Photography is simultaneously an investigation of reality and a means to investigate reality. That’s according to an essay I’ve just started reading about abstraction in photography. It takes me several readings to be able to even start to unpack essay-length academic writing, so I won’t reference the original essay just yet. The gist of the argument, though, is that photography is not necessarily about looking at or looking through, but looking with. One way to think about this is that each time you go out with a camera, you are essentially doing an experiment, with the camera functioning as an instrument of investigation. Poking at reality with the camera. I was thinking about this concept while watching a YouTube video about how to photograph the Orion constellation and nebula using only a digital camera and a tripod (no other equipment). In total, several hundred frames (what the author called ‘the data’) were recorded and used to generate the final result. Of course, there is also the whole issue of assigning colors in a ‘realistic’ or at least reasonable manner, which amounted to ‘season to taste’. My approach to photographing this tree growing near my home was much more intuitive, but the images are getting better over time as I continue to return to the scene. Presently, I’m happy abstracting to a monochrome vision, but that could certainly change.
