:http://www.michaelkenna.net/
Christopher Burkett:http://www.christopherburkett.com/
Ansel Adams:http://www.anseladams.com/
William Neil:http://www.williamneill.com/
Roman Loranc:http://www.romanloranc.com/
David Plowden:http://www.davidplowden.com/
Bruce Barnbaum:http://www.barnbaum.com/
Level Four (printslook technically ok yet lack richness and depth) - it’s about going from technically competent to highly skilled.No single tip is going to make a fundamental difference and it is likelythat you will have to work hard and long to achieve this kind of improvement.That said, here’s some specific suggestions.
i) a workshop is almost certainly your best investment,though you have to be sure that the instructors are in fact great printersin their own right.
ii) take every opportunity to visit galleries and lookat original prints.
iii) buy lots of paper and work hard. Don’t make dozensof changes to an image without saving some intermediate stages so you cango back and change things - this is the single biggest advantage of printingdigitally - use it. Don’t keep printing for hours - stop and have a lookat your prints the next day - we tend to have problems with image ‘creep’by which I mean we get darker and contrastier as the day progresses andit’s only the next day that we realize we went past optimum about threehours before we quit printing.
Level Five (printpresentation lacks) - You just needto ask yourself does your portfolio present your work in the best possiblelight - immaculate prints which are easy to see, and in a format that isnot too difficult to handle - nothing like a stack of glossy borderlessprints for picking up finger prints fast. A call to LightImpressions Direct or a trip to your local photo store can show you some ways to present yourimages. Michael has discussed presentation in the past, both for his workand with suggestions for yours.
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Aesthetic Levels
This was always going to be harder to write (and ithas been). I knew going in that whatever advice I had to offer, it wasunlikely to be something you could pick up over a weekend. Sweat and commitmentare required to advance aesthetically. That said, I do have some suggestionswhich might be of value.
Level A (snapshots are boring)
the essential problem here is level A prints don‘tshow what the photographer intended. Pictures of exotic Caribbean islandsdon‘t look anything like as nice as you remember them. Family picturesdon‘t show how cute your 3 year old niece is, mountains look unimpressive,sunsets look anaemic.
It‘s not that the message doesn‘t come across, rathersimply that there does not appear to be a message at all. While there arehundreds of photography books which are helpful, there is one step whichcould be taken to quickly improve the quality of your images.
Ask your self the following questions:
Question 1 - what would I like the picture to showand what are the odds that if I shoot now, from here, that it will showit?
It could be that beautiful Caribbean beach you wantto show off from your holiday, or it might be your grandchild looking angelicjust before dropping off to sleep, or it might simply be how great yourroses were this year in the garden.
Question 2 - is there anything I can do right now toshow it better? You could change position, zoom, or reframe.
Remember that moving left or right while still aimingat the subject changes foreground and background - could such a changeimprove the picture - simply becoming aware of these two picture elementsis going to result in improved pictures.
Think of a rose bush. Shot from 20 feet away with awide angle lens, you’d be hard pressed to even know it’s a rose in theprint, so clearly moving in is going to be important. You need to decidewhether the delicacy of a single flower is more important than the collectionof blooms - you might decide to shoot it both ways to give yourself a choicelater - nothing wrong with putting off decisions by giving yourself options.Youmove around the bush to see the best light, the best show of blooms, andif you are getting creative, the most interesting pattern of blooms. Youhave been viewing it from standing eye height - but is that really thebest position from which to shoot - what about waist level, or even lower- no, that means the background is partially sky and it’s way too bright,o.k., back to between waist and eye height. You have a zoom and have theoption of going wide or long - long means the background is more blurred- that might isolate the blooms, wide angle includes the surrounding gardenin the back - is that important?. Do the blooms look better looking downor from the side? It’s a sunny day and in one position there is a harshshadow across the image which can be eliminated by moving round a bit.You find a good position and pleasing composition. You check the cornersof the image - any problems? Things look good, but just before you pressthe shutter you realize that one bloom is a lot closer to the lens thanthe others and there’s no way it’s going to be in focus if the others are- hmmn, o.k., if I move round just a bit I can cover the major close bloomswith my depth of field and the background blooms will be nicely blurred- I like that. Last minute check - any bug eaten leaves or other problems,if not go for it.
Consider shooting the picture now from where you are(after all if you hesitate you may miss the moment), but then move aroundand move in and take a second shot after a quick look for an improved position.Sure this results in 50% wastage of shots, but few photographers ever approach50% success rate and with digital cameras and no film costs, why not experiment.

