Technique and Good Technique: An Affair of the Heart

To use a musical analogy, technique is what allows you to play all the right notes, and good technique is what allows you to play music. It is the same in photography—technique is the pursuit of competence, while good technique is the pursuit of expression. Technique is not about technique—technique is about having enough command over your materials so they are capable of expressing what you are capable of feeling.

The artists’ hard won knowledge of, and command of the materials of art has been passed down from hand to hand, down the great chain of artistic being from the caves of Lascaux and the Dordogne, to the jury-rigged darkrooms of today because every artist knows in their heart of hearts the debt they owe to those who preceded them. Whether concerning technique, or concerning good technique, no artist springs from the forehead of Zeus. All of us are made, none of us are born.

In photography, the distinction between technique and good technique is particularly vivid (with technical approaches in the age of digital, Photoshop, and Lightroom being overwhelmingly dominant) all the more so in that the technical overhang of photography is larger than in some of the other arts—much larger than some. Photography was born in technical inventions, optical inventions, physical inventions, chemical inventions—all of which required a certain degree of understanding on the part of the artist to use them, unlike say, the understanding required to play the flute. Technically minded people frequently end up in photography, frequently relishing the problem solving aspect of picture making—picture making that can be visualized as an equation with multiple independent variables.

The archetype of the scientist/problem-solver/inventor/artist/technician is of course Ansel Adams, who gets a bum rap from his critics for being a technician, when in fact he was nothing of the sort. In making his artwork he invariably used his prodigious command of the materials to achieve expressive power—not for their own sake. In the vocabulary of this essay he was a good, even great, technician whose aesthetic path was illuminated by the power of his materials to express his feelings. The way it should be.

Which brings us to the central irony of this volume—which is that competent picture making has never been easier while technical command of the materials of photography has never been harder—or more obscure, or more opaque, or more recondite. We have reached the point in photographic technology where competence requires essentially nothing whatever on the part of the user while mastery of the same is essentially unattainable. What’s more, the technological scene changes so rapidly that technical obsolescence is a serious barrier to passing on knowledge from one generation to the next.

The consequence of increased technical sophistication built into cameras with no corresponding increase in technical sophistication amongst photographers means that the teaching of photographic technique is evolving into a bifurcated polarity where at the simple end of things teachers essentially teach the students what all the buttons on the camera do, while on the complex end of things (including this volume) those who would teach have the burden of convincing students that the challenging mastery of materials is actually important and worthwhile, not to mention comprehensible.

On every page, Bradley faces this challenge of relevancy, and every time he lowers his head and powers his way forward. As cameras evolve technologically, the development of students with really good technique—technique that underwrites their expressive power—will become rarer yet, as if it wasn’t rare enough now. We all have seen cases, many cases, where Zeno’s aphorism that the perfect is the enemy of the good is played out. In the case of the technological development in photography, however, it’s the merely competent that is the enemy of the good, and it’s a fairly robust mere competency.

Despite all this, Bradley has stuck resolutely to his purpose, which is to provide earnest pilgrims with the concepts of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom sufficiently deconstructed that they can be applied appropriately. At the very least this creates a form of knowing technique, which may not be any more competent than what the camera can provide nearly on its own, but which functions as a robust foundation for truly good technique if and when the photographer finds the powerful tools of Lightroom aligned with what they are trying to say. Good artwork always has the alignment of technical means with expressive purpose, and that alignment is what Bradley is after.

So what you can ask from Bradley is the analysis and the understanding necessary to achieve that alignment when its time comes. In a world of increasingly competent but literally mindless results (the camera does the thinking), Bradley’s informed technique means that—if you are willing to work at it—you can know what you are doing and why you’re doing it. That may not seem like a lot to ask but it’s a substantial step towards mastery, and mastery was and is rare, and appears to be getting rarer.

Learning to apply Bradley’s advice may be particularly useful during those all-too-frequent periods when the muse is not speaking to you. You may be able to capitalize on Bradley’s expertise very effectively by investing in yourself—technically speaking—during a fallow period, and accumulating the rewards of this increased skill when the muse returns. Hence the Proverb: sow in tears, reap in joy, and bring your sheathes with you.

But however you set out to master your materials, in the end, because technique is the power to express, it is too important to leave to the technical. If you are to do the work of your heart, then your heart—not your head—must master your technique. This volume can be part of your growth towards that kind of mastery—if you embrace it.

David Bayles