Shoot What It Feels Like

                                                                A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels,
                                                                in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.   

                                                                                                              -- Ansel Adams


                                                               Seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the photograph
                                                               from the snapshot.

                                                                                                              -- Matt Hardy
 


About a year ago, a participant on one of my Road Scholar photo trips sent me a link to a T-shirt that said, "I don't shoot what it LOOKS like.  I shoot what it FEELS like."  I thought that was a great mantra, and I've been trying to be more mindful of that goal in my photography ever since.  (And I bought the T-shirt, too!)

You can see what I mean from the pair of images above, made less than 30 seconds apart.  I'll admit that the bottom image has "had some work done," but even without the post-processing the bottom image conveys a feeling of power that the top one just doesn't have. 

In essence, it's the difference between documentation and interpretation.  There's a place for both in the world of photography, and I do both, but increasingly I'm aiming for interpretation:  what is the feeling I'm getting from the subject, and how can I convey that feeling visually?

Here are a few more examples.   

This is North Window Arch in Arches National Park, in a standard tourist view (documentation) and a different view (interpretation) made five minutes apart:

Here's another pair of the same arch, also made five minutes apart, but on a different day when the light had died.  Documentation versus interpretation:

     Notice the difference?


Even something as ordinary as a house under construction can become something extraordinary.  These two images were made less than a minute apart -- documentation versus interpretation:

 
And just for the fun of it, I got up in the middle of the night to shoot the same scene by the light of the full moon:

 

You get the idea:  Don't just shoot what it looks like.  Shoot what it feels like!