Memories
The smell of the damp woods, the babbling sound of the brook and the touch of the rough bark beneath my fingertips, my senses singing songs of my youth. Every path a memory, each hill, each rock, every tree; only the clouds are new.
I am in Scotland, the village of my childhood, walking the glens as I did 30 years ago as a fresh-faced teen. The boy in the man recalls sword fights and adventures of fantasy, trekking the lonely valleys in search of fools gold and the first tentative steps of my adult vagrancy, how amusing to reflect on these magical hills.
As I sit here now, back in Spain, I can close my eyes and picture the scene, reflecting on experiences, both old and recent.
For well over a year now, I have been formulating some fresh ideas about how these experiential explorations get themselves implanted in my mind, and in the dark hours before this mornings dawn, I lay in bed memory trawling, reflecting on my many experiences and memories.
What came out of that hour or so was this.
I see photography as a three stage process -
The Experience – Almost every waking moment, significant ones get to stick
The Capture – Technical issues on exposure & focus, creative choices of Composition
Processing – Transforming the Captured Light into your creative Vision
To me, Photography is the Art of transforming experiences into Expressive Statements. What begins with a Visual Stimulus is converted into expressive pixels to share with a third party.
Our Success as an Expressive Photographer is measured by the impact our images have on our viewers.
Is the first step on the road to creating a successful photograph learning how to embrace experiences and seek out memories?
Arches 2004
This image was taken not long after I began photographing landscapes, and I had never experienced desert light before. I recall powerful feelings in these striking locations. The senses being bowled over constantly by the light and shapes.
I will continue this trail of thought and discovery over the coming months, subscribe on RSS and be sure not to miss anything new.
at 8:31 pm
This is photography bordering on cognitive psychology.
There’s definitely no question in my mind that we are shaped by experiences–you are who you are because of your past. As a result, your past affects how you see the world.
In that sense, memories do indeed shape the first process of photography–the experience. So the first step to creating a successful photograph must be rooted in how we embrace the experience. To me, there’s a difference between a “felt” photograph and one in which the photographer was distanced in some way from the subject. While stages 2 and 3 might be in place, that critical first step is noticeable if its missing.
As I noted in reply to your comment on my blog this week, I think that first step, the experience, is the most difficult sometimes. Perhaps its because its the most difficult to learn. How do you teach someone to have a meaningful memory–to embrace an experience? That’s a very difficult concept to put words to me. For me anyway.
Great set of thoughts here, Ali…looking forward to reading others’ comments.
Cheers,
Greg
at 8:20 am
Thanks Greg for your ever-thoughtful reply. As a lifelong Rush fan (Rush, the cerebral Canadian Rock Band) – Many lyrics pass through my head from time to time, and one is this:
“I believe that how I’m feeling, changes how the world appears”
Black, pessimistic days may produce, dark, moody images. Light, happy, optimistic days, the reverse.
As I said in the NSN post yesterday, I feel the question we should be asking our selves is “Why do we take this image”
Sure, for some professionals that may be a case of Utility, the image can make dollars, which equate to family security. But on a more primal level, at the core of our souls, we are responding on some level to some visual or emotional stimulus. Something we feel moved to “preserve” then “share.”
I truly agree, that to teach seeing, or thought is a lot more challenging than the technique, the 95% of photography that is linear and logical.
And this is the challenge I have set myself, to explore these avenues and to articulate the questions we must ask ourselves…
Thanks, as always for your excellent contribution.
at 1:46 am
I couldn’t agree more, Alister. Thinking more about this subject in the last few days, combined with a couple of books I’m reading right now have led me to ask whether our “drive” to make the image is because of reverence.
I’ve got a blog post in the works, one that’s highly relatable to the concept of reverence, but here I’ll say that Paul Woodruff defines the reverent individual as one who has a great capacity to feel respect, awe, shame. How many of us haven’t felt that in the outdoors, at some point?
I feel that approaching a scene with reverence results in an image that can be felt in by the viewer…
at 12:44 am
I still haven’t located my wits entirely, but I’ll try to add something worthwhile.
