I am blessed with friends who challenge my thinking, and make me strive for better. One of the areas I am always challenged is in giving some voice to what I'm feeling when I do what I do. A lot of the time, I'm "going through the motions" to a certain degree. Photography is part of my existence, and so I live, I breath, I shoot, I go through my day.... Often though I have this thought that I need to do more to express myself. Photos are supposed to tell a story. Art should elicit some emotional response. Am I doing enough to do that?
When I saw the geese flying overhead, and heard their calls to one another, I felt a longing to go with them. These simple creatures will travel further in their life time than I ever will. James Taylor's lyrics "and don't you let that yearning pass you by" came immediately to mind. The walking man walks.
That's the feeling I put in this piece. The processes and textures I used to give a nostalgic feeling were intentional. I felt the pull those geese felt. The yearning to go...
The process is my expression of what I'm feeling. There may or may not intentionally be any artistic rules being used (or broken). I only know that in that moment, what I felt when I heard the call of those geese and took the shot you see above, I felt what you see in my finished piece, even if I didn't visualize it in my mind in that moment.
Should I do more to put this expression into words? Part of me thinks if I have to, then maybe I'm not putting enough in my images. And then there is part of me that senses the value of delving deeper, and struggling to put the emotions into words. That maybe this struggle will make its way into my images as well.
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| "don't you let that yearning pass you by" © Marjorie McDonald |
When I saw the geese flying overhead, and heard their calls to one another, I felt a longing to go with them. These simple creatures will travel further in their life time than I ever will. James Taylor's lyrics "and don't you let that yearning pass you by" came immediately to mind. The walking man walks.
That's the feeling I put in this piece. The processes and textures I used to give a nostalgic feeling were intentional. I felt the pull those geese felt. The yearning to go...
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| Unedited photo... the beginning of "don't you let that yearning pass you by" |
The process is my expression of what I'm feeling. There may or may not intentionally be any artistic rules being used (or broken). I only know that in that moment, what I felt when I heard the call of those geese and took the shot you see above, I felt what you see in my finished piece, even if I didn't visualize it in my mind in that moment.
Should I do more to put this expression into words? Part of me thinks if I have to, then maybe I'm not putting enough in my images. And then there is part of me that senses the value of delving deeper, and struggling to put the emotions into words. That maybe this struggle will make its way into my images as well.
Love your works...welcome Marjorie
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Alberto!
DeleteMarjorie, any form of art, is an expression or a moment in time and you have caught this right with your "geese" image. The before and after is very interesting, love the blue in the sky and the crop works well. As you say photography is a big part of your life and at best you can hope that people see what your intention was when you took or edited the image, but at the end of the day people will draw their own conclusions. A picture should speak for it's self and that is that can be great about photography. It is like if two people read the same book and then where asked to draw or describe the main person in the book. They would both describe or draw different people, because we all have our own pictures in our head.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work, love the "Walking Man"
Thanks very much Matt! I am always working hard to get across the message I want to convey... If people see my work and find something to take some pleasure from, then in part I've achieved that goal :)
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