At 01:07 PM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote: > > >On Wed, 23 Oct 2002, Emily L. Ferguson wrote: > > >> Now no one could argue with the fact that fall colors in New England >> are, hmm, shall we say, uh, overdone? > > Fall colors everywhere are understandably a popular subject. Overdone ? >Maybe in the sense that they've been done endlessly in the same ways. >There are no cliche'd subjects, only cliche-filled minds shooting them. > >> oak trees all of which conspire to product a heady wine of color for >> anyone sensitive to the outside world. ^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > Aha...every question contains the seeds of its answers. Maybe you >should have left the Provia and the Nikon at home, and run out like >a Maenad, naked in the cold rain, drunk (or otherwise intoxicated) as a >skunk, rolling in the mud, on spongy leaves until covered red and orange, >and blasted away with an Holga until hypothermia sobered you up and sent >you back to the car for another hit...hiccup...oops, where were we ? > >> So as I look at my slides I try to work my way through the morass >> towards something original. > > But...how do you know what *is* original ? You have to study leaf shots, >zillions of them, and then wait for, or make happen in the viewfinder, >something you have never seen. > > Unless one has (or have access to) a huge photo-library and a scholarly >bent, IMO, one should work on oneself as a person. You can only shoot what >you are sensitized to see, who you *are*. In the end, all the hardware, >software, gadgetry, film, etc are inert, dead. You are the only living >link between the image and the scene. > > "Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen." > > --- Robert Bresson > > >> But I'd like to see what others on this list think about the element >> or combination that makes an image rise above the classic, or cliché >> (if you prefer). > > Formulas are the cold Kisses of Death, the ultimate way to stillbirth >your creativity --- unless --- you french-kiss It, subvert them, then they >are boxes that motivate you to escape. > >> Do any of you have a checklist of design elements, or guidelines >> about color or about perspective that you retreat to when you find >> yourself drunk on the subject matter and seeking a basis from which >> to move to something unique? > > NONE. > > Be yourself. Loosen your passion into your photography. Go beyond the >pretty colors, feel what is happening there...in every sense. What do you >feel about the turning of the leaves ? What do you know about them ? The >biology; the forest turning into deadland; the cycle of death feeding >life feeding death and the promise of resurrection >in the Spring; memories inside you loosened by the falling leaves; what >is invisible...or lies below, or above what you are seeing ? Are you too >drunk to see what is before you ? and much more than I have time for >now... > > Hope this helps, or at least confuses. > > --- Luis Emily, And then send us a postcard of the results! "Drunken Maenad series No.1." Their was a maenad named Emaly, famed goddess of film and bacchanaly. She made pictures of Fall trees, fresh and un-trite as you please. And drove crazy her friends and her fam-aly. AZ Build a Lookaround! The Lookaround Book. http://www.panoramacamera.us
