This article originally appeared in the April 2004 issue of the Panoram.
I like stereo photography and I like music. So it was only natural that I would ruminate over similarities and differences between the two. After much thought I concluded they are entirely different but nearly identical. Having been an electrical engineer, I am accustomed to dealing with paradoxes. We have no difficulty imagining light as particles in one context and as waves in another. Many other such dualities exist in physics and mathematics. So I thought, could photography and music be of inversions of each other? Sure enough, make the appropriate transformations and the two seem strikingly similar.
Time versus Space
Physicists like to think of reality as existing simultaneously in space and time. But it seems that instrumental music and stereo photography each concentrate on one of those halves of physical reality to the exclusion of the other. Music is virtually written in the medium of time. I am certain composers think in those terms, and they must know any visual imagery that may have inspired their compositions cannot be transmitted to the listener with any specificity. Non-temporal information would need to be transmitted by separate means, say, poetically through song lyrics, or by staging an opera. Stereo photographers, for their part, roam the world, continually framing it with a virtual stereo window. When they finally decide to commit some particular scene to film, they effectively capture a prism or wedge of space. If they wanted capture the flow of time as well, they would need to become cinematographers. So I thought it reasonable to say that instrumental music captures time in the absence of space, and that stereo photography is its complement, capturing space in the absence of time. Let me explain this in more detail.
Music presents the listener with a rigid time line. Either keep up with the notes as they are played or you might as well not be listening. But music tells you nothing about what to look at. You might look at the performers operating their instruments or at the spinning compact disc, but that can get boring. So you close your eyes and let the music transport you to some different place. What sort of place? Well, you are free to attach whatever visual imagery you wish to a given stretch of non-programmatic music. While your temporal experience is being rigidly dictated, your spatial faculties are given free rein.
Conversely, the stereo photographer explicitly delineates what space would be available to view in any given photograph. But there is practically no guidance on how to spend one’s time before a photograph. You might decide a quick glance at the picture is sufficient, or you might want to linger for an extended period of time. And what order your eyes will explore the space presented is entirely up to you. Meanwhile, nothing in that space moves in the slightest. Time has been brought to a standstill.
Applying Musical Concepts to Photography
It should come as no surprise that there is a scarcity of words to describe spatial composition. After all, stereo photography is a rather obscure pursuit and relatively new. However, music has been around for centuries and an extensive vocabulary has developed around it. So I found it most productive to start with musical concepts and see if they might resonate in some way with stereography.
The basic attribute of music is melody – a series of notes. So I thought, suppose each identifiable object in a stereo photograph behaves like a musical note. Then any natural constellation of objects could be considered a melody. The local density of objects in the picture then would define a tempo. Rows of regularly spaced objects could be said to have rhythm. Spatially related but irregularly spaced objects would feel like syncopation. A series of sharp well defined objects would be like staccato notes. A field of soft ill-defined objects like clouds would be like a legato musical passage. Now, a detailed stereo photograph viewed in a decent viewer occupies a significant slice of our total field of view. It is comparable to being in front of a large painting – it can be quite multifaceted. So if the photograph consists of several large marginally related sections, each section is like a movement in a long piece of music.
But what about musical harmony? For the benefit of non-musicians I must first point out that harmony is a technical term in music for a progression of chords or, in the context of a complete piece, a progression of musical keys. It has nothing to do with the ordinary connotation of the word harmony – that of pleasing balance. Musical chords and keys can, in fact, be quite disturbing. Their purpose it to evoke in the listener a kind of mood – a mood in which the melody is, in turn, embedded. Remembering the analogy between musical notes and objects in space, the most natural spatial analog to harmony that comes to mind is a plane in which a set of objects are embedded. The fundamental spatial plane is the ground plane, extending from your feet to the horizon. This is comparable to the musical key of C major, formed from the basic white keys on the piano. Then consider an overhead plane, say a ceiling or a forest canopy. Unlike the ground plane, which invites you to walk forth, an overhead plane has a vaguely oppressive quality, analogous perhaps to a minor key in music. Finally, there are various types of vertical planes: walls, fence lines and facades. When oblique to the viewer they can feel inviting; when spread across the viewing space they can feel like obstructions. Again, each type of plane carries a particular emotional weight and various types may be arrayed in combination to evoke more subtle emotions, much like key changes are used in the course of a musical composition. Of course, a plane need not be solid or unbroken. Unattached objects can define a plane as well, much like an arpeggio of individual musical notes can define a chord.
