Digital Photography and Another Thing
It's about those moments which matter:
Lazy evening walks on Bamburgh beach
I’ve noticed that whenever I get close to drawing emotional and personal conclusions in this project (and I’m starting to try and write about them), I distract myself with something safe and factual. It happened yesterday when I withdrew into revisiting the realms of botanical history and then into the history of tulips. And these interesting discursions allowed me to sidestep the thought which had been developing, that my technical approach to photography often allows me (and colludes with me) to keeping emotional photography at arm’s length – so that I sit in control, and avoid any emotional connection with the subject.
I think I was drawing this conclusion on my own volition, but it’s been helped that I’ve joined SOOP this week – the Society of Obsessed (Women) Photographers.
It’s the creation of Dawn Hansch, who discusses the difference in a blog between images which you love, in which you feel emotionally connected with the subject and which warm your heart each time you see them, as distinct from those which don’t – even though they may be better technically. She states that an image must be worth something to her (she asks herself if she’d pay $200 to have it printed and framed) – if not, she won’t show it to other people.
So, thinking back over the thousands of botanical images I’ve taken, and assessing them in the light of Dawn’s ideas, I can see they fall into two distinct groups; one in which I was exercising a technical, intellectual, analytic approach (where the flower was just a test-subject); and the other, a warm, emotionally invested experience (where I feel I’m doing right by my ‘sitter’ – the sweet peas and the poppies, for example).
And reviewing the images I’ve shown you in this lockdown project, there are a handful of ‘really-warm’ images which I just had to share with you, a lot of ‘quite-warm’ images but, regrettably, two stone-cold ones – the visual alternative to placing a row of asterisks as a break in the text! (I won’t tell you which they are because they’ll be replaced before I post this journal onto my website)
Then widening this review beyond my botanical studies and the images for this journal, into all the photographs I’ve ever taken, I’m aware that the times when I’m being emotionally invested and have that warm experience are sadly outnumbered by the technical, analytic times, which are driven by intellectual curiosity.
That needs to change.