Images we make express how we portray what we see or what we visualize - in some sense it is "our truth". I would think deep inside such creations embedded are our own personality, our value system and our behavioural signatures. This expression may not happen during initial years of photography since we are busy imitating our favorite nature photographer in getting that clean nice backgrounds. But as we progress in learning to see things in our own way our own individual traits starts emerging and can be seen in some corner of our images - may be a pattern emerges from set of our images. Given ten images each of a boy and a girl, both nature photographers, it may be possible to correctly guess whether they can get along together in life ! In hand writing analysis (graphology) people use such characteristics like direction of writing, space between letters, cursive or not, size of the letters etc to guess personality of people. Though not proved scientifically they have statistical backing for success of such methods. I would think image analysis can be as accurate if not more.
Other day this thought occured to me and I spent some time looking at some of my favourite images to analyze them to understand how my compositions relate to my value system and personality - I could clearly see some of my known strengths and weaknesses as a human being subtly portrayed in some of my creations. Let me not talk about how I did that! - which is not the purpose of sharing this whole thought.
That said, I am not at all interested in viewing/analyzing images from that angle - my purpose in photography is to visualize and create to satisfy my emotional hunger and not behavioural analysis. But such relations appear very interesting.
Ganesh H Shankar
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You are welcome to my home - Nature Lyrics
14 comments:
Interestingly ganesh have wondered about the same and this seems to have multiple dimensions. At the first level the choice of photography wildlife, potraits, fashion or journalism seems to give a hint of the persons inclination and at the second level factors like mood, colors, emotion, play of light,composition and uniqueness seems to kick in. Both these levels seems to be intersecting in many interesting ways. So I guess after some reasonable maturity in photography is reached an eclectic mix of above factors is what defines a person's signature.
I totally second Mahesh's thoughts - one usually gets inclined towards a particular filed and in that a particular subject and as days goes by he/she starts to use more of a signature style in the form of a unique colour or composition etc.
What i have observed in your images is that you have already come to a postion where in u put an image without your signature - people can recognise that it is yours.
Very interesting - thought provoking and encouraging writeup Ganesh.
Thanks for penning down your thoughts.
You are talking about "Personality" and Shiva and Mahesh about "Signature". Talking on the same plane, it takes time for the person to get his/her signature. But then, personality, is something already existant and the photographer/artist "seeks" and "searches" for the signature. Considering R&L brain scenarios of your earlier articles, shiv's and mahesh's thoughts, pixellation of emotions takes a long time, so what overrides the "art of seeing" ? Too much of technicalities? Lack of emotions?
Coming to shiv's thoughts, yes, I completely agrre about your signature, no second word about that!
Folks! we seem to have two topics running here - signature or individuality which was topic of my earlier articles (Journey as a Nature Photographer and Art of seeing) and other topic which I wanted to discuss in this blog is personality which can be guessed by looking at a pattern of images of an individual - When I said personality I meant, given say 10 images of nature made by an individual can we derive some information about that person ? Just like what we can do with hand writing analysis ? If a person for example loves such compositions like for example subject very small in the frame or subject taking entire frame, big prominent signatures in the frame, small signatures, no signatures..? What do that tell about the photographer as a human being ? Do they say anything at all ?
My feeling is we as nature photographers display our character as individuals and our value system through our images.
Bang on - got the point sir :)
Yes there was infact a slight confusion between signature and personality from my end.
"My feeling is we as nature photographers display our character as individuals and our value system through our images."
This indeed is the key thing here.
:)), Now back to your main point Ganesh, "Personality which can be guessed by looking at a pattern of images", it takes time for the person to get what he is really seeing. Does that mean that his personality is not reflected in his images?
Shiv - yes, that is what I meant.
Pramod, I would think so ! when we try to imitate I don't think it reflects our personality too - natural right ? Unless our imitations itself are poor -:)
Right, but what about an amateur? Do you consider the images of an amateur as junk? And so does his personality? :))
Pramod, I think I have not made myself clear. I am *not* talking about the images or its quality at all. I am suggesting using it to analyze the personality just like what is done in hand writing analysis - there we don't bother about what is written - people look for slanting angle, size of font, nature of font etc to understand someone whom we don't know. In US some companies use this method to to recruit people. For more about graphology you can read here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology
The point I was trying to make was set of images talk about us as human beings. I am not at all talking about quality of images here or signature of the person in the image. But when images are imitated it is not possible to predict the personality in a similar way I changing my hand writing to resemble some one else's. If we do that then handwriting analysis will fail.
That is what I meant when I said if images are imitations then it is not possible to analyze.
Not sure whether I made my point clear now -:)
That said, everyone is amateur in this world - learning never stops. The definition of a professional as far as I am concerned is those who make living from it - *not* those who learnt everything about it !
:)) Yes now its clear Ganesh. I Now, understand the context you are coming from. So irrespective of the way the image is composed, you mean to say, the placement of the subject, lines et al will define the personality :)
"The definition of a professional as far as I am concerned is those who make living from it - *not* those who learnt everything about it !"
True!! I completely agree :)
Thanks for responding to my questions!
love being here, ganesh! just my 2c here:
haven't we heard that any given moment every photograph drags along, wherever it goes, two people with it? -- the photographer and the viewer.. the intent and its interpretation!
and personally, i would tilt it in the favour of the former - that it is more about the expression than a possible/chosen/appropriate meaning.
but throw a "value system" in, and we are no more discussing just "picture and personality".
Prabhu, I would think poems talk about poet as a person, novels talk author as person, so does images. In my view it includes photographer's value system. Did I understood your comment differently ? -:)
Where are you now a days ? Not seen your posts in forums..
ah! do my words convey even remotely that the creator is not part of the creation?
my argument is if we can include "value systems" when talking about "picture" and "personality".
the value system of a creator is definitely something which has an influence on the creator doing his creation - the way he has evolved/matured.
when i look at a nest photograph i do say the photographer does not carry a healthy value system. but when i see a display which carry none, i don't question the photographer's value system nor can i come to a conclusion about one.
many of us say the image should speak for itself and it should not be judged on the hardships one went through making it. like the hardships, a value system is also a sum total of impacts, experiences, and responses from and in a creator's environment.
A photographer's personality could be shaped by his value system. And an image definitely carries with it the personality of the photographer.
But to talk of a value system in the context of an image can be only by the photographer himself and therefore no more than an egoistic statement about the creative process - just like putting his/her name as a signature.
..that is what i think, ganesh!
Prabhu,
"my argument is if we can include "value systems" when talking about "picture" and "personality"."
Not sure whether you meant "whether we can include" in those lines.
But the lines, "A photographer's personality could be shaped by his value system. And an image definitely carries with it the personality of the photographer."
made me think we are on same page. Nevertheless, Not sure what you meant by -
"But to talk of a value system in the context of an image can be only by the photographer himself and therefore no more than an egoistic statement about the creative process - just like putting his/her name as a signature."
Sure it *sounds* interesting -:) Would be keen to know what you meant !
This is an interesting discussion..
Thanks for your views..
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