Seeing What isn’t

This is an accidental picture.

I wasn’t even thinking about looking for a picture. I looked up and thought “this doesn’t look good.” I did what I could to stop it. I froze time. That’s my magic power. That lasted all of the 1/500th of a second. The clouds kept moving. So did I.

I’ve been having a discussion with another photographer about image making and photography in her comments. I’m not sure we are n the right track. What really matters is vision. I doesn’t really matter how you get there. I try very hard to make a statement about my vision in a particular picture. Today’s picture is meant to inspire awe in nature. Maybe even a little fear. I could have gone an entirely different direction and turned the picture into something light and frothy. That wouldn’t be what I felt when I looked up and saw giant storm clouds rolling in over the horizon.

Even with my post production, which is a huge part of image making, you might not see the scene as I saw it. After all, we all make our own meaning from art.

This is all part of a much longer discussion for another time.

The picture. I looked up and saw those massive clouds. I made a good base exposure knowing full well that the result was headed for post production. I experimented a lot with different approaches and settled on one that approximates real life. It’s a little bluer than real life. That helps you to understand how I saw things at the time.