The Photographers Eye

Rich was talking to our oldest son’s art teacher at Hogwarts last week about the dreaded scholarship and the ongoing photography v. art saga. During this conversation he let slip that he was a photographer.

“Ah," she nodded sagely, “You have the Eye. My father was a photographer. I have the Eye too you know”

Our twelve year old son was rather boggled by this. He had visualisations of a giant Photographer’s Eye floating around in space, watching everything. He even did a quick sketch.



O.K. It doesn’t scan so well.

So my son later asked his father, “So what exactly is The Photographer’s Eye?”

Rich explained that it is basically the ability to see good composition and form.

Mystery solved, right?

Now I’ve been reading about this, and it seems to my uneducated mind that there’s a lot more to it than this.

In my opinion, the Photographer’s Eye is an ability to visualise not just the photograph, but a way of looking at the world around you. It’s natural instinct, and it’s innate to photographic creatives.

Artists and photographers seem to have a unique way of thinking and imagining. They are different from us ordinary mortals. They see everything in terms of light and texture, and as a result, their art is a way of exploring the way how the nature of light changes the visual world. Positive and negative space, colour, black and white and scales of grey - they are ways of looking at reality and illusion through the medium of light.

This way of seeing the world is different and apart from the average person. It’s almost magical in nature. Because of this, I don’t actually think this quality can be learned. It’s either in your nature, or it‘s not, pure and simple.

Ever since I’ve known Rich, he has talked about life, physics, art, philosophy, religion, you name it, in terms of light and darkness. It is a metaphor he uses constantly to explain the way he perceives life. After so many years, I’m now completely used to this way of speaking. Light is a different language really, and you don’t begin to understand it until you’ve lived with a photographer or an artist.

The art photographer exists because of light, and his reason for “being” is to explore it, to try to capture it in a single moment in time, in a single image. Can he transfer that magic to the viewer? Can he unravel that mystery and visually communicate the way he imagines the photographic subject? In a way, he is educating the blind to really “see” with his eyes.

Sometimes, when driving along, Rich will just stop by the side of the road. I’ll see him pause, go silent for a few moments, and then he’ll quietly point out the way the light falls on the trees, the shadows, the texture of the bark. But it’s no good, I just can’t understand what he’s getting at. I can’t feel what he feels as he looks at the tree. Words aren’t enough. I don’t see with his eyes. He has to make me understand what he feels through some other medium of communication.

There is a well known saying in art that “imagination is the eye of the soul.” If this is the case, then it is only when the photographer picks up the camera, can he really capture and compose what he is imagining. Only then can he communicate the way his soul sees the world through the language of light.



Pirate Maiden, from a few weeks ago.

Rich’s comment on reading this “Hey, you can’t post this! Everyone’s going to think I’m a really pretentious idiot. Can’t you just tell them I have no eyes and I’m just stumbling around in the dark?"