| home | other articles |
As should be clear by now, I excel in only one thing; and that is creativity and craftsmanship in the formulation of structure of concept using only words. I take a concept, boil it down, and present a finished product: emotion. As with light and shadow and framing and other similar constructs, I erect emotion from theme flow voice and other such structures.
I present to you a problem: these two mediums are simply entirely different things. To creative writing's Pure concentrated creative freedom, there is photography's limitation to what can be shown through a lens onto a sensor in only what is directly in front of you. To creative writing's source of material being the literal extent of the author's own depth of emotional gamut, there is photographies source of material of mere reality. To the author's view, to every freedom of creative writing, there is severe limitation, and that only.
And yet here lies the author, sorting through dozens of photographs from the authors prized camera, after hours of tireless and purely thankless work capturing things that the author had no control over whatsoever in the moment. What disgusting displays of laziness! What examples examples of theft of structure! What a fraud!
I disagree. The author, keep in mind, is only really interested in a certain subset of the photographical cannon: street photography. in this practice, the photographer captures as much as possible. People, buildings, movement, stillness, tons of metal and lightweight and refined angles of efficiency. The photographer of the street, mark, captures.
Capture- consider this word. You capture a split second moment, which is now defined by permanency, not movement. And yet, the goal the most photographs attempt to capture is not a wash of color and structure only, but, mark, emotion.
I will make the claim here that all art is the reprocessing of emotion. The claim does not even need to be made that each form of art does this in dramatically different ways. My home art form is created by, purely, the mass creative freedom of the author. I suggest that photography is not, and never will be, able to match this creative freedom. No amount of creative placements of subjects in a studio will ever match the dynamic flight of moving art. Sad but unavoidable truth; don't beat around the bush.
But more journalistic photography, such as street photography, is different. The goal here is not to tell a story, but to capture one.
The asset then that makes the ideal street photographer is not only knowledge of one's tools. The street photographer becomes an entirely different form of artist from any mentioned so far here. The street photographer becomes a curator.
The world is, indeed, a stage. A camera is not a spec sheet. A camera is not the ideal placement of buttons or the perfect set of tools. A camera is not even very special at all. What is special is the fact that the world is a stage and that I, and my camera, are the audience.
After the show, comes the arduous game of curation.
…
quit at 12:48 AM lol