Frank Wilson’s Pasture
My friend Howard was a copywriter who wrote for television and leading advertising agencies for many years, often winning awards for his work.
One evening, over a drink, he told me about being on a set where they were shooting a commercial for agricultural products. The creative team planned to use actors from Atlanta to pitch the products, but they also had real farmers as extras. It seemed a sensible approach. Howard had developed the ad campaign and written the script, so the director wanted him on hand in case any changes were needed. Until then, he had little to do but watch as the team prepared for the shoot.
As he looked on, things didn’t appear to be going well. The actors seemed hopelessly fake, while the farm people seemed utterly authentic. Howard wondered if the smart thing would be to turn the whole presentation over to the farmers. Who knew better about the products or could pitch them convincingly?
And then the cameras began to roll…
The actors, as they chatted with the farmers before production began, had studied and internalized how the farmers presented themselves. They searched out the essentials and shaped what they found into something tangible and dramatic. The farmers lacked this ability. The camera became their enemy—its cold eye threatened them. Not knowing what defined them, they could not shape it or present it to the viewer.
That is why photographs so often disappoint the amateur. Someone takes a photo of a beautiful scene only to find it flattened, chaotic, and meaningless. This happens because cameras are unintelligent. They don’t discriminate. They see everything, and therefore they see nothing. When we humans look at the world around us, our brains home in on what interests us, and we exaggerate it. The remainder of what we see is de-emphasized.
Raw reality is not art.
This gift is revealed in the actor’s craft, the writer’s selectivity, or the photographer’s reshaping of reality—compression, interpretation, and elimination of the unnecessary lie at the heart of the creative process. By seizing the main lines of an image, a role, or a story, reality is transformed into a coherent statement. When done well, this triage reveals a personal truth—a truth formerly concealed in complexity.
To illustrate my point, I present a pen-and-ink drawing and a photo of the same scene.
