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These six suggestions can set the scene for picture making, however equally important but not on this list, is the photographer's relationship to the subject in front of the camera. Each of us will respond differently to any object or situation. Life experiences color the way we view our world as we construct our personal narratives. This accounts for the variety of photographs we find in our world today.
My son tells me that when he looks at the photos in An Intimate View, he sees the influence of David Lynch because so many images seem to harken back to my childhood memories of the 1950s and 1960s. If this is true (and I won't deny my sincere admiration for the work of David Lynch), it has happened on a subliminal level. For instance It seems obvious that I'm attracted to store windows that evoke an era of my formative years. I recognize childhood memories in baby dolls in Waverly, miniature train sets in Horseheads and a kitchenette set in Montour Falls. A walk down the streets of Bath or Odessa is the proverbial walk down memory lane. Would a twenty year old be so drawn to these relics of the past?
Rather than David Lynch, I myself would have acknowledged the influence of the photographer Minor White who advised:
Be still with yourself
until the object of your attention
affirms your presence.
Being still with one’s self is a discipline that we can master over time. From that center of stillness, we recognize the endless array of shapes, colors and textures in our personal worldview; we then select or frame what is most compelling about the object or view in front of us. With any luck, the final photographs will resonate with the viewer by puzzling, delighting, or challenging them in some way. By sharing my intimate view of the Southern Finger Lakes, my goal is to inspire the viewer to find the unfamiliar in the familiar, to see our world with a fresh eye again and again and again.
TIOGA Broad StreetWaverly, NY
As I review the many images I captured digitally for An Intimate View, I recognize the advice I offer to photography students each year to help them see the world with "new" eyes. I share this list of suggestions or "strategies":
1. Photograph early in the morning or late in the day to capture golden light and long shadows; fog that softens the landscape; rain that glistens on windshields or shimmers on blacktop driveways
2. Photograph at night to see a world familiar in daylight become mysteriously strange with long shutter speeds, enchanting when artificially lit
3. Photograph reflections of reality that surround us, but go unnoticed, including reflections in store windows, mud puddles, mirrors, shiny metals and wet surfaces
4. Photograph shadows that simplify and interact with reality as evocative, organic or geometic shapes
5. Photograph so close that enlarged details turn ambiguously into abstractions of shape, light, color, and line, often stirring our tactile sensibilities by visual means alone
6. Photograph surprising points of view by working a subject from various angles, whether it be that of the bird’s eye soaring above, the worm’s eye at ground level, or randomly by pressing the shutter without conscious framing; choosing how much to sharply focus or blur
Artist Crossroads Project
AN INTIMATE VIEW
is made possible, in part, with public funds from
the New York State Council on the Arts' Decentralization Program, administered locally by
The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes
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