Level B (images lack wow, they act as good markersfor remembering a holiday but aren’t likely to persuade anyone else tomake the same trip)
Images are competent but not dramatic enough to befeatured on a calendar. Instead of simply making a good capture of yourtwo year old niece with a nice smile, we are looking to shoot the imagewhich shows her at her cutest, or most vulnerable, or innocent. Movingbeyond Level B involves effort. It means visiting at the right time ofday (crack of dawn till proven otherwise). It means following that twoyear old round for 3 months, getting faster and better at capturing expressions.It means knowing something about our subject so we can capture the peakmoment of a football game for example. It also means not taking some picturesbecause not enough things come together to make a calendar worthy image- and that‘s hard.
Images have a message but it isn’t clear. To make meaningfulimages, the photographer will need to identify the message and decide whatelements of the subject add to that message and just as important, whatare the parts which detract from same. Messages can be political - poverty,crime, war, pollution, etc, or they can be feelings - anger, calm, excitement,humour, or they can be about the character of the subject - weight, height,delicacy. The message can be about relationships - things that go togetheror in fact which don’t and so are ironic.
Let’s say you are taking a picture of a waterfall.It’s conceivable that with careful framing and lens choice you could makeit look as impressive as Niagra Falls, even though it’s only 3 feet high,but perhaps you want to emphasize how secluded the spot is, or you wantto show the light reflections, or the swirls at the base of the falls,simply standing back and firing away isn’t going to cut it. You might evenhave to get wet to get the best picture, you certainly want to catch itin the right light - bright sun alternating with deep shadow isn’t likelyto work. You need to ask yourself what is it that appeals to you aboutthis fall - is it the tranquility? Once you have established that, it isn’tthat hard to figure out how best to show that aspect of the falls.
Find the message you want to relate and work to showit.
Level C (images illustrate nicely but aren’t art)
Level C photographers can take pretty pictures butmoving on means starting to create art, actually putting something of ourselvesin the images and making an image which means more as itself than as agreat representation of the real world. This means ‘making pictures‘ insteadof ‘taking pictures‘.
Our images do a great job representing ‘the thing‘yet one would still rather have the sunset than the picture of it, be atthe game instead of looking at the picture. We‘d like to create a picturewhich would make you wince with the impact of the tackle, that shows footballin a way sitting on the sidelines doesn‘t. It might show the pain, or theskill, the balance, coordination. It opens a little window into what it‘slike to be part of a football tackle. Somehow we need to create imageswhich educate, entertain, inform, stimulate or otherwise create a connectionwith the viewer.
This is a pretty tall order. It‘s easy to imagine thatyou‘d need to know something of football to be able to create that powerfulimage. You‘d likely have to care about football and almost certainly you‘dhave to practice shooting for some considerable time to be able to showall this in a single photograph.
Short of signing up for a 4 year fine arts degree,how do you go about making a fundamental difference to your photographs.The traditional method has been practice, practice, practice. I would arguethough that we are looking at a different type of photograph and practicingthe old skill which was one of taking great snapshot, just isn‘t goingto do it.
There isn‘t any simple step you can take or exercisethat you can do in a matter of weeks to ‘move up‘. There are however somesteps that over time will help. Below are some suggestions:
1) take a photograph appreciation course, or even anart appreciation course. Many years ago I took such a course at the EdmontonArt Gallery. An entire hour was spent looking at a Steiglitz image of aporch, it was boring to start and after an hour it was extremely boring,yet the instructor had pointed out dozens of things in the image whichworked to make it successful (if you say so).I left the workshop angrywith the waste of time, but within six months I couldn‘t look at photographsthe old way - they meant so much more to me and I now appreciated a muchwider variety and style of photography encompassing a much greater rangeof subject matter. Highly recommended.
2) Study intelligent critiques of photographs - thoseon Radiant Vista are generally excellent and they spend at least as muchtime discussing what works as what doesn‘t which is extremely important.
3) Study books on art and books of art. Pour over booksof fine photographs and consider starting a library that you can returnto time and again - there are books of collections, small inexpensive mastersof photography books from Aperture and Phaidon and others. Start with thebook ‘Looking At Photographs‘ and expand from there. Look at and read booksof photographs that provide some good descriptions of what the photographerwas doing. eg. Joe Cornish, Sam Abell - part way through the book startmaking predictions about what the photographer was deliberately doing tomake a good photograph, then check your predictions against the text.
