Young woman and her grandmother. For Women's East Pavilion, Chattanooga.
Two comments I often hear when people look at my photographs are "That's really clean" or "This picture is so clear!"
The "clean" comment is most often spoken by art directors, graphic designers, or other photographers. And no, they are not saying "clean" in contrast to dirty pictures! What they mean is that the photo contains everything it needs to convey its message and has no extraneous or distracting elements.
A photograph that is sharp and properly exposed is often said to be "clear," especially when viewed by non-photographers and others who are not used to seeing high-quality prints. The advent of digital cameras that can achieve sharp focus and make well-exposed files automatically has made clarity much more common
Cleanliness and clarity are qualities that we all, as photographers, should strive for in our work. Clarity, as I said, is not as difficult as it used to be, but our autofocus cameras will not give us sharpness unless we're careful to place our focus where we want it. Our exposures will not be good unless we are aware of large areas of light or dark in our pictures and know how to compensate for them. Modern digital cameras are nearly magical, but they need some help for best results. That means that we photographers need to know what effects we want in our photos, and how to achieve them.
To make photos that qualify as clean, we must remember that we are responsible for every square millimeter of our viewing screens. If what we see through our viewfinders isn't exactly as we want it, it's our responsibility to move--closer or farther away, to one side or the other, up or down, or zoom, or any combination of the above, to make sure we have exactly what we want in our viewfinders. No more, and no less.
In other words, if we want to make good photos, we must think about what we are doing.
The above photograph was made in my studio with a Mamiya RB67 medium format camera with a 127mm Mamiya-Sekor lens and Fujichrome film.
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Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
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