By now you may have noticed I am more interested in why we do what we do rather than in the technical aspects of how we do what we do. There are a lot of places you can go on the Internet that have explanations of software and technique, but far fewer discussions on the meanings behind our images. This might be because writing a step-by-step process, although sometimes tedious, is not necessarily difficult. You have a starting point, a direction, a goal to complete. I know... I've written them before.
Once we need to discuss how we feel about something, things get murky and more personal. Think about the last time someone asked you why you shot in black and white, or why you shot that dead bird or crack in the wall (after 30 years, my wife still asks me that). Not so easy to come up with an answer, is it? How do you explain how you feel, how you experience? Our images hint towards our innermost sentiments and how we think the world works. They are not to be taken lightly, and as such, can be difficult to explain. Our assumptions about the world move us towards making certain kinds of images, and our feelings change how that world appears. To communicate photographically, we need to see how these assumptions change our images in the process. If I am uncomfortable (let's say its really cold outside while I'm trying to take a landscape shot), I tend to rush so I can get somewhere warm, and end up with less than stellar results. That in turn gets me upset, and things just go from bad to worse. But if I'm wearing a warmer coat and the cold isn't affecting me as much, I tend to enjoy what I'm doing and the exact same scene ends up as a magical moment. My perception of cold altered my view and in turn altered my photography. How do we control our perceptions in such a way as to not color our world? In short, we don't. We will always perceive the world is some fashion... that's what makes our images different from all the other images out there. If we didn't view the world differently, we would see nothing but the exact same portrait angles, the same snowscapes, the same product shots. Sure, sometimes it does feel we are seeing the same images again and again (especially in the age of "look what I'm eating today"), but for the most part we really do see some amazing images out there. And if we look at their backstory, the reasoning behind making the images, we realize they are a view into the mind of the photographer that created them. The problem, as I see it, is the number of images taking up our precious time. Social media -- advertising on multiple cable channels -- the ease of which images may be produced -- all have contributed to our need to walk away from studying what we are looking at. We look at an image for a split second, decide if it is worth our time, then walk away. This isn't really new, of course. I read somewhere that the average time someone looks at a painting in a museum is something under 30 seconds. For some viewers, that might be a generous estimate. Because we are all rushing about, we miss a great deal of the communication going on around us. By slowing down our viewing time, we can connect with the photographer and see how their mind works, how their perceptions color the world. A photograph is not to be viewed in a moment just because it was captured in a moment. Thought and emotion was put into its creation, and those qualities can be transmitted to the viewer if they take the time to let it happen. So what do we do when we take the time to look? We could, for instance, consider the compositional features of a photograph, but I find I tend to stop at that if I don't like what I see. The way I compose an image may not be the way another photographer does, and that jars with my sense of reality, so I ignore everything else. Instead, I would suggest thinking about what emotional responses we have to an image, and by an image, I mean ANY image. We often do not realize we are having a response to an image unless it is something like "oh that's a beautiful landscape / portrait / wedding shot (insert whatever image you happen to really like here)". If the image is something other than that, something we don't get an immediate response to, we fail to realize there is an emotion there, just not as strong or obvious. By taking some time to focus on our emotional response, we can lead ourselves down a path towards appreciating the art we see. That crack in the wall might be a statement of the decay of society; the dead bird becomes a view into the fragility of life; clouds become wild horses, the play of light and shadow the mysteries of things yet to come. Take time to perceive the world through another's eyes. You may be surprised at what you find.
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