Throughout this guide you’ll see a number of references to the concept of emotion and its rendering. Why is this such a big deal? Because photography can be an expressive communication medium and because the crafting of emotion in your images makes a much more effective, more communicative image than one that is merely ambivalent. If we think back to the images that have moved us, it is their emotive qualities that got our attention. The work of Ansel Adams has at its core the ability to grab our attention through its emotive qualities.
How do these memorable images emote us? Mostly through their impeccable transition of tone. The rendering of three dimensional reflectances on a two dimensional target (paper, for instance) requires transition of tone, what separators call “shape”. Without transition of tone, reflectances lack shape and depth; they lack emotion. View one of Ansel Adams’ examples of “near-far” (Mount Williamson is a good one) and you’ll see two dimensional images that seem to jump off the paper. Using expressive transition of tone and the forced perspective of wide angle optics, Ansel succeeds handsomely at emoting us all. Key to our imaging process is the effective rendering of three dimensional reflectances on two dimensional targets.
Why should you care about emotive communication? What if you’re shooting drug store products on seamless paper that repro outlined in the newspaper? Do you think your paper target is so poor that you don’t need to bother yourself with this emotional stuff? You do. Actually, the poorer the paper the more you need control of your craft to make it look good. Consider that a printing press has 100 potential tones it can reproduce from highlight to shadow. That’s because inks can be applied in percentages of 0 through 100. In reality the press’ ability to visually separate 100 separate tones does not exist. Truthfully, you’d probably be hard pressed to visually count 60 separate tones on the best press in the world. On newsprint you might have as little as 20. That means you’d better be able to make the most of the tones you do have available. That’s where making sure you have enough transition of tone for your print target is critical. If you don’t get it right your images might be ignored, making your efforts a waste of time.
Be aware of emotion. Cultivate its communication. Produce it at your whim. It’s what the viewers of your images judge you by, it’s what you get paid for; it’s a shooter’s stock in trade. Ambivalent viewers are what we must avoid; crafting emotion into our images will keep them involved. Practice will help in the crafting of emotion, so shoot a bunch.