best effort’s

I was listening to Brooks Jenson again this morning and he was saying he wished he’d spent more time studying the aesthetics of photography and visual arts, and where photography fits into art history. He said he wished he had done that instead of the time spent on the zone system. He went on to discuss how overly complex the zone system is.

After one of my many forays into the zone system I asked Gordon Undy about how often he actually used it after he had set up his base iso and development. When his answer was about one in a hundred photographs, I did stop worrying about it.

I had fallen into the trap of thinking that the zone system was important because, well, Sir Ansel used it, Minor White used it, and everyone seems to say it’s important, therefore it must be.

How often do we do that? Think that technique and technology is more important than vision and seeing? Way too often I think. After all these years of studying techniques I ended up with an incredibly simple system that is based on seeing with very little work. Simplest is best is my conclusion.

Study aesthetics not technique. Study art and leave that fancy processing to those that enjoy it.

You do need a base line of skills. These days they aren’t as hard to get as many would have you believe. Making it all seem harder than it is justifies thier work and raises the importance of thier own work to themselves. We do this to elevate our work in our own minds and for our audience.

Study aesthetics. Now that is way harder than it sounds. Something very worth spending the time on. We do a lot of aesthetics in Len’s School. Particularly in the online classes I teach. Learning how visual language works is incredibly important. Analysing and verbalising what works and how is incredibly helpful.

Interestingly, we all see and notice different things in great artworks. So studying aesthetics in a group is incredibly beneficial. I learn so much from others. Particularly as they talk about why an artwork works for them and captures thier attention.

When I study a great artwork I am looking to see what interests me? Trying to figure out why I keep wanting to look at it. By doing so I am increasing my visual literacy. By listening to what others see, they are expanding my visual literacy. We learn so much through these conversations with artworks, ourselves and others.

These images are from the Matisse exhibition at the art gallery of nsw. If you love gorgeous figure painting I’d recommend going. It is a stunning exhibition. I will go again.

Paintings by Matisse. AGNSW. Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf. 2022