Michael Johnston has a list of recommended readingat The Online Photographerhttp://www.theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com
4) Spend some serious time studying a portfolio ofyour best work of the last year. You are looking for aesthetic issues sowork with modest sized prints. Ask yourself the following questions:
a) what was I trying to show?
b) how effective was I in showing it?
c) what is there about this photograph which is worthwhile in and of itself rather than just as a representation of what itphotographed (ie. why would I want the picture instead of the thing?)
d) what is there about this picture that would makesomeone else want to look at it?
e) what changes can I make to the image to improvethe answers to the above.
5) Using the answers to your questions, go out andreshoot the images with the necessary changes. Ask questions again andif need be repeat cycle.
Level D (starting to be artistic but the message isn’tclear)
We‘re definitely striving to be creative, we have foundsomething that means something to us, but the message we create isn‘t clear.
I have some suggestions for photographers who findthemselves at this level:
1) It’s necessary to make composition stronger. It’snot enough to have one or two matching compositional elements, the themeneeds to be repeated throughout the image. Take more effort to repeat thesemajor themes of composition in the image. This may mean walking away fromimages which simply don’t offer enough.
2) Decide to work hard on the edges of your images.Each time you go out, spend substantial time analyzing the outer partsof the image. Use the edges and corners to create shapes with subject matterbordering them, see what you can do with lines that come to the edges andor corners. See what you can do to keep the viewer’s eye from wanderingout of the image frame. Remember that the black surround of an SLR viewfindertends to keep one’s eyes within the image but that won’t help when it comesto a print, so more effort has to be made to keep the viewer in. A whitecard viewer can be helpful here. I keep one round my neck at all timesand use it rather than the camera viewfinder for initial framing.
3) Improving from this level means that anything atall that detracts from the image has to be eliminated. If at all possiblethis is done at the time of recording the image, but sometimes that’s justnot possible and it will be necessary to minimize distracting elementsin the print - by changing colour, by altering contrast or brightness,or if you think proper, by cloning it out - if you can.
4) Sign up for Photographic Workshop - from someonewho‘s photographs you admire but who also has a reputation for being agood instructor. Workshops can be anything from a few hours to more thana week, they can be classroom only or mostly field work. It‘s my experiencethat more is learned in the classroom than in the field - that in the fieldthe students scatter and you are lucky to get advice from the instructoronce or twice in a day of shooting.
Level E (images are admired by fellow photographers,yet lack emotional impact)
Level E is about going from admirable to wonderful.Problems of composition, lighting, presentation, and so on have all beenmastered. Lots of images by the masters of photography are ‘only admirable‘and not wonderful so it‘s no disgrace to find yourself at this level, yetthe question is: is there anything to be done to create some wonderfulimages?
At this point you are going from ‘’I think that imagewould look good on my wall’, to ‘I HAVE to have that image,it says so muchto me’.
It‘s inconceivable that you are going to make the majorityof your images wonderful - no one has accomplished that yet in my opinion.Still, some would be terrific.
This raises the question - how can certain types ofphotography be powerful - emotional - containing a message - after allthey are just (and here you can put in whatever kind of photography youthink fits). One might use this argument about a still life, about a landscape,an industrial or architectural photograph. It‘s easier to imagine a newsphotograph having this power, certainly advertisers pay big bucks for theirad photos to have this kind of power.
I think I can persuade you that my favorite ‘Pepper# 30‘ has such power. The curves and tones of the pepper are sensuous,they curve in ways that remind you of running your hands over the bodyof a beautiful woman. But what about a ‘rocks and roots‘ picture - I thinkthese too can be powerful - I think an image can not only make you ‘wishyou were there‘ it can actually make you feel you are there, that you canfeel the weight of the rock, the delicacy of the branches, the power inthe waterfall, the cold in the snowbank. A landscape can convey excitementor tranquillity, even spookiness. An image can show you beauty where youwouldn‘t expect it - in a patch of rust, or the underneath of a railwaybridge. I can think of flower pictures which are more beautiful than theflower itself, which were it in a field, you‘d probably walk past withouta second glance. This could be because of lighting, framing, compositionor closeness. It could be because of eliminating colour and so emphasizingshape and form.
So how to create wonderful images. You could go downto skid row and photograph ‘bums‘. You won‘t be the first. You might evenget some good images but probably not. Whether you could justify such exploitationis a conversation for another time. The images might be more meaningfulif you spent some time with these people and got to know them and tooktheir images with their cooperation, perhaps after helping them for somemonths.
