If you look through the galleries here at Fstoppers, the images trending on social media or the images on the pages of magazines, they often depict beauty. Beauty is easy to like and understandably popular. But there’s something much more elusive that’s great.
When I was young, I remember a girlfriend of mine disparaging that actors in TV shows were all beautiful. She was right. The characters have symmetrical features, well-proportioned bodies, and they have triumphant smiles that reveal perfectly straight teeth. I was a clumsy teenager and was never good at giving quick compliments. Therefore, there was a long pause before I told her that she could become an actress. She turned around and said I had a good face for radio and then added that there was no voice for it. She was right, of course. But it was the end of my dreams of being a movie star or radio DJ, and it heralded the end of that teenage romance.
Things don’t change much on TV or in movies. Those industries are still dominated by beautiful women and handsome men. Of course, they also have talent. Modern audiences are more discerning than the studios have for them, and wooden performances can still cause production to fail.
The same applies to photography. Our audience often looks for beauty in our photographs. No matter what genre you shoot, your photos will attract a lot of people if they have a beautiful element. However, just like a handsome guy’s shoddy acting can ruin an entire movie, just being pretty in a photo isn’t enough. A photograph must be done well, because a poorly designed photo, no matter how beautiful the subject, is not going to be appealing.
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
Beauty is something that is difficult to describe. Although it is said that it is in the eye of the beholder, most people appreciate beautiful things equally. Who doesn’t love a glorious sunrise, a perfectly formed rose or moonlight reflected in the sea, Brad Pitt or Halle Berry?
It’s no surprise that an appreciation of beauty can be skewed by fear and learned prejudices. I know a man who is very afraid of butterflies and birds – rather crippled, for he is a gardener – and the most ignorant will not see beauty but be obsessed with the color of people’s skin. But those exceptions aside, the understanding of beauty is universal. Therefore, beautiful photos are easy to like.
Soft focus and slow death of natural beauty
I joke with my wife that our eyes age with age is an evolutionary adaptation. As we age, we look at each other through a lens of soft focus that helps mask the wrinkles and imperfections brought about by time and the exciting and adventurous lives we’ve lived so far.
Soft focus is an old technique that photographers and filmmakers use to enhance beauty. Take a look at older movies from Hollywood’s Golden Age to the late 1990s and you’ll see the filter applied to, especially, female actors. Watch the following trailer of the movie Casablanca and notice the gradual softening as Ingrid Bergman is in the frame.
Over time, models were machine-edited and then “Photoshoped” to give them supposedly perfect skin. Now, Instagram applies automatic filters that are supposed to make people more beautiful. It is now widely recognized that idealizing what one’s skin should look like in order to be beautiful is deeply damaging.
Cultural norms, driven today by commercialization, try to dictate what is beautiful. Western ideals have led those standards globally. However, when I lived in Africa, the beverage posters featured people who looked much healthier than the stick figures you see in their advertisements in the West. It is a false belief that is being sold. In fact, the result of consuming these chemically-laden acidic drinks only leads to obesity, heart disease, and tooth decay.
Thanks to digital manipulation, what is considered beautiful by society has become inaccessible. The most desirable male features and female body shapes can often only be achieved through supposedly computerized enhancements. Photographs of people turn out to be harmful lies, destroying the self-esteem of people whose bodies don’t conform to an impossible set of rules. Thankfully, this imitation of beauty is being exposed as erroneous and the idea that it’s okay to not fit in is becoming more widely accepted. However, it is a brave portrait or photographer who will give their subjects, warts and all.
What ever happened to beautiful things?
There was a time in history when man-made products were made to be beautiful. Ming Dynasty vases, sailboats, furniture, watches, printers, book covers, steamboats, and even cameras are all beautiful things. I have long believed that creative people should surround themselves with beautiful things. The industrial revolution has brought great leaps in technology, but designs have always been aesthetically pleasing.
However, with the digital age, most cameras have become bland, utilitarian pieces of plastic. Let’s face it, mass-produced cameras from the biggest brands – Nikon, Sony and Canon – look boring and unappealing. There are always exceptions, especially from smaller brands, such as Fujifilm and OM, who manage to produce good looking devices. Fortunately, last year Nikon introduced a better camera with the Z fc. Those big camera makers should learn from the books of the smaller brands and create technology that looks great on function.
After all, other functional innovative products that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars look amazing. The Montblanc fountain pen, the Apple MacBook, the Da Vinci brush set, and the Aga Range induction hob all look beautiful and therefore inspiring. But most cameras from the biggest brands are shapeless, featureless blobs.
That may seem controversial, as beauty seems to fly in the face of the utilitarian design ideals of the Bauhaus that proposes form to follow function. But, if inspiration through beauty is seen as a function as it can be, then beauty also becomes an important element of design.
Life outside of beauty is great
On the other hand, by no means the only thing we are attracted to beauty. Sometimes, we photograph things that are amazing and not necessarily pretty. In the aesthetic branch of philosophy, this is sublime. Greatness is the quality of greatness beyond all measure. It is not limited to artistic, physical, and aesthetic greatness, but can also refer to moral, intellectual, and metaphysical greatness.
If you have ever walked in a mountainous setting, heard a lion’s path in the vast savannas of Africa, or listened and was moved by the speech of a great orator, what that was great. The essayist, poet, and playwright Joseph Addison summed it up when he said of the Alps that they “fill the mind with a kind of pleasant horror.”
Philosopher Edmund Burke argues that sublimation and beauty are mutually exclusive.
Emmanual Kant says that the sublime cannot be contained in an object. The rough seas, the storms, and the night sky are not sublime in themselves. However, the apprehension we experience when observing such things is what makes them so wonderful. Kant considers this as predecessor knowledge: something of universal value but independent of previous experience.
So if you’re standing in front of an awe-inspiring landscape, or in a thunderstorm, or looking up at the stars, or looking at a rough sea, or seeing a bird diving into the sea for fish, if you stand in front of an orchestra playing a Beethoven symphony, or being moved by an experienced actor reading a Shakespearean sonnet, the reaction you feel to an incomprehensible power over which you have no control be great.
Just as in the face of beauty, encountering the sublime brings about physical reactions: pupils dilate, heart beats fast, hair stands on end, and shivers run down the spine.
The works of Ansel Adams can be considered sublime because one can be overwhelmed by the astonishing landscapes of Yosemite. His careful composition and precise exposure were designed to showcase the power of the American landscape.
Horrible images of war, oppression and destitution; portraits of people who appeal to both good and evil; photo of the R101 plane exploding; images of the atomic bomb explosion on Bikini Atoll; small figures overwhelmed by the surroundings; and deep space images showing countless galaxies, each consisting of billions of stars, are examples of pictures that could be considered sublime.
Creating amazing images to capture in one photo is a lot harder than it looks. Moreover, it is still getting harder than ever because of the huge number of photos taken every year and some of the photos that took us by surprise are now commonplace. Overexposure to the subject reduces the impact and we become numb to what surprises us.
Moreover, sublimation is something we lose when displaying photos on the phone screen. How can we marvel at a painting that is two square inches in size?
The difference between beauty and sublime can be quite elusive. This is just the most brief introduction to the concept, and there are plenty of online resources to read about on the subject.
Do you pursue beauty or sublime in your photography? Is that something you haven’t considered before? It would be great to hear your thoughts in the comments on this topic.