I have to admit that my approach to photography is not very cerebral. I tend to look for things/places that interest me and respond to them. That’s not to say I don’t travel with a plan often enough. So in the first step I see something that I feel is worthy of sharing with others as well as pleasing to myself. How I come to this decision is surely affected by all that has happened to me.
In a small way, like many bad story lines, my whole life has got me to the point of this experience. Sometimes I remember my childhood in the Adirondacks, running through the woods around Lake Massasoit as a teen or possibly an experience during college while roaming the forests. Smells come back, visuals repeat.
There are times when I experience a bit of what Greg referred to in his recent blog post…the wonder and thrill of discovery when finding an insect or flower I’ve never seen before or in a way I haven’t experienced. That all leads to the second and third steps of trying to bring that memory or thrill to someone for sharing.
I hope that is not too loosely expressed. I am looking forward to what others have to share and to your future thoughts and posts.
at 8:27 am
Hi Steve, great to have you here, loaded or witless, they’re both good
I don’t believe that being “cerebral” is the key here. It is not necessarily and intellectual process, rather than an emotional response that triggers a simple question in ones own head.. Why am I taking this?
I don’t believe we have to analyse WHAT it is that is stimulating you (just yet anyway!) – just to try and understand WHY that thing is stimulating you.
As the worried father used to ask his daughters cheeky suitor “Son, what are your intentions?”
More and more now, I am struck by something in nature, and I ask, so Alister – What’s this all about?
WHAT is the stimulus?
WHY will I take this?
WHAT am I trying to say?
Then we get into the
HOW am I going to do this?
This is the start of a long journey for me and hopefully some others who will be interested to read and use
The Language of Light…
at 2:00 am
I like point one in particular. “Almost every waking moment” is right. In his wonderful book “Flying in the face of nature” someone asks Simon Barnes how often he goes birdwatching. He seems puzzled by the question because he is constantly birdwatching, whether with eyes or ears. Just because the sole purpose of the outing isn’t birds does not lessen the awareness of them nor the fascination they provide.
So it is with photography I think. I regularly find myself imagining things viewed through a viewfinder. Maybe memory is the aggregation of my viewfinder experiences. I too can still recall vividly the walks in the woods with my father, seeing deer for the first time, woodpeckers in the garden, picking blackberries from the hedgerows, wading through the bracken, turning over stones in rock pools, collecting shells at the tide line. Rural Herefordshire was tame but idyllic. Sometimes I know I am pulling on these memories, trying to recreate 40+ years ago, bring back my dad to see things with me today.
Nostalgia it may be but I am not so hung up on sharing. The memories are mine to interpret and wallow in. But you are welcome to peek in if you wish. Nice article, Ali.
at 8:32 am
Certainly, learning to see is a huge leap forward for most budding photographers. As a birder since about the age of 3, I too grew up noticing birds. 8 hour drives on a dull motorway lightened by Magpies, Kestrels, Skylarks or Pheasants.
When we walk in nature with binoculars around our necks, seeing a small brown bird in the bottom of a bush beside a rice paddy, “Stimulates us” to raise our bins to identify it.
We can easily answer the question “Why did you raise your bins?”
Now, to answer the question “Why did you raise your camera?” is of equal, or even more importance, as we are taking an image that we aim to share with a viewer who should at the very least have an insight into WHY we took it….
MOre fuel for those flames of passion…
Great to have you here Andrew, and we hope to meet up when we’re in Hong Kong 6th-10th October…
at 3:31 am
Great read Alister. I have had a camera in my life since I was 14 or so. Photography has altered my life in many good ways – it has taught me to see, smell the roses and slow down in this busy life (which I have a hard time doing). There have been moments along the way (a number of them in Scotland interestingly enough), where what I have been witness to is so amazing that those moments will be with me forever. Capturing that moment and looking at those images later brings me right back to that spot, the weather, the smells and the mood which to me is the gift of photography. I feel fortunate to be part of nature when I can witness things that most do not take time to experience.