Thread: What Do Your Photographs Say About You?

My photographs would say that I have no family and no pets. They show a person that finds it difficult to empathize with people. The photographs that I do post of people show them at work or a work type task, be it their paid employ or what they do as a volunteer or in pursuit of their hobby or interests. I find much street photography of what are anonymous people going about mundane tasks of little interest to me. That being said it might be surprising if I was to say that one of the photographers I admire is W Eugene Smith. However his photographs of people are generally incorporated into a photographic essay where both the pictures AND the words work together to place those people in context with an interesting story, so for example his "Spanish Village" or "Country Doctor" are excellent examples of what, if things had been different in my make up, I should have liked to emulate.

So my main interest in roll film days was landscape photography, usually devoid of people and hopefully avoiding modern artifacts. I would consider a vapour trail across a cloudscape the ruination of the image. I've often found compact digital image quality a little lacking for that genre, perhaps my DP2M will rectify that for me. Perhaps I'll pursue the small details in the landscape, a sort of abstract image but one which could be a landscape in itself, time will tell.

All in all a person who is out of step with this fast developing modern world, not only out of step with it but divorced from it and rapidly becoming disenchanted with it. So old sailing vessels and steam engines show me harking back to a bygone era, perhaps reflecting an interest in local history.

I could say more, but perhaps that's already too much!

Barrie

I feel that writing and photography are no different, both are forms of communications. The greater the ability of the word/photo to communicate and to express the thoughts and emotions of the writer/photographer, the more successful the photograph or the written piece. Success has many standards of measurements.

My photos don't say anything about me--you have to look at them.

I think people try to hard to conceptualize art. And everyone fails. I find I make better pictures the less I think.

I find writing and photography very different. One is a temporal form and the other a spacial one. One exists using definitive symbols the other does not.

I have found very few writer say anything important about photography.

Originally Posted by Gary

The greater the ability of the word/photo to communicate and to express the thoughts and emotions of the writer/photographer, the more successful the photograph or the written piece.

Do we really express our thoughts or emotions? Are we simply reacting to outside stimulus intuitively? The more successful my photograph, the less of "me" I see in it.

I think the guy that said the unexamined life was not worth living was just trying to justify procrastination...

I don't particularly want my photographs to say anything about me. Theres no particular concept there, I just shoot things that I like to look at later. If others like it too, thats great, but if not... meh.

All my photographs say about me is "this guy needs to buy a medium format digital camera"

Originally Posted by Xuereb

They say: aging hypochondriac & eccentric.

Never, ever would I have seen that in your photos Xuereb!

I have no idea what my photos say about me. I do know that in order for me to want to photograph something I have to be drawn to it in some way. (Of course that does not mean every time I push the button that I'm thinking of a masterpiece...)

I really don't like it when someone I'm with says "Oh, you should take a picture of this." It often makes me feel like running the other way. Lately I've been rather preoccupied and am often documenting a transformation of an old house that we're renovating.

Personally, I'm not egotistical enough to ask 'what does this image say about me?' or to think about the 'meaning' that I want to convey to viewers or critics.

I also think his notions of 'concept' and 'meaning' are a bit dodgy too, but that's another matter.

Originally Posted by Hikari

My photos don't say anything about me--you have to look at them.

I think people try to hard to conceptualize art. And everyone fails. I find I make better pictures the less I think.

Nope, everything you do and everything you communicate says something about who you are. Someone of the defining statements may be insignificant while others may be a chapter of who you are. Whether you should emphasis who you are in every photograph, to minimize content over style, is another matter.