The Speed of Photography
There are several topics I would like to cover over the next few weeks pertaining explicitly to the practice of photography. These won’t be theory (as disconnected from practice) or any sort of accounting for the effects or quality of the photographs themselves, merely case studies in which I will try to use the photographs as illustrations of the general concept under investigation. Included in this post are a few previews of what’s to come image-wise. I’ve tried to choose diversely. Each image was taken in a different mode of transit, and each mode of transit has a bearing on what sort of image can be made.
The topic at hand is the speed at which one moves when making a photograph. Or, more precisely, the speed one is moving right before they take the photo.
I love landscape photography- the practice of moving through the world, stumbling upon what you will, creating photographs in the uncontrolled environment of “out there”. More could be written in chasing down a more fine-toothed definition, but for the next series of posts we’ll simply define landscape photography as “photography out in the world”- let that definition be as loose as you like in your own head.
One of the key features of the world is that it’s massive. Huge. The world is a very, very big place and there are many sorts of things in the world. One of the key features of human beings is that we are comparatively very small.
Our total peripheral vision is approximately 120°, and we are really only able to focus on a cone of vision in front of us (optimistically) at about 30°. The curvature of Earth finally precludes any vision from the ground at 3 miles, but due to haze and obstructions we rarely see that far. All this is to say is that to physically look at something we are surveying at best 2.25 square miles of the Earth at a time. Even expanding to our broader peripheral vision yields only about 4 square miles that falls on our eyes at a time. This is, at any given time, .0000002% of the world’s land visible to us at a time. At best.
All this is to give you a sense of the scale and problem we must address as small human creatures, thinking of art purely as a physics problem. How do we see what we want to photograph? We have to move around and decide what to look at. But what is movement except for changing your location in space over a given amount of time?
When moving, we are still looking. We are preoccupied primarily with the task of making sure we don’t run our car off the road, crash our bike, fall in a ditch, twist our ankle, etc. However, a photographer generally has the mental bandwidth to consider and perceive (in an artistic sense) the broader landscape around them as they move.
The issue at hand is that just as our cone of vision is limited, so is our ability to consider that vision. Due to this limitation, based on the speed at which we move through the landscape, we will consider whatever is in our field of vision at a varying rate. Perhaps the bluntest way that this can be expressed is that the faster we move, the more ”interesting” something will have to be to pique our interest immediately.
If you’re more inclined to a simpler, more “logical” approach, you might be thinking that it would then be better to go quickly. Fast = more seen, more seen = more chance to see very interesting things, more chance to see interesting things + a higher “noise filter” against that which is uninteresting = more interesting photographs of interesting things.
This doesn’t totally hold, though.
Unfortunately for the one who wants to approach making photos in this manner, the world is very beautiful. This means that if you just stop and look closely at everything in your immediate vicinity, you may suddenly realize that there was more to photograph there than you ever imagined. This was the basic working thesis of the Pleasere Turncart Shere project. Provided you have light to see, there will always be something more to photograph, to perceive, and to visually appreciate whenever and wherever you stop. This is, of course, to speak nothing of the other sensory enjoyments available to us in this richly beautiful world.
So, we are left not with a gradation of quality, but a tradeoff between two equally good ends: go slowly and see more qualitatively, or go quickly and see more quantitatively. Taking the beauty of the world as a given, it can be argued (in fact, I am arguing it now) that neither of these is the worse option- one method of looking isn't "better"- we must merely take into account the effects that each mode of travel has on our perception as we consider our work photographing "out there".
Over the next several posts I will be taking a look at the following means of transport, speaking of my experiences and individual shoots.
The Walk
The Hike
The Run
The Bike
The Car
Landlubber that I am
The Airplane
Be Absolutely Still
The fate of the Moment
Beyond the mere fact of how much you are seeing at a certain rate of travel, I think it's important to take into account some of the more practical concerns in view of each method of transportation. Considerations like:
Do I have to catch my breath before photographing?
How heavy is my camera?
Am I bringing snacks, do I need to stop for food, or can I go back home?
Am I physically uncomfortable?
These concerns are not so far from the typical concerns that we have as bodies moving through the world. I once bought greeting card that said 'I have found that 90% of my enjoyment of any situation depends on whether or not I have the option to sit down'. Similarly, I have personally found that testing chairs in stores is one of the most peculiar experiences we can have in a department store- we bring ourselves to a moment of repose and call to our attention the sensations of our body in a way which, at least for me, has left me feeling somewhat exposed or nude in a public space.
The above is just to say, we cannot separate the act of perception (even the act of perception unto making a photograph) from our broader perception, vulnerability, spacial characteristics, etc. We are made of stuff, and we look at stuff. Moving the stuff of your body around to look at other stuff is fraught with logistical and creaturely concerns. While we certainly can never exhaustively account for these, it still seems to me to be a fitting use of time to try to account for some of them when considering what it means to photograph "out there."
I do hope you'll enjoy the series! Let me know any initial thoughts you might have in the comments below. And, if you're not already subscribed to my newsletter, please do so to avoid missing any posts in the future.
