365/34 On the porch

"What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what kind of a person you are."

C.S. Lewis

I was standing on the porch tonight for a bit, listening to the rain and thinking about the idea of visualizing a scene before photographing it. I'm still reading VisionMongers and need to re-read Within the Frame to soak in some of the more salient points that I hi-lighted. Only, when I say I'm doing these things, I mean I haven't touched either book in about two weeks. Slacker. Go me!

So, tonight, after writing this, I will redouble my efforts towards refining my visualization and go back to reading those books. Then maybe I'll pick up Joe McNally's The Moment It Clicks again and page through that to find the interesting bits again.

This 365 project has been interesting visually and ideologically for me because it's forcing me to pick and choose my subjects in a way that I hadn't before. I find myself thinking more about the image that will work, even if it's but a momentary pause before making the photo. As well, it's making me play with ideas that I wouldn't have thought about before. For example, one of the things that I've toyed with recently was the attempt to capture motion in frame.

The blurring of bodies seems powerful to me, like a hummingbird's wings moving faster than one can normally see. Sometimes I don't want to capture the crisp detail of the image, but rather the unfocused reality of it.

I can see where each of these photos is making me think more specifically about the photo, the intent of it. Yes, intent. Something that's lacking for a lot of my photos. I can be super critical about it because I can tell what's crap about them. Well, at least, what I think is crap about them. For good or bad, this mood is also bleeding out to the photos of other photographers. I can't look at a photo now and appreciate it for exactly what it is. Or rather, I have a very hard time doing it now. I seem to be evaluating everything at the moment and looking for the good points, the bad points, the boring points, the outstanding exquisiteness of it, so I can incorporate, bend, mold, and change into my vision.

Frankly, there's a lot of crap out there. And like I said, I count mine in there as well. But, even though it's crap, it still makes me stop and think about it. I guess that's the point of all this. To make you stop and think. Re-evaluate, decompose, reconstruct, and stand there in front of it so you can see how it might be better.

Meanwhile, I stand out on the porch, in the rain, continuing to struggle with that idea of seeing because, frankly ... much of the time I look, I'm just blind, too focused on the wrong parts to see the right ones. Eventually, it will all pull together. Until then, I keep shooting. Even if it's raining.