All the arts begin with a blank — a screen, a canvas, a room. All the arts, that is, except photography. Or at least photography as I have been practicing it.
It’s one thing to find pretty corners around my house and life and record those. Those documentary moments are important to me, my family, others…but they remain only documentary. Now matter how much I attempt to coerce a vision through composition techniques and post-processing goodness, the images remain outside of my imagination. Less a reflection of my inner vision and more a reflection of my technical skill (or, sometimes in all honesty, lack thereof).
There have been a few times when an image has come to my mind that I have then recreated through the lens. Too few times.
The year I created this image, I was driving by this spot almost everyday. One cold January day, I “saw” a figure walking through the snowy trees. A few days later we had snow (and a day off of school) and so I scurried over with remote in hand and brought my vision to life.
I think this is what attracts me to Gregory Crewdson, Brett Warren, and Annie Leibovitz’s Vogue photos, their images are clearly created out of their interior worlds.
I picked up a copy of Twyla Tharps book The Creative Habit at the library yesterday and I am finding it rich with ideas. Her meditation on “the white room” is what sparked these random thoughts of mine.