‘The old masters’. Something Told
The old masters were painters who worked in europe before the 1800. More specifically, it refers to the ones who were working at the top of their game and many of their pieces will still be displayed in galleries around the world to this very day.
There are many things that we can learn from ‘the old masters’ that we can and do use today in the world of photography.
1. HDR (Higher Dynamic Range)
Higher Dynamic Range which in reality translates to very little pure black shadows and very little pure white highlights in your shot. In effect, you use tools like multiple exposures or multiple lights to ensure that every part of your image is evenly lit. Done poorly and your image will look flat and visually very confusing. Leonardo Di Vinci was a master at interpreting light and he would often use his ‘artistic license’ to convey the impossible in his outdoor portraits.Painters were masters at somehow never over-exposing their backgrounds and of course that’s because they didn’t have to worry about one single exposure, they could use whatever brightness they wanted in their backgrounds.We as photographers need to bear the same things in mind, because detail in the background of an outdoor portrait is nearly always preferable to blown out highlights.
2. Using colour to seperate foreground and background
In the shot below, you’ll see that using a very shallow depth of field to throw the background out of focus so as to force the viewers attention onto the subject.
Unfortunately, the Old Masters didn’t have this ability. In fact, it’s very rare to see a painting where every aspect of it isn’t in sharp focus, it’s really only when cameras came along that this became a more creative visual element in imagery. So because painters had everything in focus in their images, they had to use different ways of guiding the viewer where they wanted them to look and they did this with colour.
In the below image we see Orazio Gentileschi using very bold and bright colours on his subjects yet behind them we see nothing but drab, grey rocks and dirt. It might seem obvious, but this is a very powerful way of creating a clear separation from foreground to background and guiding your viewers gaze.
Composites is merely a modern word but the act of bringing multiple elements together to form a unique piece has been around almost as long as art itself. One of the core reasons for bringing multiple elements together in paintings was often due to larger paintings that had many, many subjects involved. Artists rarely got 10 important people to stand around and pose at the same time so they were often painted separately until the entire painting was complete, effectively creating an impossible shot. But multiple subjects wasn’t the only reason for composite painting like this. A great example of composites from the Old Masters was in still life painting. The painting of still life subjects upon a table was incredibly popular, but it wasn’t until Jan van Huysum came along in the early 1700’s and began creating impossible paintings that their popularity skyrocketed. Jan Van Huysum was nothing short of a genius with his brush and at his peak, he literally could not paint fast enough to keep up with the demand for his exquisite work.
4. Composition and Leading lines
This one should come as no surprise, but composition and lending lines have been a big part of the art world for a while now. But although you see this as obvious, strong composition is so often overlooked in modern photography in favour of simply recording what’s in front of you. As photographers, we need to be thinking about telling a visual story and to do that many great artists will use composition and leading lines to take our eyes on that visual journey around a frame.
This painting of ‘The Night Watch’ by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1642 is likely one of the most studied paintings of all time, as art students across the globe discuss its art tropes and it could easily fill an entire article all by itself. But if we just briefly look at composition and leading lines alone, you’ll see how Rembrandt clearly uses shape, form and objects to create leading lines that all lead us to the centre subjects. This is one of those elements in artwork that may seem obvious once they’re shown to you, but to the unknowing viewers eye, this is an incredibly powerful visual tool.
