The Power of Photography: Understanding the Intent Behind a Shot

Certainly, the camera has a big role to play in this image, but what was done to realize the intention of the photographer? For instance, if McCurry intended for there to be blues in here, he might have shot her outdoors and you would have seen the sky and somehow, but this worked because it's a very limited palette. It also makes it very difficult and a lot of people have asked how to get that look so you can do a preset or something. However, I'm not really sure if that would work for you because first of all, we don't have enough color information to create a preset that's going to work universally in here.

What are we gonna do about blues? What are we gonna do about oranges? What are we gonna do about yellows? So those things are hard to realize with a limited color palette. And then I think also it's not so much is that we're going to create the next African girl if we follow this formula, there's already been one - some consider it to be the Mona Lisa of photography. It's a really special iconic image and did Steve McCurry intend it to be iconic? I don't know that image, I've never met Steve and I can't speak for him. I'm guessing it may have taken a couple minutes to make it may have taken a couple hours to make that image.

I would actually argue that it was also the 20 years of experience that led him up to that point and I don't know that he was saying okay, I want this woman specifically with this outfit with a costume crew and we're gonna put her against the green walls to bring out the set. It wasn't like that. I think it's more of a subconscious thing - here's what I have to work with making that arrangement work.

When it comes to realizing the color tones in front of the lens, this is something that people skip over all the time. There are tons of tutorials on how to use software and that's great, but nobody talks about what we're doing in front of the lens. In case you can't tell, if everything I'm doing is not supporting this, that's the most important part of this image - it's that limited color palette.

Another couple examples if you watch the video that I did last week, I used four of my favorite photographers from roughly the same era of the 1950s and 1960s and how they all shot on Kodachrome but all had different looks in the end. Well, some of that is the post work that's being done, but some of that also is what they're putting in front of the lens - what are they photographing? What do they like to see? What is their intention as a photographer?

This can be frustrating too for instance if you're really into Saul Leiter and those really interesting images he did of New York back in the 50s and 60s, and the color palettes that are involved. To go shoot those today is actually really difficult. This is kind of problem with vintage photography - there's a nostalgia element that is is very alluring to people. I love it and when you try to go recreate that it doesn't work because New York City doesn't look much like it did in the 1950s if you go to New York today.

And that's the important thing to learn from people when you're studying the great photographers - how did they arrive at their conclusion? What influences me and then how can I just use my own personality and bring that into what it is that I like, what are my tastes, what is it that I want to accomplish. Those are the things that start to define your intent as a photographer.

It's a long learning process but that's how it works. We'd love to know what you guys think we will have another video on this next week, I'm gonna put a whole playlist below so we'll keep all these together and so if you want to kind of go watch them in order, but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say on this.

The Importance of Understanding the Intent Behind a Shot

Understanding the intent behind a photograph is crucial in appreciating its value and significance. It's not just about pointing the camera at something and pressing the shutter button; there's a thought process and creative intention that goes into each shot.

When analyzing an image, it's essential to consider what the photographer intended to convey or capture. Was it a specific mood, atmosphere, or message? Did they use certain techniques or elements to achieve their desired outcome? By understanding the intent behind the photograph, we can gain a deeper appreciation for its artistry and craftsmanship.

In some cases, photographers may have intentionally limited their color palette to create a specific aesthetic or mood. This deliberate choice of colors can add depth and complexity to an image, making it more engaging and thought-provoking. However, this approach also presents challenges, as it requires the photographer to carefully consider every aspect of the composition and ensure that the chosen colors work together harmoniously.

The Power of Photography: Understanding the Intent Behind a Shot

Steve McCurry's iconic photograph, often referred to as the Mona Lisa of photography, is a prime example of how understanding the intent behind a shot can reveal its true significance. By analyzing the image, we can see that it was not just a random snapshot but a carefully crafted composition that tells a story.

The 20-year experience and skill of Steve McCurry played a significant role in creating this iconic image. His years of practice and experimentation allowed him to develop a unique style and technique that resulted in a photograph that transcends borders and cultures. The fact that he intentionally shot the image with a specific outfit, green background, and carefully considered every aspect of the composition demonstrates his commitment to artistic expression.

The Impact of Nostalgia on Photography

Nostalgia can play a significant role in photography, particularly when it comes to capturing images from the past. Vintage photographers often sought to recreate the look and feel of their era, using techniques and equipment that were available at the time. However, this approach can be challenging, as modern eyes may find it difficult to appreciate the aesthetic of older photographs.

