The Art of Photography: a welcoming bridge between me and you

Pictures are the smaller tales we tell ourselves; the ones we share with others. Sometimes we need these smaller tales...almost as much as we need the light and air itself.

Other times, the picture lives and breathes by itself. It needs no supporting prop of explanation. We breathe. It lives.

There is no instant; no single moment; no brilliant flash of captured light; that can possibly hold and keep the all of the Truth.

So photos are not the Truth of things.

Perhaps the artful photo is an attempt by an artist to frame an experience; to try during some fleeting moment; to share the wonder of his thoughts in the presence of something greater; something finer; something outside the words and nearer to the heart of more pressing and important things... he's left unsaid.

There is another side to photography...the author.

Every photo taken doesn't have to be a story.

It may be a misunderstanding to think that the photo is always about the subject. It also matters who takes the picture...and why.

Most photographers have a point of view, a concern. They care about and have an emotional connection that goes beyond the subject. They have a context, a reason they're shooting on that day or in that place.

Take the big moments in your life...a child is born, a parent dies, you lose your job or your house catches fire. All these things have a tremendous impact on your choices. It has to.

These things are of such import to us. We're shaken and humbled; changed and splintered by them. We cannot be the same..it's not another lame breakfast, something tedious and taken for granted. No. Now we're alive. Sometimes desperation, fear, envy and dread..they creep in and take over.

So, yes, feelings and strong emotions matter. And, naturally, they change how and what we shoot.

Sometimes the shot is about how we feel. It's a terrible thing to try and capture. But, so often, it's there; unavoidably there. So you look. You turn down this shot and that.

Then you see.

I often find it in the small things. Things lost in the blur of the multitudes. Some small and creeping tiny wonder; a splash of discordant color notes; a blurred frame; the spoiled shot that said more than what it was made of. Sometimes we shoot something truly more like poetry than prose.

Part of seeing is this search for more.

Whether I shoot landscape, or nature, or people, or travel sites, or public events, or my grandson in the living room; all the living things of this world exist with passion. They vie for our affections. They persuade us to reach out and try to grasp their living, breathing essence..just because we love it so.

Whether the photographer is persuaded that God made all these things for His good pleasure (or are not so persuaded)...we all still feel that life. The life that tumbles and surges about us is worth capturing inside a small box with a glass lens. And that gives us, the photographer, pleasure. I often feel I must agree with God; that when He was done creating all these wonders; He said, "It is good".

..to say it is good. It's not a moral word, as if creation was doing good. No. Not at all. It means that I look upon all these incredible works of beautiful, functional design, these amazing complexities of harmonious parts flowing out into great symphonic themes, with melodies and antiphonals so rich I'm aghast to find the words...But I find it so simple to say the truthful thing about creation...it is good.

So I shoot to hope and look to pray... and I occasionally stumble upon some measure of God's glory. And mostly find it's just the shadow of Him...passing by. But even that... gives me the jealous envy of a shining moment, now past. So this glimpse...I try to keep it's meaning as if I could hold it and keep it new. But my picture is just a veil (like Moses wore). Because in passing; He touched my soul... and I have only this picture to tell myself something I cannot put into words.

Sometimes life is more than photos show. Other times they mean more than the subject itself. So I choose to shoot the living things. I hope to empower a poem. But usually I just end up en splintering the woodpile. I shoot the living things because in them I find ...I seem to become less.

I like that... and I need that.

Framing the exposed Earth, seeing it's folds, feeling it's untold ages; I'm at a loss. If this is a story, then it's too complicated for a single frame to capture. There's just too much complexity. The pictures are just fragments of this enormously long and involved saga of the Earth.

So despite the physical beauty of vistas and sunsets, canyons and woodland clearings; you just cannot tell the Earth's story..even with a great many photos. Instead, there is the pathos; the inability of language to convey.

The hope is to convey more than mere words...could. We can never exhaust the Subject anyway, now could we? And here is the hope of the photographer...looking long into the space before us..trying to frame a moment of wonder. 

The photo is the "real" view of things, isn't it? Photography is just about as simple and "real" as you can get. Right?

After all, a picture cannot lie. The light captures the moment. And that's the truth... Isn't it?

But haven't we photographed a loved one at some happy event...and in their smile...haven't we seen a shadow of some unspoken sadness? I have.

Well, that's not a lie. It's just some ironic thing that happens sometimes, right? People don't always show their true feelings all the time. So why not expect to get an awkward moment on film from time to time?

Well. What if the world puts on a face? Can we just occasionally see something of the living Earth with her hair down? Could it happen?

Perhaps in the action scene; where the blurred image captures the passion more raw, the in-between moments, the time of transition; the time less graceful than the latter second. There is a truth here.

We see it in sports shots. The intensity that reveals jealousy or envy; perhaps even an inconveniently remorseful moment of regret that quickly passes into the brave smile and mouths the words of praise for a nearby victor.

But do the rocks and trees playact as men do about their "feelings"? Only when the camera bids them so. Or when the development allows. Or when the author begins to paint on the pixel canvas.

There are so many things unspoken in every photograph. Sometimes, photography is less about truth or what's "real". Sometimes the photo has more to say about the cameraman than his subject.