Inspiration(s)

Common and uncommon threads

For a better understanding of what inspires me to photograph, I went back through my digital files starting with the most recent.   I knew I’d been tending recently to simply use my camera to document things or places, but was surprised to see how far back I had to go – about two years – to gather 20-25 images that really had an emotional charge for me.  But that’s why I began the Find Your Eye courses – to return to photography as a more personal expression.

After spending hours with them, thinking about what compelled me to take the picture, looking among them for similar themes: of subject, composition, mood, etc, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t come to a conclusion.  At least not a single one, more like two or three...or five or six.

I’ve always thought that if I could have my fantasy house, I’d like enough rooms to indulge a taste for different decorating schemes: one neutral, calm, very spare, Japanese; another exotic, densely ornamented in glowing colors with Moroccan lamps and carpets; another a sunny garden room, full of plants, hammocks, a floor of Saltillo pavers.  Not surprisingly I found my photographs heading in very different directions too.

On one hand I’m drawn to the exuberant, voluptuous, sumptuous, like these:

This ride's form and colors obsessed me, though you can't see the peaked top here.
I wanted to focus on the center and capture the movement by letting the riders fly outward off the frame

only a portion of the splendor of Oakland's Paramount Theater

On the other hand simple, subdued, even sometimes stark images also attract me:

 

In some of my photos, like most of the ones above, a single strong impression comes through – whatever is there, it’s full-on 100% there. Others are ambiguous and nuanced, like this mysterious child on a billboard

(it turned out to be an ad for the charity that does surgery on cleft palates, though I didn’t realize that until later because the trees blocked that part of her face), or the poignant one below.  Here the glowing summer amusement park colors implying laughter and fun meet the silent and bored isolation of the vendor as the sun goes down in the lull between the day and evening crowds.

I also like to photograph the outright funny, like those little white dogs wearing sunglasses and the tasty salted pig parts booth in my January 10 post.  Flowers are another frequent subject, usually close portraits.

In composition, I notice I use a couple of approaches. In asymmetrical photos, I try to balance open areas with detailed areas, and can’t resist alignment with vertical and horizontal elements, as in some of the images in my January 20 post.  But I also have the strong counter impulse to get right up on a subject, centering it in the frame.  I’m fond of symmetry even if it’s not considered sophisticated.

If there’s been any change in my tendencies over time, it’s probably been an increasing impulse toward color and exuberance.  For pure inspiration, I can easily say the photographic setting/subject that thrilled me most in the past several years is the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk in late afternoon, early evening, though I was also strongly affected by that sofa and painting above in the Oakland Museum.  I need to find more subjects that excite me that much.