Saul Leiter's photographs of New York City in the 1950s and 60s are a prime example of how nostalgia can influence photography. His use of color palette, composition, and lighting techniques created an atmosphere that was quintessentially New York at the time. However, when these images are re-created today, they may not have the same impact as they did in their original form.

Conclusion

Understanding the intent behind a photograph is essential for appreciating its value and significance. By analyzing the composition, colors, and techniques used, we can gain a deeper understanding of what the photographer intended to convey or capture. The power of photography lies in its ability to tell stories, evoke emotions, and create connections between people.

Whether it's Steve McCurry's iconic image or Saul Leiter's vintage photographs, each shot is a reflection of the photographer's creative vision and intent. By studying these images and understanding their context, we can appreciate the artistry and craftsmanship that goes into creating them.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso a couple days ago I did a video on photographing with intention and what is the intent of a photographer and how do you take that image from the stage where you make the photograph all the way through the post-processing to your final output whether that's going to be paper-based or whether that's going to be screen based and how do you understand and fulfill your vision as a photographer and what is that intent and how does that work through that whole process and this is going to be a whole series I'll probably do these once a week and I really want to get into a lot of the middle ground where we have some amazing tools these days that allow us to do some pretty amazing things with photographs whether we're using Lightroom or capture one they're set up so we kind of have this convenience of being able to select presets in there but really what I want to do is I want to dig into these and we're gonna talk about how to use these tools and what is available to you to realize and fulfill your intention as a photographer and while we're gonna get into a lot of that stuff and it's going to get somewhat technical I think it's best to start with what happens in front of the camera lens because this is probably I think the most important part to understanding what that intention is and how you're going to realize it and since we're gonna be talking a lot about color in these I'm gonna start with a color image today and I want to look at Steve McCurry's African girl now this is a very famous image it was shot in 1984 then appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 and not only is it a famous image I would argue that it is become iconic I've seen this reproduced in murals and in other mediums and it was something that really spoke to a lot of people and it was the right photographer the right image the right time to understand some of this she had to understand the context of this image this was done in the mid 80s and you have to understand what Afghanistan was like then with Soviet occupation and this woman is a refugee and this intensity in her eyes everything in the composition with color with line with shape all leads into that and I think that this became an icon of what a refugee was during that era and it literally took off it became an icon I did a interview with Graciela you tobita a few years ago we had a discussion about that she had one of her images that kind of took off on its own and became iconic as well her famous image of the woman with iguanas on her head and that's kind of beyond the scope of this to talk about that it is an iconic image but several people had asked me about this in the comments and on social media after I talked about this photographing with intention and how to achieve this look and this is where I want to kind of put the brakes on for a second and yes there is a definite iconic famous look to this image and if you look on the internet you've seen people tear this apart down to all the equipment that was being used Steve McCurry used an FM to nikon with the 105 millimeter 2.5 portrait lens it was shot on Kodachrome 64 and if you replicate that setup which is not hard to do are you gonna shoot a bunch of images that become iconic like the African girl probably not so a lot of it we need to understand what's happening in front of the lens and then there was also a stage in that I have never seen the original slide to African girl we see the final print to this and Steve McCurry used a retouching studio that was in Georgia at the time and so some work was done on this but there's a little documentation on specifically what but all we can do is look at this image and kind of analyze what's going on here the main thing I want to look at and I think it's one of the things that creates an enormous amount of interest in this image is the color palette now let's put this aside for just a second let's talk about palette what is a palette well a palette literally is the flat surface that has rounded edges that a painter uses to put paints on as he or she is working on a painting that palette usually defines what's going on in the painting and it's a limited color set and typically colorists who have done this really well use a palette that works together and creates interest so we think of palette is what colors are used in the final composition and we'll look at a couple painters first because I think this is really interesting to see what somebody does basically completely from scratch with a painting which is a little bit different than photography the first image that I want to look at is from 1663 this is a Vermeer painting and it is gorgeous and you can see that it has a very limited color palette there are three main colors that you see in this image there's blue you see yellow and you see red on the tablecloth blue and yellow really create the predominant interest in the image and the red obviously kind of anchors all that together but what's really interesting about Vermeer and a lot of the Dutch masters at that time was their renditions of light in the composition and I think this is one of the reasons this appeals to photographers sure but if you look at how light caters through this image when you look over on the left-hand side of the image to where light is coming in through the window and then again through a stained glass window and specifically the woman's arm as it's kind of held up to this light and all of the highlights and shadows are pretty much rendered in that yellowish tone and it's a very warm sense but it also creates all of the interest with minimal color which is real interesting another interesting use here is when you see the blue it's obviously the most vibrant and her dress but if