COOL SCOOPS ~ Wildwood, South Jersey Shore (embiggenable) • iPhone
COOL SCOOPS / v. the new snapshot ~ Wildwood, South Jersey Shore (embiggenable) • iPhone
In case you're wondering, here's my rationale, re: the new snapshot v. my "serious" pictures. The rationale has everything to do with the manner in which I see. To a certain extent, the way I see the world around me but, most certainly, the way I see pictures (or Art in general).
On hindsight, I have come to realize that, since very early childhood, my visual apparatus coupled with my related mental visual sensitivities / perceptions have conspired to give me a hightened awareness to the relationships of shapes/forms, light/dark, lines/angles, colors, et al to one another - what I label as my eye and sensibilities. This visual awareness facility acted as a facilitator-in-hiding / hinden hand which guided my art creation endeavors (employed initially for my drawing and illustration activities). That same unrecognized facility stayed with me well into my involvement with the medium of photography.
Over a protracted period of picture making time-approx. 15 years- I began to realize that my eye and sensibilities are/were pricked, not by the referents I pictured but rather by how I perceived that the realtionships of the aforementioned visual characteristics-as found in a given scene-might look when isolated by the frame I might impose around them in my picture making. Short version - I was much more interested in how the thing, aka: referent, looked when photographed as opposed to the thing itself.
As that realization came into focus, I also began to understand why it was that I liked certain pictures made by other picture makers and, by association, those pictures made by me. I liked those pictures because my eye and sensibilities were pricked, not by what was pictured but by how it was pictured. FYI, how it was pictured does not mean special equipment or effects, but rather a picture makers's ability to create an image which causes my eye (guided by my sensibilities) to dance across the surface of the 2-dimensional plane of the surface of a print. In other words, a print must have visual energy, independent of its depicted referent, to get my eye and sensibilities in gear.
All of that written, my pictures are the result of my seemingly preternatural facility to see and identify incidents of visual energy in the world around me. In turn, I picture what I see. Then I make a print of what I saw so that others might be able to see what I see.
FYI, the 2 pictures in this entry are an example of how 2 pictures of the same referent can incite very different reactions and perceptions from a viewer. More on that idea tomorrow.