Focus, signal and noise

There is no straight line between problem and solution. So it is with creativity.

Problems create goals. Problems beg for a resolution and we seek solutions. Enter creativity, focus, signal, and noise. 

There is no straight line between problem and solution. So it is with creativity. 

Reading photographer Ralph Gibson’s newish book where he reflects on his own creative process I found this idea important:

“Photography is like electricity: we know how to use it, but we don't really know what it is.” 

“One makes a photograph, and it leads to the next photograph which subsequently leads to the next, and it seems you have to make all three of them rather than go directly to the last one.“

Where do we begin? How do you choose which word to start a sentence with? Where do you point the camera first? What problem do you choose to begin solving? We aren’t going to solve all the problems today now are we? One way or another, a choice will be made.

In a sense, we are all conduits of something like electricity, life, love, breathe, spirit, something that we are living, but we don’t know exactly what it is. 

The Apostle Paul in the New Testament wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12:

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face..”

Dimly, darkly we see reflections of ourselves and the challenges we face. Confronting them with creativity, we search for the signal amidst the noise of life.

In a contemporary world of glittering images, information is now pervasively perversely available. A competition of attention rules our days. Life is a struggle of attention. Everyone wants ours and too often we want everyone else’s. We compete for attention, begging, conniving, pleading.

Filtering noise, hearing the signal, and focusing on the relevant is a difficult task and the critical one.

How does one identify signal from noise? How does one focus on the signal and manage the noise? Where does one find the signal? 

Humans see through pattern. What we recognize today is grounded in the recognitions of yesterday. The recognizable guides our perception.

We ingest patterns of language, behavior and visual patterns of beauty too. Through these patterns we interpret the world, making sense of the world, searching for the signal that resonates, that is recognizable. 

Ralph Gibson through his book, Refractions 2, lays out the patterns of his inspirations and influences, tracing for himself and the reader, his creative process. Sculpture, the nude, architecture, landscape, still life, Henri Cartier-Bresson, literature, The Leica, Music, Light/Source, Mythology, Theatre…his own mix of resonant references that form a frame in which to work and play. 

His comments on music I found really beautiful: 

“Melody is to music what reality is to photography.”

“How abstract can a melody be and still adhere to the parameters of listenable music? How abstract can a photograph become before it is no longer recognizable?”

The limiting factor in the creative solution is a connection to patterns that are known, heard, seen.

The problem of recognizing signal is that our minds are filled with the chatter of our own insecurities and delusions, noise. There is someone somewhere always preaching that we are not enough, ourselves primarily, that we deserve more and the solution lies on the other side of purchases. 

Advertisers well know the human weaknesses and use those to drive buying interest. Commerce we call that.

Distractions are everywhere. Misdirection is the primary human foible. 

Managing the noise, finding the signal, and organizing a creative solution, this is our task.

While we were young, the patterns were given to us, without our consent or understanding. Parenting is important.

As adults, we are able to better choose for ourselves the patterns of our lives. Perhaps not totally capable of patterning, or repatterning our own selves, but we are able to choose, or so I believe. 

In our pursuit of the patterns to ingest and digest, we hold the key to resolving the challenges we encounter with creativity and hope. Ancient ideas hold such power over our lives because the collected wisdom of humans throughout millennia provide us patterns that we can lean on.

The ancient patterns of knowing and living are a filter for the noise around us. 

With photography, the ever-present challenge is one of noise. One such example of this is camera sensor noise. 

When a camera sensor is directed to capture a low light scene, a low signal scene, the sensor heats up, working hard, and casting a random noise pattern into the image. These bits of random pixel noise clutter an image, obscuring fine detail, obscuring the image.

As I started getting serious with photography an early subject was the night sky. This subject situation requires the management of noise. 

The best way to manage noise with night sky photography to capture enough signal with multiple captures of the same image, over and over in a single session. Back home, the images can be organized with software, brought together and stacked, and when stacked, software can determine the random bits of noise from the consistent bits of starlight and the noise can be eliminated, mostly. 

The same process works in creative life, in life and in photography. 

Capture enough signal, and the noise can be managed, and not fully eliminated. 

Recently on a beach I was out looking for an interaction of elements to photograph. It was a bland enough day. Not much surf, not much sunset, not much atmosphere…not much at all. But there was an ocean, waves, beach, rock, quite enough to hold promise.

As small waves washed ashore, a rock stood in the way and the wave turned into a final splash before collapsing into the sand. 

To capture the splash a high shutter speed is needed to freeze the action. It’s a challenge to get the proper focus, framing and shutter speed. A very high shutter speed is needed and you have to push the sensor to its limits. 

I knew that the settings needed to capture the image I had in mind of the splash would make for a very very noisy image. But the potential image was beautiful enough to command my attention. No stacking here with this dynamic subject would be possible. 

The image must be beautiful enough to deal with the noise. In a properly crafted image noise can be its own creatively placed element, and sometimes it is background noise, present, but not overwhelmingly so.

One result of my efforts reminded me all over again why I love photography. There is a special delight in pushing through objections of my own mind and the dullness of a day to find a photo that is beautiful, and balanced even if it is noisy.

A frozen splash of wave, noisy, but not too noisy.

This process of creation is its own pattern of problem solving that will serve me today and into tomorrow.