Photographing Gentle Silence

In recent weeks I've been able to observe from time to time a couple of college students interacting with their friends. The interacting is not so unusual except virtually all of the interaction was done using text messaging. What struck me as odd was the amount of time these two spent with their eyes glued to their phone working those electronic keyboards. My thoughts were one of amazement and sorrow. It seemed these two were so fixated on their high tech gadgets, they failed to grasp just how much of their life was passing away. I once watched for over a half hour as this one person never once lifted an eye from that tiny glowing screen. Even more disconserting was that it continued way longer than the half hour I happened to watch.

I suppose one could compare it to someone who has to have some kind of music...noise really...playing around them all the time. Silence makes them feel uncomfortable. One might also interject that spending hours on end sending and receiving text messages is a kind of silent noise, not unlike the audible noise so many feel they must have in their life. It is like their minds are in a constant state of flux where it dare not slow down for fear of being left out.

Maybe I am unusual or maybe it is a bi-product of my generation, but I seem to crave silence more than noise. Could be too that is why I spend a lot of time in pursuit of captuing photographic art. Most visual arts including photography is a silent art. Once the image is captured and placed on display, it makes no audible sound, yet in many ways a photograph can interject a sense of noise through its interpretation of the visual composition. A good photograph will by its nature pull the viewer into the moment. By doing so the viewer will often hear what the visual effect is trying to portray.

One of my favorite things to do is to sit atop a high prairie knoll and simply allow the gentle part of the moment to fill my heart. The prairie is not silent, nor is it noisy. There is the subtle whisper of the wind as it swirls through the tops of the tall grasses. There are the prairie birds singing to the wind. There are sounds found there one cannot find elsewhere, yet they are so subtle, so soothing, they become a gentle silence.

I love photographing gentle silence.

A Season for Every Color - A Season for Black and White

Every season of the year provides its own unique combination of light and scenic value and all seasons carry their own color value forward into the next one. There is one season where black and white is king. That would be winter when light values shift between contrast and brightness.

The stark nature of winter lends itself well to black and white imagery. Trees are bare, reflections are crisp, skies can be clean and clear or filled with texture. Clouds draw wispy lines at high altitudes, or cover everything in a heavy blanket of rolling overcast.

When I am out searching for a dymanic scene to photograph, I will often attempt to see in black and white, or rather, I try to look beyond the distraction of color and visualize the scene as combination of contrasts and textures filled with varying degrees of brightness. It is not unusual for me to take a photo fully expecting to convert it into black and white. It is not always an easy process to accomplish, but with enough practice, one begins to see beyond the ordinary and extract visual clues from the environment that can be enhanced as a black and white.

Some of this process goes way back to my early days of photography when I would process film and develop B&W prints inside my closet darkroom simple images made from a vintage box camera and roll film. Those days turned out to be invaluable to my learning to see photographically. Doing so with black and white in mind helps to train your eye to see through the clutter and distractions and concentrate on what is truly important...shape, form, contrast, composition.

Listen With Your Eyes, Visualize with Your Heart

Not so long ago I had to endure countless hours sitting in dull, inspiration choking meetings. I won't hold back on how much I hated sitting there. Almost always the meeting would evolve into a Whaa Waahhaa Waaah, please, just shoot me now situation. I was hearing the words, but was not listening to what was being said...at times to my chagrin when I was asked to speak my insights on the discussion at hand...of which I had no clue of what had just been discussed.

Sometimes photography can be like that as well. There are days I hear with my eyes, but I am not listening, or seeing what is really there. I try to take a photo, but it is like I am clueless as to what I am seeing, what I am trying to accomplish.

The trick is to not allow yourself to fall into that state of mind where you hear, but do not listen, where you see, but do not visualize. Some of my best images have been random moments I stumble into. Those are rare. What I have discovered over the years is I can create more consistent quality images if I allow myself to listen with my eyes while I am visualizing with my heart.

The two work together. Using one or the other by itself will often fall short. If I listen with my eyes, but fail to visualize beyond what I am seeing, or if I try to visualize an image, but fail to observe, or listen to what I am seeing, the results are often sub-par.

In all honesty, I am not so sure I can fully explain this concept in such a way as to make it clear. The best way I suppose is to provide an example. Take the image shown above. The creek was running high and flowing over the top of the low water bridge. There was motion, there was the rushing sound of the water as it fell over the edge, there was the light, the reflections, the lines. It was the kind of scene one could easily miss because of the complexity of the visual references being presented.

As a photographer, my purpose is to find order amongst the chaos. In this instance I used a small zoom lense to tighten the visual look. I angled the camera to position the movement into an array of lines and angles. I let the light play across the textures of the flowing water and used a fast shutter to capture the moment. I listened with my eyes to what was being played out in front of me, and before I snapped the image, I saw the finsihed product as black and white in my heart.