Internet bloggers love to make lists of things - it is one of the techniques that we are told will increase the hits on our site. The more outrageous the premise - or common the theme - the better. Everyone gets to relate to the list and then decide that the author is full of it.
I am more interested in seeing into the mind of the reader - in particular the visual mind. I want to know what has made the photographer take the photographs.
Sometimes this is obvious - the photographer has been given a dollar and told to go out and take a certain picture. Or the photographer has speculated that if they take a certain picture they can sell it later for a dollar. It is commerce.
Sometimes it is need - emotional need. The first picture of a long-desired baby...followed by 32,000 more of them. Or the last picture of Grandma just before she went over the top at Ypres. These are the basic photographic lining of our memory box, and we can all understand it.
But what about the...shhhh, don't speak loud...Art picture. The one taken to show, and shown until the pixels are ragged, but never paid for. And not a relation. Why? Or more to the point, what image was there in the mind of the photographer that influenced them? You can generally find out if you can get an honest answer to this core question: What is your all-time favourite photograph?
You can answer that one for yourselves. Find the one that you have always loved and look to see if it is re-appearing time and time again in your images. Don't be ashamed of this - after all something has made you the way you are in every field of endeavour - even if it is just the memory of being knocked about.
Should you break free of it? CAN you break free of it? Can you do it better and make it the springboard of success - after all it is sitting there in your psyche whirring way anyway - might as well use the power.
Okay - now you know why there is an August Sander picture of the Konditormeister at the top of this blog. That's my prime image. I don't know why, but it has always made me feel good to see it. I don't really know if any of my own pictures exhibit all of the features but I can see some of it somewhere in my successful ones. I just wish that he had had the opportunity to work in colour.
Uncle Dick
