“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” Ansel Adams
We see the world around us through the filters of our life’s experiences – all the things he mentioned influence us to some degree, and that forms how we interpret the world around us. That’s why our vision is uniquely ours. The combination of influential factors is different for each of us. When I think about the people I have loved, in various ways, they are/were outdoor-loving, natural, adventurers, in love with the beauty of nature and experiencing it. My father took the whole family on great vacations, when I was growing up, but always to a place where we would then hike up mountains, canoe lakes/rivers, and camp in nature. The photographers I favored were those that shared their vision of nature’s wonders through their pictures, or they love of cultures/places. The music I grew up with was an eclectic mix, -church, folk, classical, rock, jazz, reggae, and “new age.” The instruments that spoke to me were piano, violin, guitar, sax, and drums, to name a few. When I think about putting a piece of music to my images in a slide show, it’s most often a piano piece, or guitar, in the new age genre or possibly classical or light jazz. When I’m photographing, I typically don’t play music, but if I did, it would likely be new age or classical, something that keeps me in the peace of nature. When I travel, I listen to the local music, as it helps place me there, it immerses me in the culture perhaps a bit more, and I believe that helps me see more deeply. The books that I resonated with were often books that expressed the beauty of nature, the wonders of places, or ones with an environmental message. These formed the basis for my passion towards capturing nature’s beauty/drama. (Yeah, I read series of historical fiction, steamy romance, and espionage, but those were escapes, flashes in the pan for entertainment).
As I write this post, spontaneously, I can see where all my experiences have indeed influenced how I see the world around me. It has helped me form my own unique vision, and that continues to this day. Take some time to look at your work, and think on your own life’s experiences, and how they might be showing up in the work that you create.
I wanted to thank you for this great read!! I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it. I have you bookmarked your site to check out the latest stuff you post.
Thank you Gretchen, for your comments. I’ll keep doing my best to inform, inspire and entertain with this blog!
Wonderful post and thoughts. Although I shoot frequently, it’s not that often, maybe once per month, that I have enough time to really “get in the moment.” I consciously try to adjust my brain.
Luckily, we don’t have to go to museums to find work we enjoy. We can go to Brenda’s blog! And so many others, and create our own private, virtual, museum.
Love this pic btw. That is what I was after for last year’s fall color and I never worked hard enough to find a place like that.
Thanks, Bob! Yes, we can create our own virtual museum, good thought about that. The picture was actually made in Maine, but it happens here, too, if you get yellow leaves and blue sky and a shaded surface of the water so your reflection’s stronger – then when you slow the shutter down you get a nice blending of colors but still having a vibrance to them. You’ll find it, you just gotta get out there looking for this sort of thing next Autumn. Merced, Yuba, American – all those rivers have potential and a fairly close by for you. 🙂
Thanks, Bob. And, I agree. I often gaze in wonder at pictures in galleries – wondering how it got accepted, that is! Much of it today shows a more bizarre viewpoint of our world, a viewpoint that I simply don’t resonate with, I guess.
Your work does seem a perfect expression of how you describe your history and tastes. That kind of congruence brings harmony to our lives. One of the reasons showing our work publicly can be so intimidating is that it can’t help but reveal so many personal things about us for those who care to look.
It does make me wonder, though, what we should infer about the photographers who seem to find their way into the museums and high end galleries in SF and NY. So often these pictures capture the very seamiest side of our lives and beauty is intentionally spurned.
Thanks for sharing… this resonates with me.
I’m glad to hear that, Rhoda!
An excellent and thought provoking article, especially good for the New Year. We are made by our life experiences and cannot help but bring those into our view of the world. I never thought about it before but as a child books were my escape and I grew up the the FL Keys where nature was my friend, solace and at times my sanity. Today, that is what I photograph and now I have a better understanding of that.
Thank you.
You’re welcome, Laura. Nature is surely my solace, as well.
Excellent article–to me photography is a an element in a circle that starts with being “there” because ‘there’ is a place where we want to photograph to capture the beauty. The act of photographing creates a wonderful and meaningful memory that we can escape to when we are no long physically ‘there’ and the photograph allows us to relive the experience.
One of my memories is a chilly September morning waiting for the light at Oxbow Bend and listening to the bugling Elk all of which rushes back whenever I see a photograph of Mt Moran. What a wonderful circle photography brings us!
Well said, John. I think we can all agree that pictures bring us back to a place, an experience. We must continue to have more of those experiences in our lives, to make us whole and happy! Here’s to getting out ‘there’ more to making memories…
i think thats why i started taking pictures. to find out more about how i see the world and discover my filters, hopefully i can shed the unwanted ones. theres a lot that we see that follows from the fact that were humans but theres a lot of artificial filters we’re trained to see through that are fundamentally incompatible with human nature. the things im drawn too are the things that dont really have an answer as to why i want to look at them, such as sunsets. i dont think theres ever going to be an answer to why we look at sunsets. but i never really appreciated them until i took a few pictures of a really good one. now everyday at sunset i look outside
hoping to get a glimpse of another magical light and color show.
well put, kalani. I never grow tired of sunsets, or seeing the moon, amongst other things. And a good point about shedding the unwanted filters – those won’t help us see with clarity.