Authenticity, Identity, and Privilege.
Recently, a friend announced that they no longer wanted to identify themselves by what they do but instead describe themselves by what they are passionate about. This change got me thinking: Are authenticity and identity privileges? For many people, authenticity comes with consequences that a cisgender white male does not contend within the USA today. I have never struggled to get credit and have never been racially profiled or victimised for my gender or sexual orientation. For a long time, I have used a series of words to describe myself on social media: “Husband, dad, yoga and meditation teacher, kayak builder, hiker, photographer, vegan, sober, retired.” Some words are self-serving, some are egoic, and others are to help people connect with me. Some I do, some I am, some I earned, and some I am passionate about. I am also privileged AF.
Filters in Photography.
This weekend, I attended a Winter Photography workshop led by a great landscape photographer, Bryan Hansel, whom I am delighted to call a friend. (Bryan also has a newsletter on this platform). To those who have grown up with a smartphone, a filter is something you apply to a photograph before you post it on Instagram. Bryan taught us how and when to use physical filters, graduated and normal-density filters and polarisers. Physical filters affect the light before hitting the camera sensor, altering the image tones and colours before the image is captured. Filters allow exciting effects to be applied to images, lengthening exposure time to create motion blur, creating higher contrast in the sky, removing reflections from ice, and many more. We learned many creative ways to modify the image captured. But is the result authentic?
Editing photographs.
Last week, I watched a video provocatively titled “Bad photographers edit photos”, in which Todd Dominey discusses the notion of authenticity and aesthetics and the impact of editing in digital photography. One of Todd’s remarks stuck with me: “Injecting a creative viewpoint to reveal a truth the camera cannot see”.
The camera does not capture what we see. The dynamic range, depth-of-field and colours our eyes see are very different from those captured by the camera’s sensor. The camera is a viewpoint that is different from that of the photographer. In editing the photograph, they can edit the image to more faithfully represent what they remember seeing; they can also “inject[ing] a creative viewpoint to reveal a truth the camera cannot see”.
Take emotion as an example. Does a camera capture your emotional response to a scene? Or do you do that through filtering or the fabrication and stylisation of reality that is editing?
What do you think about editing photographs? Is it an integral part of the creative process or only practised by bad photographers?
A quote I read recently.
“[Ecstatic truth] is mysterious and elusive and can be reached only through fabrication, imagination, and stylisation.”
Werner Herzog - Ecstatic Truth.