The photographs of contact sheet #42 reflect the impact of Professor Hugh Lifson on my photography.  

I took introductory drawing from Prof. Lifson my second semester freshman year at Cornell College.  I learned a lot from him as did many others.  He was an excellent teacher providing both guidance and a model of behavior.  From him I learned such things as “Great art is accident.  Work with the accidents.”  Or, “When your drawing is hanging in the Louvre, no one is going to know that you moved the tree to make a better composition.”  

This idea recently struck me when a friend posted photographs of her visit to Monet’s garden including that of a tree found in one of Monet’s paintings.  Now, some gardener in France is trying to grow a tree to resemble one found in a painting in the Louvre (or the National Gallery).

Much of what Prof. Lifson taught was inapplicable to photography.  Then I could not move a tree in a photograph to make the composition better, as Photoshop can today.  But Prof. Lifson did cultivate my understanding of what made good composition.  There were commonalities between good drawing and good photography as there were commonalities between bad drawing and bad photography.  There appeared to be rules of composition covering both media.  The so-called Golden Ratio appears in both drawing and photography and other two-dimensional art.  And of course the best artists break the rules in the best way.

I was able to persuade Prof. Lifson to give me a half-time independent study class.  Once a week I would bring in my photographs.  He would look at them and tell me what he thought.  He knew little about the photographic process, what it took to get the photos the way that they were, and didn’t care.  That was actually helpful to me because few people in my audience, visience, knew or cared either.  Did the photo work and why or why not?  It was up to me to think through how to get to what works.  

I alluded to the big difference between drawing and photography earlier.  In the drawing you can move the tree to accommodate your intended artistic structure.  It took a while for me to realize that one of the critical ways I was learning was to relate the process of taking and creating the photograph with the photographic product.  Process equals product.

What is the process of photography?  You see something that you think is worth the time and money to photograph.  Back in the day, even a worthless negative cost about 50¢ per frame to purchase the film and develop.  The internet says that inflation would bring that to $2 today.  To print that photo would cost another $2.  Imagine if every photo you took with your phone cost $4.  You decide you want a photograph, so the next part of the process is to put you and the camera to where the light entering the lens onto the film creates the image that you want.  You can’t move the tree in the photograph, you need to move the photographer and camera.  There was an old saying that the essence of photojournalism was 125th of a second at f 5.6 and be there.  The numbers refer to the shutter speed and the lens opening, both choices that the camera can make for you now but couldn’t when I learned.  

There was the process of that choice - which shutter speed, which lens diaphragm opening, which film, which lens and so forth.  Learning photography was learning how to relate those choices to the result.

What you see in these photographs is my learning how to create artistic composition of images with the photographic process.  The Golden Ratio wasn’t big news in the 1970s.  The quick lesson to beginners was, “Don’t split your frame in half, either top/bottom or left/right.”  Those 50/50 compositions are seldom interesting.  The closest metaphor is whether the picture is “in tune” or not.  A pleasing composition is similar to a pleasing chord.  Sometimes that chord is at the Golden Ratio and sometimes it is not.

The other major difference between drawing and photography is timing.  In drawing you can take your time, draw a bit, and return later.  The photograph is created when the shutter is open or, now, when the light sensor is operable.  Some photographs are of static objects.  Still lifes.  Most photographs are of dynamic objects.  Timing is everything.  I enjoyed sports photography because it honed my timing.  Today’s photographers can shoot a video and choose the best frame as their still.  

As I’ve written elsewhere, in the old single-lens reflex film cameras, the viewfinder went blank when you shot the photo.  The view from the viewfinder was via a mirror that let you see through the same lens that was taking the photos (single-lens).  When you tripped the shutter, the mirror would flop up out of the way to allow the light to go through the lens and onto the film.  I never saw the photos I shot because the viewfinder went black.  How was I taking photos at the right moment of things I didn’t see?  And it really doesn’t matter whether you are using a contemporary digital camera because by the time you see the right moment it is gone.

While I was deliberately working on my timing with action photography, when these photographs were taken I wasn’t yet thinking about timing.  Photos from this era and before seldom have the ‘moment’ of my later photography.

One of the other major lessons I learned from Prof. Lifson was inherent to drawing.  He called his approach “haptic.”  He believed that drawing was an extension of touching, and that to draw the line was to touch that line.  He confided that he’d suggest that his students touch the models but that that was not going to happen.  This to me also taught me the lesson that the drawn line was a suggestion and not a definition.  The good line evoked, rather than contained the visual idea.  This has its metaphor in photography.  A beginner photographer will try to get pictures “of” something.  This is a picture of an apple.  This is a difficult concept to explain, but you get to be better at drawing and photography when you look to see and draw out, rather than try to describe.  My archery and marksmanship improved dramatically when I started to shoot as though the arrow or bullet was being drawn to the target rather than when I tried to point the arrow or barrel at the target.  I tried to feel the pull at its strongest before the release.  Just like photography.

And then there are hip shots of Jeff Busby passing in the gym, or random photos of weird objects.

This essay references photos that can be found in the “Photos by Number” section in the gallery 00042.  The answer to the question of life.