It seems to me that to start, you are looking for sceneswhich have an emotional impact on you. Then you go about trying to showthat somehow. If on the other hand, you see something and think it willmake an interesting composition, no matter how carefully you line thingsup, no matter how subtle the lighting, fine the detail, delicate the shadows- it‘s unlikely to create a reaction in it‘s viewers which you didn‘t seefirst. First you find the interest, then you find the picture, not theother way round.
I remember Fred Picker in his newsletter describingbeing out ‘cruzin fer snaps‘ as he called it and coming across a slatequarry and finding interesting shapes and texture and getting excited bythe possibilities, then the sun came out for a minute and the slate glowedand it was next to a religious experience for him, one which a busloadof camera club enthusiasts who’d stopped to watch this odd photographerand his ancient camera didn‘t even notice as they watched him rather thanthe scene.
Last Fall, on my way to Tofino on Vancouver Island,we came round a corner on top of some bicycle tourers, buses and trucks.Behind them though was this wonderful river weaving it‘s way through somecolourful rocks. I went back later in the holiday on my own and spent severalhours climbing and exploring, hopping over the water, shinnying up rockfaces, literally hugging the scenery. It was a wonderful experience. Itried very hard to create an image which expressed how I felt about thisarea, with little success. I have the strong feeling though that this isan area which visited several times will finally reveal a great image.

Another time I visited Writing On Stone ProvincialPark. I‘d heard it was nice but any images I saw beforehand were prettyordinary and I was expecting to be disappointed. Instead it was incredible.I arrived just as it stopped raining and the light was magical and I wasable to climb one of the rock pillars and photograph others, the nearbyMilk River and the last of the storm clouds. I‘d like to think those feelingsshow in the picture. Certainly it‘s one of my more popular images.
So, first you find subject matter that is importantto you, that you relate to, that you have some experience with, then youlook for the good photograph. Too often we‘re desperate to take a goodphotograph so first we find the good image, then we hope to relate to itand somehow put that in the image - some chance.
How you go about putting your emotional experienceof the subject into the image is up to you. I like to think that sometimesI can do it, often I can‘t. I do know that the more often I shoot, themore I practice, the more successful I become.
Level F (wonderful but not iconic)
Even if I had been a photographer who created one ormore of the iconic images of photography, I suspect I‘d not know how totell someone else to do it, never mind how I could repeat the effort formyself. Steve McCurry is a superb photographer, but there‘s only one AfghanGirl. Dorothea Lange took a number of powerful photographs but ‘MigrantMother‘ so perfectly says depression/suffering/heat/dust/discouragementit is the image everyone remembers. One can only say that the more oftenone is able to make images with a clear message and emotional impact, themore likely one is to one day create a future icon.
There are lots of wonderful tunes, yet there is somethingabout ‘Amazing Grace’, especially on the bagpipes, which just grabs manypeople. I remember when it first started playing on the radio in the early70’s and was surprised at my reaction to it, and even more so when I foundthat others had a similar reaction. We’re talking about photographs likethat tune. That so many wonderful pieces of music don’t grab you that waysuggests an element of magic for which there are unlikely to be any rules,tricks or tips to make equivalent photographs,they just are...
The preceding advice on improving one‘s photographyis by necessity incomplete. On the other hand perhaps you will find oneor more strategies in the preceding which could work for you and whichif applied would help you progress further and faster than simply tryingharder which is the traditional method of moving ahead.
Hopefully some of you will come up with your own moreapplicable methods of moving on after reading the three articles. It wouldbe great if you have discovered a method of making a big step forward,that you‘d let us know in the Luminous Landscapes Discussion Forum. Itmight be a particular workshop teacher, or a book that was especially helpful,or some exercise you assigned yourself.
In the end and even if none of the above advice worksfor you, I can‘t help but feel that knowing where you are at and whereyou want to go has to make the journey easier.

George Barr
May, 2007
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About George Barr
I am a 57 year old family physician. The switch to digital a few years agowas like a light going on – my creativity was unleashed to a degreeI‘d never had before. It opened the possibilities of colour work after almost40 years of black and white only. A weekend workshop gave me the courageto show my work and has since led to being published inLenswork,BlackAnd White and also Black And White Photography Magazine fromBritain and Focus magazine in the U.S. My website ishttp://www.georgebarr.com andmy blog is athttp://www.georgebarr.blogspot.com.