Snowy Tension
I’m going to share a couple of photographs that normally wouldn’t make it onto the site to illustrate an epiphany I had the other day. The epiphany occurred in part because I spent some time staring at this photograph rather uncomfortably.
The epiphany comes at the end, though. First, the uncomfortable part. I had no idea this photograph was so full of tension until I got in into Lightroom. I just didn’t see it when I was taking the photo. I saw it when I cropped it to straighten the fence. It was then I realized how terribly wrong this picture is. I don’t know that I can actually explain it. There’s some obvious things: the severe contrast, the jaggedness of the fence, the leaning of the snow cap, the rumpled snow and so forth. Ultimately, if the snow cap is going to fall, it’s going to fall on what looks like unbroken snow. That seems peaceful except it signals the end of the snow cap. I don’t know, it just bothers me. So I like it.
Then I realized that in the same session, I had taken a picture of the imprint of a wing on a neighbor’s rooftop. It suddenly seemed interesting to compare the tension in both photographs. This one doesn’t have anywhere near the same impact, but still an interesting experiment.
Now that you’ve sat through all that, here’s the epiphany: I realized that when I am actually taking the photograph, I am not able to concentrate on the emotive content – I’m too preoccupied with light, exposure and composition. Said a much nicer way, I’m comfortable seeing in light and composition, but I’m still working on the emotive part.
