Listening to the small voice.
I guess that I’m a creature of habit, or perhaps lazy. I find that I don’t like, all that much, to go to so many different places and get many different photographs. All it does is confuse me. That is to say, I don’t know what it is that I’m trying to say when I go to a new place. Sure, it’s easy to get caught up in the grandeur of the mountains, the vast open spaces of the beach, or the mystery of a swamp, but those are the shouts. The big “Look at me voices”. Below that, there is something quiet. That’s what I seek.
It’s kind of odd. Sometimes I don’t hear that voice, even though I know that ultimately, it’s the voice that soothes. It’s the voice that makes me smile when I place my CF card into the reader and see what I got. To see if I heard. When I listen to the shouts, I usually end up with pictures that are simply ‘nice’ and have little meaning to me. The easy shots. The ones that are easy to delete.
I’ve been trying to stay away from the field across the street, but it continues to call, so I continue to go. I know that I cannot exhaust all that it has to offer to me. All I have to do is to be quiet and listen. Its gifts are endless.
Today, I discovered this little cluster of flowers. I was just out for a casual stroll through the field, 50mm lens mounted, to see what I could see. This is what I saw. These flowers were growing in an area that had been intended for a small flower bed, but has obviously not been tended to. It was overgrown with weeds and dead or dying vegetation, but these guys didn’t seem to mind.
It’s amazing how many cars go by this field, how many people walk by, or through, and how much of it gets ignored. They continue to cut the grass, yet the clover keeps right on flowering as if nothing happened. It seems as if it is hanging around waiting for me to start my book on Monday. Perhaps it is waiting. What a nice thought.
Vision-driven photography.
The starting line for SoFoBoMo is nearly upon us. When it was announced with a May 1 start date, some months ago, I thought that that was a long way off. Now, it seems very near. 8 days. I find myself making more frequent trips to David DuChemin’s website, Pixelated Image, reading the articles that he has written, and thinking about my own photographic vision.
I can say, with a great deal of honesty, that I’ve never been taken with any particular photographer. That is, I’ve admired the works of others such as Alain Briot, Moose Peterson, Joe McNally, Freeman Patterson and, of course, Ansel Adams; however, I don’t own a single print from any of these artists. David’s work is different, or perhaps it is his writing. I feel that he is writing from the soul and it resonates with me, seriously.
He talks almost exclusively about vision. Vision driven photography; Vision-driven workflow, etc. It’s an idea that I’d never really considered before, but it makes a great deal of sense to me. His vision driven photography works a bit like this:
- Decide what it is that you want to say. Perhaps you’ve received it as an assignment from a client, or made it up yourself.
- Create a possible shot list that will help to realize this vision.
- Choose the tools (camera, lenses, filters, flashes, etc) that will help you to attain this vision.
- Scout the location, if possible, looking at light, angles, etc. Again, with your vision in mind. Do you need to have an overall warm feel, cool, bright, subdued, glowing, etc? What are you trying to say with this body of work?
- After you’ve taken the shots, continue with your vision in Lightroom or Photoshop all the way through post processing.
This certainly has given me lots of thought cycles about what it is that I want to say during my SoFoBoMo project. I think that I need to go sit in my field and ponder it. I have a vague idea, but not a clear vision of it. After reading his articles, I want to get a clear vision of what I want to say before I actually start to say it, which may cause a slight delay in my start date … which is what the fuzzy month allows, anyway. Having this vision ahead of time will make things easier, more cohesive, I think.
Perhaps this sounds like I’m over complicating things and taking this too seriously. I don’t think so. I think that it is just the first brick in a path that I wish to continue to walk upon. Perhaps this is my first step in my journey of 1000 miles.