Lately I have discovered two projects that seems to resonate well for me. First there is my shots of the forest, and now the night shots. I haven’t posted that often, and quite frankly, I haven’t been that much out with the camera either the last couple of weeks, but I do spend quite some time on the photos I have so far.
As a result of this, I’m starting to understand something about why I like to photograph. I have always had a rich imagination, and I don’t necessarily like to picture reality as it is. I often feel like I want to add some mystery to a scene, or create some dramatic effect. For some reason, I have said to myself that this is not what I should do, and I have suppressed it. I have fooled myself into believing that I should create photographs that are true to the original subject, but no, that’s not me. The pictures I like best is usually the ones that does not exists in real life. I’m not talking about way over the top photoshopping here. The pictures look just like when I saw them, but I don’t think anyone standing besides me when I shot the pictures would agree that it was like that. Is that a bad thing?? No, I don’t think so. I don’t take pictures to document anything, nor do I claim they are a true record of what I saw. Well, they are records of what I saw, not what anyone could have seen.
Hmm, still haven’t finalized my thoughts on this, but it felt kind of good to get started. Somehow I feel like I’m starting to tear down a barrier that I didn’t know about until now.
Kjell, I do like both of these night photographs, but for different reasons. The first has an interesting graphic appearance that attacts me. The second has some very nice atmospher about it, that seems to create a sense of mystery and intrige, which keeps me looking longer. Perhaps it is the added visual complexity compared to the first, which seems to lend itself to a “quick” read. Nice!!