THE WAY IT IS…

Of course, I know that taking a picture of something doesn’t change it; but facing any part of the world with camera in hand, the thoughtful photographer asks, “How do I want to see it.”  A few years ago the process of seeing the world and “drawing with light” on light-sensitive film involved a darkroom process.  Today millions of people with cameras extend the process of deciding how to see the world by taking captured images to a computer for editing. The “final” image is a statement.  After I’ve edited a photographic image for posting in my BLOG, with the picture I’m saying, “This is the way I see it.”

Many of the pictures in the new show at The Museum of Photographic Arts were made in the first few decades after the birth of photography. They are in Black and White.  I came away from the exhibition determined to “play around with” ways of seeing in black and white a world of color.  Today I made a picture of Margaret and David… in black and white.  

For several days I’ve been thinking about taking pictures of birds in Chinese artifacts that we acquired in our years of living in Singapore. A couple of the birds are antique carvings on wooden panels.  A couple of the birds are painted on silk scrolls.  Those, too,  are old, but they aren’t as old as the wood carvings. What I like about them is that the carvings and paintings tell us how Chinese artists saw the world in their age.  I made a choice about how I would “picture” them.  I decided color says how I see the birds, the art, much better than black and white would.