At some point today I read a list of instructions to aspiring photographers. One of the suggestions was "be interesting", another "tell a story".
My photos definitely are not interesting, except exceptionally and by accident. And I'm not much into telling stories with photos either - I'm documenting things I see. If there is a story, it is in my head, and sometimes also known to the family, no more than that.
Sometimes it feels that in photography I try to remove the story from the picture, aiming towards abstraction and calmness, the opposite of "being interesting" and "telling a story". An example is the photo here, taken today at a nearby park with my new LX3 camera.
In any case, I'm not aiming to be a recognized photographer, so my views are not really relevant for aspiring photographers. I'm using a camera just for my own enjoyment and relaxation. Thus, these (probably relevant) instructions were wasted on me.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The difficulty of being interesting
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3 comments:
hi juha,
It was interesting to see you say you are not interested in telling a story with your photographs. Why do you take your photos? What are you trying to capture? Do your photographs mean something to you?
The meaning (not story) of a photograph changes over time, and I have learned not to expect much of the original story (or meaning) to survive when time goes on.
For me, photographs open windows to reality, and reality is not a story. I feel that a story is a temporary and volatile artifact of the human mind.
That makes a lot of sense to me, and is a beautiful perspective.
I often find with my writing, particularly poetry, that the meaning of what i write evolves with every time I revisit and read it.
In a way, like photography, poetry captures the reality of a moment, or of an emotion, and the story/meaning of that poetry is different depending on the interpretation.
If I were to rephrase my question as: "When you decide to press the shutter release, why do you decide to press it at that moment? Why do you choose to include the things you have in the frame? Why do you choose to exclude other things?" I would love to know how you would respond.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and photographs on your blog!
Same "anonymous" poster.
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