Bonding

I find this a funny example of the pitfalls of success. You built a very interesting series of your "other worldly" places and characters, and now when you use a similar technique on a simple lifestyle picture, it doesn't really work for me. It's like Picasso's family asking him to do a family picture to give to their mother. When she gets it she says thanks Pablo, but I can't recognize anyone here...... So as usual, excellent technique, and a cool scene. But you ruined me for the other world.

blanksy and I look at photographs vastly differently. Neither is more or less correct. They are just very different...

This one grabbed my attention immediately. It evokes melancholy reminders of my own years past. My son is 24 now. But ten years ago during the scouting phase we canoed together down rivers and across lakes. We hiked into vast Pacific Northwest wilderness-designated reserves. Areas untouched by man, and looking exactly the same as they did 10,000 years ago.

We climbed local mountain peaks, both of us making it to the top when others couldn't. And huddled there during howling wind and snow storms. We spent summer evenings camped in alpine valleys, hanging our packs to keep the bears at bay. And telling stories by campfires into wee hours of the morning.

I am less concerned with the formalities of leading lines, and curves, and form weights, and complimentary tones, and eye dragging, and preexisting bodies of work, and consistancy, and all of those mechanical issues. I am more concerned with the direct emotional response that a single image may generate in its viewers. With what that image is saying to viewers.

This one is saying melancholy to me because it depicts a time in my own life that is past and will never return. In this case it's not universal truth that I seek. It's echoes of my own truth that I don't necessarily any longer want to seek. And be forced to acknowledge as being over.

The photographer does not know me. Does not know my background. Or my history. Yet his photograph speaks strongly to me in ways he could never have known or imagined.

I find that ability to effectively communicate with an unknown viewer to be far more powerful than any leading line or curve. Good photographers and good novelists can both do it. So can good motion picture directors. Perhaps in a sense that ability to so communicate is a universal truth in itself? At least in the good ones?

blansky said:

I find this a funny example....

Click to expand...

So Micalngelo, you thought you had a 'vriend' in 'vlansky', didn't you ? nice image though.