Maybe you see what I see, maybe you don’t. The other day my youngest daughter ask me, “why do you take the pictures that you take?” WOW! Tough question. Honestly, when I’m in the field making images I try not to think too much about what I’m shooting and why, I just follow my “eye” and my instincts and let the world come to me. I guess that’s what some artists call following their muse. From the training I have received and from everything I’ve studied, I do have the basics of photography ingrained in my brain so I don’t have to “think” too much. Hopefully I am trained and have the instincts to see in a way that most other people don’t and to be able to capture an image that is interesting and pass it on to my audience.
When you look at a photograph, most likely you either immediately like it or you don’t. What is it about human beings that allows different people to see certain things so differently? Lots of people, besides photographers and artists struggle with this question everyday and I certainly won’t be able to answer it here. Some examples are teachers trying to reach their students, advertising agencies trying to get their message across to their target audience, or how about the police interviewing multiple “eye-witnesses” and getting completely different accounts.
The other night I saw a blurb on the local news about a mountain lion sighting in the middle of an upscale neighborhood in Golden, over near the foothills. It started me thinking about the City “Open Space” just down the street from where I live and how much wildlife I see there on a regular basis. This open space is like many in suburban Denver, former ranch land that has been swallowed up by development, saved just in the nick of time by our City fathers. It is not very big, probably 100 acres in all and it is surrounded by residential neighborhoods, a golf course, a busy four lane street and a Mexican restaurant. It is primarily open fields with a 2 acre farm pond, some wooded brushy areas and a few remaining cottonwoods, most dead from lack of water since the old ranch irrigation ditches are long gone. I run my two dogs there almost daily and sometimes take my camera along. (I need to take it more often)
Subscribe to my RSS feed
Facebook