Fine Art Photography | Nature | Creative & Artistic

Not sure how many of you have seen a very interesting recent ad by Canon – “Art and Artist”. If I remember it right it showed an image of a dancer performing with “Art” written near it and beside it was an image of a Canon 1D Mk3 with “Artist” written near it !! I had a nice laugh thinking about an extension of such an image shown below. How could Canon forget about the poor porter (also known as photographer ) who carries this artist on a tripod everywhere ? ! I think without their knowledge (hopefully!) Canon ridiculed every photographer with that ad

On a philosophic note can a camera ever become an artist ? Modern day digital cameras have powerful computing infrastructure within their hood. Considering computers can play and out smart humans in games like chess can’t they out smart we photographers some day and Canon’s vision really coming true ?

Here are some of my formal looking informal thoughts on possibility of camera really becoming an artist.

According to Church-Turing Thesis if there is an algorithm or a program then there is a Turing Machine that can be constructed to run that algorithm. In other words today’s Random Access Stored Program computers are bound by Turing Machine in its computing capability. So as described in the above Wiki link today’s computers can be abstractly described as a 7-tuple – . What is interesting note here is the the transition function is a finite table which essentially is heart of the program or the algorithm. Summary being capability of computers are clearly understood today in terms of capability of the Turing Machine – a mathematical model for today’s computers.

If we can describe computers using this model, is it possible to arrive at such a model to describe a human computing machine – the brain ? Is there such a 7-tuple or n-tuple that can be formulated to describe human brains ?

Today how human brain works is a big mystery. For now let us assume science in a few light years from now will find one such n-tuple representation to express human mind and its computing power. Let us also assume such an n-tuple has a transition function similar to δ shown above. One quick observation that can be made is such a transition function δ will not be static since we humans have a remarkable inherent ability to learn on the fly.

Why humans, I think even small insects’ brain is more powerful than today’s computers in terms of its learning abilities. One day I noticed a mosquito repeatedly hitting a mirror – probably seeing its own reflection in the mirror. It was interesting to know however that after hitting the mirror a few times it quickly learnt the other one is not real and went away. Assuming we had implemented a mosquito using a program and it was programmed to get attracted towards another mosquito we would have seen a bug report seeking implementation of mirror detection logic be included in the firmware of the mosquito because our electronic mosquito did not learn about the mirror at all and went into an infinite loop

The point is there is no way to code all those lessons and experiences of life into programs we write. Having studied computer science I think writing program to create art is beyond my imagination. God has designed a beautiful computing model where transition function δ (if one exists) gets changed on the fly or in other words there is a true learning on the fly. Expression of emotions and feelings are part of this beautiful yet unknown computing model.

How then computers can play chess ? If they can can’t they compose an image ?

Games like chess is a solving a search problem. It is possible to arrive at an algorithm to compare different positions and best move to make. A machine with enough computing power can outsmart human beings even though it indeed takes lots of CPU power to match the mysterious analysis a human mind makes. Problem of composition on the other hand is related to emotions felt in human minds – working of which still remains a mystery. Below is an image I made yesterday. It is an image of the cloud pattern in the sky rotated 90 degrees clockwise. I felt presenting it that way makes it visually stronger abstract image. Here we are dealing with emotions and mystery of learning which is not at all understood by science so far.

Limited imitation of art using computers may be possible but then it is only an imitation not a true creation. I think prerequisite for a camera becoming an artist is we understanding how our own brain works. Hope that happens some day – but my gut feel is it is impossible since there is a complex recursion here – mind trying to understand the mind itself.

Till then following will remain true –

I am sorry Canon

I often hear views that a nature photograph should faithfully portray what is seen by human eyes. I would agree to this if purpose of nature photography is only documentation. First of all the medium of capture (sensor/slide/negative) has inherent limitation compared to human eyes and it is theoretically impossible to portray what we see. For example there is no way I could have made an image of the above butterfly which truly appears like what I saw – either we over expose butterfly or under expose background. Obviously I decided to do latter. Isn’t this a nature photograph ? Is this a manipulation ? Should I selectively open up only background by about 2+ stops to show traces of some branches if any? Isn’t it a selective manipulation then – since people think a modification applied to an image as a whole is only considered OK ? Are we waiting for some supreme authorities to tell us what is accepted and what is not ? We have come all the way from digital is unacceptable to cropping is ok to modifications applied to whole image is ok but not to part of the images to crops, curves a little bit of dodging/burning is ok to … What is that next rule that we are waiting for ? I am not talking about placing a tiger’s head on elephant’s using an image processing software but some of us seem to create boundaries for ourselves in terms of what is accepted. Recently I was talking to a very senior wild life photographer and was telling him I am tired of seeing stereotypic images of xyz bird with feed kind of images and we need to think of something more original and creative. He asked me – “God has created everything, what is there for us to create?” – needless to say I strongly disagreed with him. We are not talking about physically creating something here – but some new perspectives that our inner vision sees and we giving it an expression in the form of an image.

I think following strict rules on what should nature photography be is killing our own creativity. I do think human mind wants to see perspectives which are beyond faithful representation of physical world.

I visited Ranganathittu Bird Sanctuary yesterday morning. Light was just perfect and sky was painted with beautiful cloud patterns. Lots of White Ibises flying in all directions. Seeing them I decided to make some images with different patterns of clouds as background. Wide angle lens (24mm) gave interesting perspectives of them in flight – rendered small in the frame with interesting cloud patterns providing a feel of these Ibises flying in their own universe. I used a circular polarizer to increase the impact of white clouds.

I have a few more images in my avian gallery. Larger images with black background seem to provide much better visual impact for these images. You may see them here in my avian gallery.

Recently I came across works of a 15 years old school kid named Nirvair Singh. Some of his work really made me think. Here are a few of his images –

Fields of Punjab

Compliments

Sunny Pearls

Shadow

Against the Sun

Can this Survive in this World

Just Before I Leave

These images and the way he titled those images made me think he has God’s gift to beautifully see the nature and more importantly translate them to images. I got in touch with him to know some more details – it appears he just got access to his father’s camera and he is learning and experimenting with it!! I am sure if he continues one day he will become a great fine art nature photographer – I sincerely wish him great success.

This triggered a thought in my mind – are several of us are born with such a skill to freely and beautifully express our visions and some where we got derailed while trying to learn nature photography ?

My little friend Nirvair has been seeing bird portraits on various internet forums for some time now. He told me he took lots of time using a blind and an 80-200mm lens to approach a cattle egret from a very close distance and made this image. This really concerned me a bit – I am not worried about the quality of the image here but I am really concerned about the photographic lesson he has quickly learnt from the net – approach as close as possible to get a frame filling image !

Questions that are currently running in my mind are –

Did our visions distort during our learning journey of nature photography ? Did we learn those attributes which went beyond techniques of using a camera and started imitating others, throwing our own God given natural visions ? Or we are not as gifted as my little friend Nirvair is ?

I hope it is the last one otherwise it really hurts