Digital BW, The Print

In a message dated 6/26/07 11:57:06 AM, jnhugo@... writes:


> I'm thinking of starting with "why take pictures at all?"
> One of the best explanations I've heard over the years is by Pedro
> Meyer: "I photograph to
> remember"
> 

Thats one major vein of photography, and with "I shoot photographs to tell a 
story" it covers a lot, including: I shoot to in hopes of making change, or 
educating others, of making the world a smaller place, etc...

The other major vein is "I shoot to see, and to share with others how I see". 
Here the key word is "how", not "what"... I was struck by this anew recently 
while I sat on the terrace at a botanical garden. There were people all around 
me, taking photos of flowers. The patterns that the shadows of the metal 
chairs made on the terrace caught my eye, and my "art shot" of the day is of a 
chair shadow, virtually no color, and definately no flowers or butterflys in it. 
When I showed it to the people that were with me that day, it was something 
they had seen (they could identify what it was, and where it had been taken) but 
something they had not "seen"... they had not found the art in it that I had. 


This aesthetic view of photography explains a number of factors not really 
covered by the other side. Yes, I am telling a story about a chair, in the sun, 
on a summer day, and in a more abstract sense about line and form and shadow. 
But also, I'm challenging others to see: to see what I saw, to understand why 
I shot it, and bothered to process and print it in just this way, to see how 
it relates to a larger aesthetic, my body of work perhaps (if they know it), 
the other works on display around it, past concepts of art, current trends in 
art. 

I think those areas: photo as memory, photo as story, and photo as art, cover 
a good deal of it; sharing your memories, sharing your stories, sharing your 
vision.

C. David Tobie
Product Technology Manager
ColorVision Business Unit
Datacolor Inc.
CDTobie@...
www.colorvision.com


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