"The Feeling" of Photography

Originally written in my journal on deviantART Tue Oct 12, 2010, 4:29 PM

This is going to be deep so you have been warned.

I wonder how much others really think I do, that is if they do at all. I am sure maybe one or 2 of you do, but how many more do I am not sure of. There are a very select few who know this about me, and I mean few, as in I can maybe count them on one hand on DA.

So what is it I am talking about? Ok….

I wonder how many others have this secret meaning with their photography, an emotional attachment to many of the images which they post, which convey a greater sense of feeling and meaning within them? I remember when I first started on DA I used to be so excited to upload my latest shots that I had just taken, to share with everyone. Somewhere along the way, many many MANY moons ago, that changed. While 85% of the shots I do upload are fresh from the latest photo shoot, there are many which are not. I think this started changing several years ago when I started to become enamored by images which contain a sense of feeling within them. Images which many traditional photographers would probably frown down upon because they have been processed, sometimes rather heavy handed.

I wonder if my feelings are so often seen by what it is I upload on here…how I felt, what I experienced, how I thought at that very moment. I for one am not so sure but I do hope so. I wonder if people upload images mainly in this same manner, images which they hold deep to their heart that hold a much deeper meaning in them than what most viewers see?

Take for example the shot, while everyone was chasing a Bear around behind me, I was alone about 15 minutes by myself, just watching the sunlight come upon the peaks, watching the color change as the sun broke the horizon, and I felt like I completely belonged in this moment, with the soft echoes of some unknown soft song coming out of the car radio. It was in the background but it fit the entire scene as a whole. It isn’t so much the beauty of the landscape itself I was trying to represent, but the feeling I had whilst being there. What it is that I experienced.

 

 

 

Truthfully I have a lot of photographs like this, but most will never be uploaded on here…stuff shot in cemeteries and the like. I don’t upload it because I don’t think many would be remotely interested in seeing it. Some of it is very heavy though I will say that, and probably very unlike what you would expect from me.

Sometimes when life is being a PITA I am of a two tiered train of thought, one is just to go and get lost somewhere with my camera in nature, and the other is just to kind of go crawl under my covers and sleep, because I don’t have the desire to shoot. Luckily the latter happens very rarely.

Honestly the next images you see from me, well, I am trying to decide what I should post honestly but in it lies a deeper story than what you see, within that very image. Wildlife images are usually an exception to this rule, but generally everything else has this quality about it. Considering the last 2 weeks have been enormously hard at times, it may very well show up in my photos, who knows.

In the end, I hope that my images remain long after I am gone on this face of this earth, and I hope that maybe they touched someone along the way. that is the solstice which I would have in knowing that they did this. If they are able to do that, then I must be doing something right.

John