The Story Photo - Fallen Heroes

Tucked into one corner of a local cemetery in Bowling Green is a memorial dedicated to fallen veterans.  It covers maybe an acre or two and is surrounded by trees which bloom in the spring and blaze with color in the fall. Spread across these special grounds are row after row of small white headstones each marking the final resting place of a Kentucky veteran.  The oldest marker dates back to the Spanish American War, others range from World War I through Vietnam...a few from more recent times.  I've always felt there was a story here...one single story that speaks of a greater collective sacrifice shared by all of the men interred within these grounds.  Capturing this story photograph turned out to be more difficult than I imagined.

At first glance one might think it would be easy...just point and shoot...and you've got the picture story.  In fact I'm not so sure there is a definitive process one can use to consistently capture a story like this with a camera.  It takes the right kind of shot...the perfect light that expresses, character...emotion...drama...sacrifice...gratitude...all traits not easily captured digitally in a single image.

During my walks through this quiet place, I always sense a feeling of solitude...one that speaks softly...one that asks, "What visual image can one find to say thank you to these men..."  Simply photographing what I saw fell well shy of what I felt.  Photo opportunities were all around...colors and light that reflected the serenity of this memorial...but, capturing the emotion of the moment seemed to always elude me.  By chance, on one hazy bright morning, when the first light of day filtered through the trees, the one story I wanted to capture appeared among the shadows.  It lasted but a brief moment as I walked along the path that curved around the compound.

The hazy sky cleared briefly, and one beam of light suddenly illuminated a single headstone where a small American flag leaned.  Across the top of the headstone lay some foliage and the base was stained with a reddish brown with streaks of dirt stretching upward from the ground toward the name carved into the stone. The flag cast a shadow across the lower outside corner, beyond and across the background other scattered markers lay darkened in the subdued light of the shadows.

Something wonderful happened at that moment...this was the shot...no time to think it through...it just looked right.  With tripod level with the name on the headstone, I knelt a few yards away, obliquely to one side...framed the imaged...and released the shutter.  A few seconds later the light faded once again into the morning haze.

Later, after loading the days work into my computer, I began to sort through the images and came to this one shot.  From first glance this single photograph stood out as it captured the emotion of the moment more deeply than all the others.

The flag that leaned against the headstone, along with its shadow that caressed the stained surface, appeared as though it were gently embracing a fallen hero.  The reddish brown stain across the bottom appeared as old battle wounds that had long ago left their mark...and the splashes of dirt that stretched upward from the ground reminds one of stained tears from battle weary eyes.  Surrounding this scene in the shadows stood other markers as reminders of the cost of our freedom and the debt that we can never fully repay.

Here at last was that one special photographic moment that told the full story of this serene place...the greater collective story...captured in a way that honored these fallen heroes...their sacrifice and service to their country...to us all...not forgotten.

Keith

To Those Who Served

“That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end”...Lise Hands

There comes a time when we as a country must set aside our political differences and reflect on what it cost for us to first obtain, then retain the freedoms we have.  No amount of words will ever suffice in such an endeavor.  Emotions are often rendered incomplete when translated into written form.  The following photo essay is an attempt to capture first the feeling of gratitude I have regarding those individuals who served, fought, and died to protect all of us, and second to send a message to all veterans...all heroes who placed themselves in harms way so we could live in safety...

Teaching a Photography Workshop

Photo courtesy Ronnie Ryne

One of the more challenging things I've ever been asked to do is to teach a Photography Workshop.  The first time I was asked to do that my initial reaction was..'sure I can do  that...' then I got to thinking about what I actually needed to do to pull it off and I rapidly began to understand just how involved something like that was.

I went over and over all kinds of scenarios...should it be a beginners class...generic...advanced, well as advanced as I could make it anyway...lecture material...hands-on...and so on.  It was hard to focus in on one agenda.  I eventually settled for Generic that would include some basics and tips and techniques.

Photo courtesy Ronnie Ryne

That ended up being the easy part.  Now I had to come up with a viable program that would fit inside a 2 hour window.  Good grief!  Photography concepts are full of material that would probably require a single subject to take a full 2 hours if I thought about long enough, but it had to all make sense for people with a wide range of skill levels.

What I ended up doing was to create a program that was based on many of the same problems I had difficulty with over the years.  As I began to ponder about those difficulties, one recurring idea kept infiltrating my thoughts.  What was the one thing that gave me the most trouble?  As I thought about it, I began to understand that it was not the technical/mechanics of the camera, for those things are rather objective in nature and for the most part, can be learned with a bit of practice and simply reading your owners manual.  No, what gave me the most trouble over the years was learning how to see photographically.

Being able to see photographically requires a different thought process than simply understanding the mechanics of the camera, or to take simple snapshots.  It requires an understanding that light is the key to creating those amazing photographs.  It goes way beyond simply relying on the camera to make all the decisions for you...it requires a blending of how we visually perceive light vs how the camera sees light...the two are not necessarily the same.  Once I began to grasp that concept and apply it to what I was doing photographically, for the first time my photographs began to evolve away from the realm of the ordinary toward the realm of extraordinary...I said it was evolving toward it...I haven't reach it yet.  In fact, the more I evolve toward it, the more I realize that it is becoming one of those journey's that never has an end point.

So with that in mind, I formulated a program that would get the participants to thinking about what they are doing...to possibly change their perspective about photography and remove the intimidation factor related to the mechanics of the camera, and focus their mindset more toward understanding how to see light...how to see photographically.

Although I had previously presented similar material at our local photography club meetings, the first real presentation occurred back in March of 2010 that was sponsored by the county library.  They signed up almost 50 people of which about half showed up.  The program went very well for the first hour until the digital projector lost it's red color and all the sample images thereafter were displayed with a strong greenish hue.  Not exactly the best way to talk about and demonstrate how to see light...but overall it worked out pretty well.

Photo courtesy Ronnie Ryne

Since then I've refined the presentation and have broken it into two sections each about 90 minutes long.  This makes for a much more relaxed presentation as I now don't have to hurry through the material to squeeze it all in in under 2 hours.  The next presentation is coming up next June...it should be a good one as I now know more about how to present it, and have smoothed over some of the rough edges, plus I'll have more time to work through the material.