you look at the lines in her blouse it's somewhat more muted and held back and it's almost as if Vermeer is creating a sense of maybe black or a dark brown or something without actually using it and so it's a very controlled use of color in this composition a lot of the texture in the wall in the back you can see is actually using blue to create the texture against this warm yellow and it really works because all three of these colors have purpose in the image they're there for a reason and they work together and that creates an enormous amount of interest another painting that we can look at is coincidentally from the same year this is Rembrandt from nineteen Recife 1663 definitely not 1963 but anyway this has even fewer colors going on and it's got kind of these reds and yellows and the Reds fade down to the lower tones in the image and the darker shades and you see that they almost drift into this Brown but it's still kind of this predominant red that flows through there and then all the highlights with this beautiful light that's coming down are done with this yellow warm color and so again you have two colors so it's a limited palette and the interest comes in using shades of those colors now what's different about photography and painting well the most obvious difference is that the painter is creating everything from the artists vision and so there's an enormous amount of hand skills that are involved with this understanding of color and shading some of these things do apply to photography even though photography you're limited to what's happening before the lens you don't actually draw anything or render it that way but let's go back to Afghan girl for just a second I want to look at the colors that are happening here basically you have green red which are complementary colors then you have skin tones and everything works together to bring out the intensity in those eyes this is a great composition but those minimal colors are a big part of this what's also interesting is how they kind of sort of relate to them in some of the you know non important details but like if you look at the cloak that she's wearing it's got holes in it and under she's got a green garment and it matches up with what we see in the color on the wall behind her some of this was probably done in retouching to match those colors up a little bit or maybe bring out some of the intensity of some of them but I think people get really curious about this image from a photography standpoint to particularly today because these don't look like colors the way they're rendered out of a digital camera they're warmer they have that analogue look they have a a film type feel to them and a lot of people realize this is a definitive Kodachrome image even though I think that's really hard to define and Kodachrome certainly has a big role in here but what was done to realize the intention of the photographer for instance there are no blues if mccurry intended for there to be blues in here he might have shot her outdoors and you would have seen the sky and there somehow but this worked because it's a very limited palette it also makes it very difficult and a lot of people have asked could kind of show you how to get that look so you can do a preset or something well I'm not really sure if that would work for you because first of all we don't have enough color information to create a preset that's going to work universally in here what are we gonna do about blues what are we gonna do about oranges what are we going to do about yellows so those things are hard to realize with a limited color palette and then I think also it's not so much is that we're going to create the next African girl if we follow this formula there's already been one it's some considered that to be the Mona Lisa of photography it's a really special iconic image and did Steve McCurry intend it to be iconic I don't know that image I've never met Steve and I can't speak for him I'm guessing it may have taken a couple minutes to make it may have taken a couple hours to make that image I don't know but you I would actually argue that it was also the 20 years of experience that led him up to that point and I don't know that he was saying okay I want this woman specifically with this outfit with a costume crew and we're gonna put her against the green walls to bring out the set it wasn't like that I think it's more of a subconscious thing of here's what I have to work with making that arrangement work and like I said it's the right photographer the right girl the right time the right magazine the right place everything came together and boom there you now I do want to talk about how to realize if that those are the color tones that you're working with and how do we get the red to kind of go that hue and what is that analog look and what does that do and we're gonna get into that when we get into the software portion of that but I do want to talk about that first because what happens in front of the lens this is something that people skip over all the time there are tons of tutorials on how to use software and that's great but nobody talks about what we're doing in front of the lens and in case you can't tell if everything I'm doing is not supporting this that's the most important part of this image is that limited color palette you know another couple examples if you watch the video that I did last week I used four of my favorite photographers from roughly the same era of the 1950s 1960s and how they all shot on Kodachrome but all had different looks in the end well some of that is the post work that's being done but some of that also is what they're putting in front of the lens what is it they're photographing what do they like to see what is their intention as a photographer and that's important you know this can be frustrating too for instance if you're really into Saul Leiter and those really interesting images he did of New York back in the 50s and 60s and the color palettes that are involved to go shoot those today is actually really difficult and this is kind of problem with vintage photography is there's a nostalgia element that is is very alluring to people I love it and when you try to go recreate that it doesn't work because New York City doesn't look much like it did in the 1950s if you go to New York today and I love New York City it's a fun place to photograph but there's advertisements everywhere the color palette is really tough to get limited if you're shooting the city because there's all these commercial things that are trying to get your attention so it's a different approach that you have to take now and that's the important thing to learn from people when you're studying the great photographers is how did they arrive at their conclusion what influences me and then how can I just use my own