#shore text

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Chapter 5 - Mental Modeling

Taylor Martz - Assignment #5  3.30.16

For Shore, photographs are “mental models” of our minds. He argues that while, for most of us, this happens subconsciously, the photographer can harness this model and turn it into an aspect for further creative control. By controlling our insights of conditioning and comprehension, the photographer can use his or her perceptions to adjust this now controlled mental model to accurately display a self-monitored, independently changed process.

The final sentence of Chapter 5 states, “It is a complex, ongoing, spontaneous, interaction of observation, understanding, imagination, and intention.” Shore uses this to display his final thoughts on the process and practice of photography. When reading over this quote, I feel it most accurately relates to my newfound journey with photography this semester. I fell in love with the process of photography early on in my high school career when taking a class on a whim. My high school professor, Jim Roetzel, has since become a near and dear friend and colleague of mine over the years. While I mainly practiced film and darkroom photography, his overall concepts and teachings have stuck. After being gifted a DSLR camera for my 21st birthday last winter, I took it upon myself to revisit, strengthen and grow my photography skills. This was a spontaneous, unexpected spark in my journey and I knew I needed to capitalize on the option of continuing my journey in the near future- which lead me to sign up for VAP 200 this spring.

I have found that photography is not just one single shoot at a time or a deadline or assignment, but rather a way of stepping back throughout the chaos of life and looking through it in a different perspective. Photography, like Shore mentioned, has conditioned me to slow down and appreciate small aspects of life I may have otherwise blown over too quickly my final senior semester of college. Things like a sunny day, a bench I’ve never noticed in Oakwood or the way the light changes my mood on a day to day basis are things I’ve all been able to stop and appreciate, and now capture, in my life. Photography has continuously changed my perspective and the level of awareness in my surroundings on campus. I’ve refueled my creative drive and have learned to relieve stress while still completing a task- two things I never thought I could say in the same sentence when referring to homework. I think this is when I realized my photographs turned out best. I got lost in the art of creating and looking at my current day to day routines and activities, and instead intentionally viewed them in a perspective that made them interesting to other audiences. I no longer feel like I need to imitate another creative’s work in order to feel confident with my own, and that is something I can proudly say I’ve found throughout the process of growing my photography skills.

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Chapter 4 - “The Mental Level”

Taylor Martz

Assignment #4 - 3.9.16

Shore begins this chapter with an explanation of focus. He says that instead of your eyes refocusing on a subject, it is rather your mental focus that tends to shift. I understood this to mean that our mental capacity to understand a photograph depends on our ability to shift our focus to the object or subject at hand. While we can operative on a depictive level, simply regurgitating an object in front of us through a lens, it is our mental level that allows one to elaborate and refine our interpretation or perception of the image. This part of Shore’s text reminded me the most of our assignment. As photographers during Assignment #4, we were asked to view ordinary things from a unique perspective. Much of what Shore hinted at throughout chapter 4 was our ability to make concrete decisions including the depictive level while simultaneously affecting the mental level through “focus.”

When I first hear the word focus, my mind immediately jumps to the alteration of clarity or blur in a camera’s lens. Shore, however, reminds us that focus can also involve our eyes, attention and mind. Each type of focus helps connect our depictive and mental levels, giving a definition to the image and space within a photograph. Shore uses the quote: “Pictures exist on a mental level that may be coincident with the dedicative level- what the picture is showing- but does not mirror it.” Photographers utilize techniques such as verticals in tension with edges, diagonals that recede and the layering of frames to help emphasize a space and create audience interpretation. Therefore, the mental level of a photograph is the audience’s intended perception of the depicitive level.

This assignment challenged me to move myself into places one would not normally feel comfortable approaching. I stood in mulch beds, took pictures of bystanders from afar, found myself kneeling on the ground and even standing in someone’s backyard. I put myself in new and unusual places that I would normally feel uncomfortable approaching, but found I could ultimately change the way in which I interpreted the subject at hand through the use of my lens. I tried to play with lines inside a frame, altered the aperture to help define the focus of the image and changed the composition by sometimes putting my subject in the corner or edge of the frame. These each challenged my traditional form of photography, but, in my mind, for the better.

