Real, Not Real, or Surreal?
I remember when I began taking photographs again a few years ago.
My husband gave me a camera for my birthday, and as I was leaving a dear friend's house up in Belchertown, I pulled over to the side of the beautiful curving steep road, and went wandering about the stream bed.
Oh, it was so beautiful, the stream wandering down the hill, the dappled light through the tall forest conifers; tiny remarkable places everywhere you looked.
Yet, what surprised me most was that the photographs portrayed the things that I had not seen.
That in fact, you can see, if you stop, and look, and slowly learn-to see.
All that motion of water! Those amazing dynamics of rock and current , of plants far beneath, living their entire lives in the dark depths.
Eventually, I learned about editing photographs. It's very similar to painting or drawing or dancing, and shifting something a little bit, so the depth is more predominant, or certain portions of the composition come to the forefront, or a dynamic is accentuated.
And we each have a different vantage point, anyway.
What we see is actually a confabulation of actual matter, our individual and very unique visual apparatus, and what our brain chooses to portray for us.
What we see isn't, in actuality , a reality. It's an arrangement that varies according to the person or species or whether you're sitting or standing or in Alaska or Australia.
It seems like when we begin to take photographs we learn all the little editing tools and then somebody introduces us to Ye Olde Instagram, with this consequent tendency to want to make these florid and extreme surreal creations. Just ramp everything the hell up. It's so lurid and exciting. The ability to transform a dry, brown leaf to another universe.
And with time, we mature, and begin longing for photographs that contain actuality.
Like a young adult who has been on their own for the first time, binging on junk food, and begins to yearn for healthier nourishment at last.
What happens then, is that we begin to realize that what we have learned to see, as we look upon your surroundings before taking a photograph, is not showing up in the photograph itself.
And so then there is this balancing act, between wanting to let the actuality of life BE, and alternately, to edit a photograph in order to have it be able to convey what we can actually see in front of us.
And so we begin.
I think it's very similar to when we paint or dance or sing or write or garden or parent or travel and we slowly begin to refine and define our voice.
And then of course, over time, we keep growing and transforming and
changing.
So it is with a photograph.
I can stand outside this morning in my pajamas and slippers, as the enormous moose pup bounces about on his lead, threatening to lop off my feet, so I stand very carefully watching him.
And I'm looking up at the early morning sky, these horizontal striations all through the sky! And I continue to look, as I rub my arms with my hands, the pup finally off chewing a big log.
And slowly, I begin to see in the cloud formation that is passing by a curve, and depth of light gradations.
I begin to see the orange-yellow light on the horizon, and I'm not sure why, because the sun is coming from the other direction, and muted by cloud cover. I began to see the cerulean blue of the sky behind the clouds.
So I take two shots, and go inside to have breakfast. And do other things. And then I have time to sit down, and look at what my little machine has captured of the remarkable beauty in this world.
And those remarkable delicate horizontal lines are nowhere to be found. And the enormous steep curve of the cloud initially is not there, but when I shift the contrast, and lower the light, there it is! Just as I thought! And when I lower the light, and heighten the saturation, oh! There is the yellow I saw.
Editing a photograph, changing the series of movements in a dance, transforming a blue you are using on your palette to a deeper , more powerful metallic shade- all of these things can be shifted this way and that to convey exactly what we see, or convey something completely new.
I remember when I began taking photographs again a few years ago.
My husband gave me a camera for my birthday, and as I was leaving a dear friend's house up in Belchertown, I pulled over to the side of the beautiful curving steep road, and went wandering about the stream bed.
Oh, it was so beautiful, the stream wandering down the hill, the dappled light through the tall forest conifers; tiny remarkable places everywhere you looked.
Yet, what surprised me most was that the photographs portrayed the things that I had not seen.
That in fact, you can see, if you stop, and look, and slowly learn-to see.
All that motion of water! Those amazing dynamics of rock and current , of plants far beneath, living their entire lives in the dark depths.
Eventually, I learned about editing photographs. It's very similar to painting or drawing or dancing, and shifting something a little bit, so the depth is more predominant, or certain portions of the composition come to the forefront, or a dynamic is accentuated.
And we each have a different vantage point, anyway.
What we see is actually a confabulation of actual matter, our individual and very unique visual apparatus, and what our brain chooses to portray for us.
What we see isn't, in actuality , a reality. It's an arrangement that varies according to the person or species or whether you're sitting or standing or in Alaska or Australia.
It seems like when we begin to take photographs we learn all the little editing tools and then somebody introduces us to Ye Olde Instagram, with this consequent tendency to want to make these florid and extreme surreal creations. Just ramp everything the hell up. It's so lurid and exciting. The ability to transform a dry, brown leaf to another universe.
And with time, we mature, and begin longing for photographs that contain actuality.
Like a young adult who has been on their own for the first time, binging on junk food, and begins to yearn for healthier nourishment at last.
What happens then, is that we begin to realize that what we have learned to see, as we look upon your surroundings before taking a photograph, is not showing up in the photograph itself.
And so then there is this balancing act, between wanting to let the actuality of life BE, and alternately, to edit a photograph in order to have it be able to convey what we can actually see in front of us.
And so we begin.
I think it's very similar to when we paint or dance or sing or write or garden or parent or travel and we slowly begin to refine and define our voice.
And then of course, over time, we keep growing and transforming and
changing.
So it is with a photograph.
I can stand outside this morning in my pajamas and slippers, as the enormous moose pup bounces about on his lead, threatening to lop off my feet, so I stand very carefully watching him.
And I'm looking up at the early morning sky, these horizontal striations all through the sky! And I continue to look, as I rub my arms with my hands, the pup finally off chewing a big log.
And slowly, I begin to see in the cloud formation that is passing by a curve, and depth of light gradations.
I begin to see the orange-yellow light on the horizon, and I'm not sure why, because the sun is coming from the other direction, and muted by cloud cover. I began to see the cerulean blue of the sky behind the clouds.
So I take two shots, and go inside to have breakfast. And do other things. And then I have time to sit down, and look at what my little machine has captured of the remarkable beauty in this world.
And those remarkable delicate horizontal lines are nowhere to be found. And the enormous steep curve of the cloud initially is not there, but when I shift the contrast, and lower the light, there it is! Just as I thought! And when I lower the light, and heighten the saturation, oh! There is the yellow I saw.
Editing a photograph, changing the series of movements in a dance, transforming a blue you are using on your palette to a deeper , more powerful metallic shade- all of these things can be shifted this way and that to convey exactly what we see, or convey something completely new.
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