personality and bring that into what it is that I like what my tastes what is it that I want to accomplish and those are the things that start to define your intent is a photographer it's a long learning process but that's how it works we'd love to know what you guys think we will have another video on this next week I'm gonna put a whole playlist below so we'll keep all these together and so if you want to kind of go watch them in order but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say on this and until the next video I'll see you guys then laterso a couple days ago I did a video on photographing with intention and what is the intent of a photographer and how do you take that image from the stage where you make the photograph all the way through the post-processing to your final output whether that's going to be paper-based or whether that's going to be screen based and how do you understand and fulfill your vision as a photographer and what is that intent and how does that work through that whole process and this is going to be a whole series I'll probably do these once a week and I really want to get into a lot of the middle ground where we have some amazing tools these days that allow us to do some pretty amazing things with photographs whether we're using Lightroom or capture one they're set up so we kind of have this convenience of being able to select presets in there but really what I want to do is I want to dig into these and we're gonna talk about how to use these tools and what is available to you to realize and fulfill your intention as a photographer and while we're gonna get into a lot of that stuff and it's going to get somewhat technical I think it's best to start with what happens in front of the camera lens because this is probably I think the most important part to understanding what that intention is and how you're going to realize it and since we're gonna be talking a lot about color in these I'm gonna start with a color image today and I want to look at Steve McCurry's African girl now this is a very famous image it was shot in 1984 then appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985 and not only is it a famous image I would argue that it is become iconic I've seen this reproduced in murals and in other mediums and it was something that really spoke to a lot of people and it was the right photographer the right image the right time to understand some of this she had to understand the context of this image this was done in the mid 80s and you have to understand what Afghanistan was like then with Soviet occupation and this woman is a refugee and this intensity in her eyes everything in the composition with color with line with shape all leads into that and I think that this became an icon of what a refugee was during that era and it literally took off it became an icon I did a interview with Graciela you tobita a few years ago we had a discussion about that she had one of her images that kind of took off on its own and became iconic as well her famous image of the woman with iguanas on her head and that's kind of beyond the scope of this to talk about that it is an iconic image but several people had asked me about this in the comments and on social media after I talked about this photographing with intention and how to achieve this look and this is where I want to kind of put the brakes on for a second and yes there is a definite iconic famous look to this image and if you look on the internet you've seen people tear this apart down to all the equipment that was being used Steve McCurry used an FM to nikon with the 105 millimeter 2.5 portrait lens it was shot on Kodachrome 64 and if you replicate that setup which is not hard to do are you gonna shoot a bunch of images that become iconic like the African girl probably not so a lot of it we need to understand what's happening in front of the lens and then there was also a stage in that I have never seen the original slide to African girl we see the final print to this and Steve McCurry used a retouching studio that was in Georgia at the time and so some work was done on this but there's a little documentation on specifically what but all we can do is look at this image and kind of analyze what's going on here the main thing I want to look at and I think it's one of the things that creates an enormous amount of interest in this image is the color palette now let's put this aside for just a second let's talk about palette what is a palette well a palette literally is the flat surface that has rounded edges that a painter uses to put paints on as he or she is working on a painting that palette usually defines what's going on in the painting and it's a limited color set and typically colorists who have done this really well use a palette that works together and creates interest so we think of palette is what colors are used in the final composition and we'll look at a couple painters first because I think this is really interesting to see what somebody does basically completely from scratch with a painting which is a little bit different than photography the first image that I want to look at is from 1663 this is a Vermeer painting and it is gorgeous and you can see that it has a very limited color palette there are three main colors that you see in this image there's blue you see yellow and you see red on the tablecloth blue and yellow really create the predominant interest in the image and the red obviously kind of anchors all that together but what's really interesting about Vermeer and a lot of the Dutch masters at that time was their renditions of light in the composition and I think this is one of the reasons this appeals to photographers sure but if you look at how light caters through this image when you look over on the left-hand side of the image to where light is coming in through the window and then again through a stained glass window and specifically the woman's arm as it's kind of held up to this light and all of the highlights and shadows are pretty much rendered in that yellowish tone and it's a very warm sense but it also creates all of the interest with minimal color which is real interesting another interesting use here is when you see the blue it's obviously the most vibrant and her dress but if you look at the lines in her blouse it's somewhat more muted and held back and it's almost as if Vermeer is creating a sense of maybe black or a dark brown or something without actually using it and so it's a very controlled use of color in this composition a lot of the texture in the wall in the back you can see is actually using blue to create the texture against this warm yellow and it really works because all three of these colors have purpose in the image they're there for a reason and they work together and that creates an enormous amount