Other musical terms useful for stereography might be pitch for the height of an object above ground, timber for the color of an object, dynamics for brightness of illumination, and so on.
So What?
The reader who has gotten this far might understandably ask, “So what?” Well, I have found that analyzing a stereo photograph using musical analogs often reveals compositional flaws. It might be that the otherwise compelling objects in a scene are unattractively spaced. Often moving the camera position left or right or up or down a bit will shift them into a more satisfactory spatial array.
The primary goal for the stereo photographer, however, should be to discover arrays of objects which contain some intrinsic magic. Note that I said that they are to be discovered, not composed. In music, I suspect that all truly great melodies pre-exist to a large extent in the minds of people, and it is the task of the composer to find them. Once found, the composer must start composing in earnest and install the melodies in harmonic and orchestral settings that do them justice. It is the corresponding duty of the stereo photographer to ensure that those compelling spatial “melodies” are suitably embedded in the planar structure of the picture. This is in addition to ensuring that conventional factors, such as lighting, exposure and color balance, support the photograph’s stereoscopic basis.
Chinatown Playground
As an illustration I have chosen a particularly cluttered slide, “Chinatown Playground.” The slide may not respond well to reproduction, but all of the details I will describe are readily apparent in the medium format viewer it was intended for. If the reproduction were likened to a scratchy Edison cylinder recording, the original slide could be compared to a compact disc in terms of fidelity. Nothing, of course, can compare to the “live performance” that played out as I took the photograph.
As discussed before, it is up to you how to explore the composition. You are the conductor. But here, in musical terms, is the way at least I conceived the playground shot. I saw it as a piece in four movements: 1) the near foreground activity in the lower right quadrant, 2) the far foreground at the left anchored by the arched ladder, 3) the middleground established by the red piping and bridgework spanning the width of the slide, and 4) the urban backdrop. The first two movements are based on similar three note melodies, each person’s head representing a note: in the near foreground the mother, child and friend, and to the left the father and his two kids. These notes can be “played” by your eyes in circular fashion for as long as they hold your interest. The third movement is in the details of the bridgework and activity thereon. Here is where 3D is different from 2D. In 2D the entire middleground area would be a distraction from the personal interactions featured in the two foreground areas. But add the third dimension and the middleground can be isolated by the eyes and appreciated on its own terms. The eyes can be likewise engaged during the final movement – the background – which is rich in urban detail and contains some beautiful spatial interaction between the trees in the park and the distant buildings (too subtle, I’m afraid, to come through in reproduction).
I have not even mentioned harmony, rhythm, dynamics, but they and many other musical analogs may be found in the picture.
The Role of Clutter
What one person considers valuable collectibles, another might call clutter. So it is with the content of photographs. If the purpose of a photograph is to document a particular event or to evoke a simple emotion, anything extraneous to those purposes is a distraction. On the other hand, if the purpose of the photograph is to delineate space, then the more objects it contains, the more intricate the space it can embrace. Remember that the musical analog of objects was notes. But without notes there is no music. To a person who cannot read music a page of a symphonic score looks like a random field of dots, in short, like clutter. A musician, however, can bring this apparent clutter to life by converting these dots into meaningful progressions of sounds. Unfortunately, there is no analogous intermediary to guide the viewer’s eyes through a stereo photograph. A photograph is static. Each viewer, therefore, must assume the roles of score reader, performer, and, to some degree, composer. Fortunately, most of us have the innate ability to view stereo space. Unlike a conventional photograph, which can be read and evaluated quickly, a compelling stereo photograph contains spatial arrays and convolutions that demand to be explored with some care. It is the duty of the serious stereographer to present a multifaceted space can engage a viewer of the photograph. In turn, the viewer who responds positively will be rewarded with an extended adventure in space.