I guess everyone would agree that any sort of art is open for interpretation. What did the artist want to say with the song, movie or photo?
Well, if you were like me when you were in literature class in high school and the teacher said that the color of the curtains in a room reflected the writer’s emotional state, you asked yourself what the hell is that crap.
To be honest, a solid number of years had to pass until I started to understand that there’s a meaning behind every form of art. For me it was music that opened me to it.
When I had already spent a solid amount of time taking photos, I started to notice that some just had a different emotional meaning than others. It didn’t matter that much if a photo was well-composed and perfectly exposed, if it had no emotional charge, it just didn’t cut it.
Later on, I read a bit on the meaning of art in general and then gradually I started looking at photos differently. I started trying to understand what the photographer was going through at that particular moment, what he was trying to tell whoever was looking at the photo in 1/500th of a second. When I started to be able to build theories on what he might’ve meant exactly, I started doing that for my photos.
Going through old photos I’d taken and reminiscing I noticed that the type (and number) of photos I was taking varied greatly depending on how I felt and what I was going through in my life. Some were darker, transmitted loneliness, others were colorful and full of life, or just had a spark of positivity. The aspect of photography I use most to tell a story is exposure. Making sure that the amount of light is just enough and hitting the subject just right. I also try to be creative with my compositions, leading the viewer’s eye to exactly what I wanted them to see. Of course, that doesn’t always work but it’s about the experience after all.
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