of interest another painting that we can look at is coincidentally from the same year this is Rembrandt from nineteen Recife 1663 definitely not 1963 but anyway this has even fewer colors going on and it's got kind of these reds and yellows and the Reds fade down to the lower tones in the image and the darker shades and you see that they almost drift into this Brown but it's still kind of this predominant red that flows through there and then all the highlights with this beautiful light that's coming down are done with this yellow warm color and so again you have two colors so it's a limited palette and the interest comes in using shades of those colors now what's different about photography and painting well the most obvious difference is that the painter is creating everything from the artists vision and so there's an enormous amount of hand skills that are involved with this understanding of color and shading some of these things do apply to photography even though photography you're limited to what's happening before the lens you don't actually draw anything or render it that way but let's go back to Afghan girl for just a second I want to look at the colors that are happening here basically you have green red which are complementary colors then you have skin tones and everything works together to bring out the intensity in those eyes this is a great composition but those minimal colors are a big part of this what's also interesting is how they kind of sort of relate to them in some of the you know non important details but like if you look at the cloak that she's wearing it's got holes in it and under she's got a green garment and it matches up with what we see in the color on the wall behind her some of this was probably done in retouching to match those colors up a little bit or maybe bring out some of the intensity of some of them but I think people get really curious about this image from a photography standpoint to particularly today because these don't look like colors the way they're rendered out of a digital camera they're warmer they have that analogue look they have a a film type feel to them and a lot of people realize this is a definitive Kodachrome image even though I think that's really hard to define and Kodachrome certainly has a big role in here but what was done to realize the intention of the photographer for instance there are no blues if mccurry intended for there to be blues in here he might have shot her outdoors and you would have seen the sky and there somehow but this worked because it's a very limited palette it also makes it very difficult and a lot of people have asked could kind of show you how to get that look so you can do a preset or something well I'm not really sure if that would work for you because first of all we don't have enough color information to create a preset that's going to work universally in here what are we gonna do about blues what are we gonna do about oranges what are we going to do about yellows so those things are hard to realize with a limited color palette and then I think also it's not so much is that we're going to create the next African girl if we follow this formula there's already been one it's some considered that to be the Mona Lisa of photography it's a really special iconic image and did Steve McCurry intend it to be iconic I don't know that image I've never met Steve and I can't speak for him I'm guessing it may have taken a couple minutes to make it may have taken a couple hours to make that image I don't know but you I would actually argue that it was also the 20 years of experience that led him up to that point and I don't know that he was saying okay I want this woman specifically with this outfit with a costume crew and we're gonna put her against the green walls to bring out the set it wasn't like that I think it's more of a subconscious thing of here's what I have to work with making that arrangement work and like I said it's the right photographer the right girl the right time the right magazine the right place everything came together and boom there you now I do want to talk about how to realize if that those are the color tones that you're working with and how do we get the red to kind of go that hue and what is that analog look and what does that do and we're gonna get into that when we get into the software portion of that but I do want to talk about that first because what happens in front of the lens this is something that people skip over all the time there are tons of tutorials on how to use software and that's great but nobody talks about what we're doing in front of the lens and in case you can't tell if everything I'm doing is not supporting this that's the most important part of this image is that limited color palette you know another couple examples if you watch the video that I did last week I used four of my favorite photographers from roughly the same era of the 1950s 1960s and how they all shot on Kodachrome but all had different looks in the end well some of that is the post work that's being done but some of that also is what they're putting in front of the lens what is it they're photographing what do they like to see what is their intention as a photographer and that's important you know this can be frustrating too for instance if you're really into Saul Leiter and those really interesting images he did of New York back in the 50s and 60s and the color palettes that are involved to go shoot those today is actually really difficult and this is kind of problem with vintage photography is there's a nostalgia element that is is very alluring to people I love it and when you try to go recreate that it doesn't work because New York City doesn't look much like it did in the 1950s if you go to New York today and I love New York City it's a fun place to photograph but there's advertisements everywhere the color palette is really tough to get limited if you're shooting the city because there's all these commercial things that are trying to get your attention so it's a different approach that you have to take now and that's the important thing to learn from people when you're studying the great photographers is how did they arrive at their conclusion what influences me and then how can I just use my own personality and bring that into what it is that I like what my tastes what is it that I want to accomplish and those are the things that start to define your intent is a photographer it's a long learning process but that's how it works we'd love to know what you guys think we will have another video on this next week I'm gonna put a whole playlist below so we'll keep all these together and so if you want to kind of go watch them in order but I'd love to hear what you guys have to say on this and until the next video I'll see you guys then later\n"