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Chapter 3 - “The Depictive Level”

Assignment #3 2.29.16

The idea of “creating order from chaos” and “solving a picture” (as Shore puts it a few pages apart in Chapter 3 of his text) produces a sense of organization. For me, ‘creating order’ would be the process by which one may choose their vantage point, the frame in which their world through the lens will lie, the moment in time in which they hit the shutter button and the confines of the very object they choose to make their subject. Similarly, the idea of ‘solving a picture’ suggests organizing the chaotic nature of the subject, scene or world in front of one’s self into the ‘depictive’ nature of the photograph through creative use of vantage point, frame, time and the subject. Through these four creative tools, one can paint a picture of their subjective view of the world through a camera lens. This provides the photographer a metaphorical “voice” in which they can ‘depict’ their opinion on how a particular picture should be ‘solved.’ (pg. 53)

While both Shore and Szarkowski touch on their definition of the grammar of a photo with similarity in frame, vantage point and time, they differ in the aspect of the subject itself. Shore includes the plane of focus in the grammar surrounding his photos while Szarkowski uses the object and its detail. Shore narrows in on the idea that, with purpose, the use of these elements can be extremely powerful by a photographer. Szarkowski, on the other hand, describes how the overarching elements in themselves create the context in which the photograph is made/viewed.

Chapter 3 truly made me focus outside of the “type” of subject I was shooting, and more into how playing with vantage point and frame, most specifically, could alter the way the photograph created a relationship with a viewer. For example, kneeling down next to a stump and photographing from the ground upward gave the illusion that the tree was once large. However, if I photographed the stump from above, I gave the viewer the impression the tree had an awfully narrow and small base. The level at which I could crouch or angle my camera alone changed the depictive level of my photography. 

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Chapter 2 - “The Physical Level”

Assignment #2 2.15.16

When reading Shore’s Chapter 2 text, a few parts stuck out to me. First, I was intrigued by his use of the word “determine” on page 16. It appeared three times within the paragraph, but each with a different sentence structure and context. I think this stood out to me in light of our second assignment, Chance vs. Intent. In a Chance photograph, for example, there is nothing to be determined besides the moment in which your finger hits the shutter button. You choose, or ‘determine’, the instance in which the photograph will be taken, but do not determine the light, color, speed or depth within the image. The frame, or ‘boundaries’ as Shore calls them, are left completely up to chance rather than the photographer’s predetermined intent. Without controlling for the flatness, boundedness or static state of an image, the picture is more free to display a snapshot of time in a unusual way. I think this passage alone helped me understand the freeing nature and purpose behind the once-confusing Chance aspect of our project.

The second part of Shore’s chapter 2 text that stood out to me was his description of black and white color in film on page 24. I took two advanced film photography courses in high school and could completely relate to his paragraph discussing the amount of control one has within film production. I was amazed when I first was a part of the class because I had assumed all darkroom photographs would turn out the same way, regardless of how you produced them. I was shocked to learn I could dodge and burn certain parts of film to create different lighting effects, how leaving a print in a certain chemical could create a washed effect and how adjusting the amount of time spent within the room alone could alter the print’s success or failure. This, to me, was an element of control. I still believe there is less control in editing and producing film in a darkroom than there is in digital photography with computer software, but regardless, an element of predetermined ideals were still present. Yet again, this section of the chapter made me realize why it is important to play with the notion of ‘chance’ every once in awhile, to help better understand the effect your control plays on the success of your image.

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Chapter 1- “The Nature of Photographs”

After reading the Shore text, I asked myself which sentence stood out to me the most in the four paragraphs I read. My mind instantly jumped to the line on page 10, “[...] an illusion of a window onto the world.” I’ve taken many pictures, viewed many images, contemplated many photos, but I have never once considered them tiny ‘windows’ into life. Anyone who wanders into my room will find a print that prominently sits on my nightstand, and with one swift glance through a 5″ x 8″ ‘window’ will get a small glimpse into a significant part of my life- my family. I no longer look at each photograph in my room as memorabilia, but rather windows into specifically times in my life- senior prom, country concerts, ministry retreats, birthday parties, etc. 

This line left me with more questions the longer I thought about it. Are all photos actually windows? A window is, by definition, an opening fitted with transparent material in a frame to admit light and allow people to see out. So what about edited pictures? Those aren’t true windows into what the scene actually looked like at the time, but rather modified versions. What about photoshopped images? Are these truly ‘windows’ if objects are removed and blemishes faded? When I look outside my bedroom window, I can’t photoshop in the presence of a sun or a person- so does this make edited photography true windows into the world?

I also felt Shore placed this line very strategically in his text to help mirror Robert Frank’s “View From a Hotel Window- Butte, Montana.” Not only did Frank’s picture make me think about how something can be viewed as a photograph differently from within the frame of a window, but also how all pictures I began to take for class were framed. I was constantly choosing to frame photographs to omit certain objects I felt would take away from the nature and focus of the image at hand. Therefore, can I even call my pictures true windows? 

Assignment #1 2.1.16