Make me care

First off, I have received my copy of David duChemin’s book, WTF, or Within The Frame. It was waiting for me at my door when I came in this evening. Much thanks to Kara Murphy and to Peach Pit for the fast shipping. The book was just released a few days ago!

This evening, I started reading the book … very slowly because there is lot of good content and he talks a lot about vision, which is a topic that is very interesting to me. Along about page 13 there is a section entitled: Make Me Care. Here, David talks about getting to know what you love to photograph, but more important, making it your goal to get good grasp on the visual language of photography. That is, making sure that you can convey your message in a passionate and powerful way, not just a technically good picture that documents something.

Remembering that communication is not only what you say but how you are heard … Like a child learning to speak, it allows us to move from babbling incoherently, to speaking simply but brokenly, to one day being able to clearly ask for that thing we want. –David duChemin

I think that this is a very powerful statement and probably the most difficult thing to do in photography. To express one’s feelings through an image and to make someone else care about that image. Certainly, some subjects are a lot more universally appealing than others. Photographing the a war-torn area and seeing the conditions of the people will probably elicit a response much faster, or deeper, than a photograph of a ladybug on a grass stem.

For me, the end goal is not necessarily to make someone else care, but to do my best to bring out the reason why I took the picture. To invite someone to stay awhile and ponder the photo as more than just mere eye-candy. I think that particular road is one that we stay on for a while and learn more about every day. We get better with our tools, with what we put in the frame and what we leave out. We get better understanding of quality of light, of choosing the right moment to click the shutter, and of course, better in post processing. But, with all of that, what really makes the difference, I think, is that we get to know ourselves much better and start catching those peripheral glimpses of our vision and are better able to hone them to a finer edge.

I can tell already that I’m going to really like this book. It’s meant to be read slowly, absorbed, and pondered. If you are to the point where you are in search of ways to improve your vision, I’d recommend that you pick up a copy, find a nice comfortable place to sit, and enjoy this book. I would imagine that my copy will become dogeared at some point as it will be a reference that I come back to from time to time for inspiration.