In New Hampshire, Autumn constructs a beautiful array of colors. The thick overgrowth during the summer transforms into blissful orange, red, and yellow pockets of different hues. As the leaves begin to fall, the landscape reveals different apertures of painted leaves. In the season’s natural beauty, time seems to slip away faster than we realize.
I’ve always been someone who remains equally grounded, but with their head lost in thought. Lately, I find myself focusing on different prospective projects that take a lot out of me. While photography is very superficial and immediate, these other projects are not.
These new projects are rooted in discipline and consistency. I’m drafting something I never thought I could stomach. It is the transcription of ideas. The culmination of so many different experiences coalesced into a square box made from the material of a tree. It has not been an easy undertaking for me: monitoring flow, tonality, and word choice. Writing may be easy for some; for me, it requires so much more.
As I contrast and compare photography and writing, one is rooted in immediacy while the other is rooted in tact. Photography is a gateway to our natural world. The creativity involved might somehow lack imagination. Our external world is revealed to be accurate; nothing goes to the inner sense. We are in the same plane of existence, our unified experience, and the image preserves it. Ultimately, utterly different than writing.
The concept of communicating an idea through text is so groundbreaking. Think about that for a second. We can deliver our experiences in life through some form of the numeral or etch on a piece of paper for others to collect. It’s both an art, but also completely necessary. Everything is rooted in writing — our technology, the very car that we drive. The planes we see in the sky. Everything, rooted in the transference of idea. Calligraphy.
A story with two different faces: earnest and humor. (Note the second picture’s backdrop is refined from the first. Focusing on the subject’s face to foster a different connection through the use of visual information)
Writing is thousands of years old, while photography has only been around for a fraction of that time. Thought presents an array of difficulty and anxiety. While writing something of importance, from the heart and passion, there is no perfect combination of words. There is no secret formula that one can pull out of their back pocket to save them. Writing is the bane for some, while it is redemption for others. It is one of the most subjective, requiring an intricate toolbox of secrets and experience through numerous and repeated failures.
Photography and writing are very much rooted in the same discipline, failures, and experiences. Equally subjective, equally relative. One person will hate the way you write, while another will fall in love with it. One person will hate the way your photographic process or approach is, while another will show affection and appreciation. There is nothing but chaos, which is valid for all forms of art.
Through the past three years, I realized writing took the backseat of my life. I abandoned it in pursuit of interpreting my natural world through the lens of a camera. Photography involves a level of intricacy, much like writing.
There is more involved in capturing a single image. Most people nowadays take pictures with their smartphones. There is more going on beneath the surface. Learning these technical details was so breathtakingly addictive, that I was abandoning a core component of my identity: writing.
I learned something, something within, through the process of photography. I can collect my thoughts and ideas; resonate with them physically rather than artificially. I can, in fact, hold out my hand and see the byproduct of our existence through the use of our ocular perspective. Writing, although very similar, is not always like this. While holding a camera in hand, you remain very much connected to the world around you. You affix to the idea of a passing moment as art. Photography is still very much the transference of intentions, only through a different medium. Controversial in some ways, but yet communicative as writing.
As I continue to press forward, I realize that I can combine both of these disciplines to create a story. There is nothing more rooted in life than fostering a connection of people through visual information, guided with a narrative voice.