When I started working on this website, I thought about what first interested me in photography all those years ago. After going back and forth for some time, it came down to the unique way a photograph could tell a story.
I’ve always been drawn to stories, wherever I found them. Whether a novel, comic book, song, movie, painting or, yes, a photograph — they captured my imagination with the story they had to tell.
In a purely technical sense, a photograph is a story told with light and time. My very first course in photography was enigmatically called, ‘Non-verbal Communication.’ While it just as easily could’ve been a course in say, sign language, I soon realized that the idea was to help students become more intentional when making photographs.
Essentially, a photograph is a record of a scene — people, places, events, etc. It’s a memory, captured light. But it can also express something the photographer wishes to convey, an idea or a feeling. However simple or complex the ambition, when we raise that viewfinder to our eye, the resulting image is a combination of the intuitive and the intentional.
I like to think of it this way: whatever draws us to a scene or a subject, it has engaged the intuitive part of our brain. It might be the quality of the light, a humorous juxtaposition, a striking face, the play of color, or a dramatic moment. Once our intuitive mind draws us to the photographic possibility, we then engage the intentional part of our brain, using the techniques and tools we’ve developed to follow through and get the picture.
These tools of the photographer — composition, camera angle, lens choice, shutter speed, lens aperture, etc. — are akin to the painter’s brush, the writer’s pen or keyboard, and the sculptor’s knife. They are the technical means of expressing an idea generated in the intuitive mind.
For me, this became the notion of ‘image as story’, a useful way of approaching photography that helps me define the ‘why’ and ‘what’ whenever I bring my eye to the viewfinder.
So, I invite you to click through the headings above and explore. My travel blog, under ‘Travel Takes’, may help when thinking about future travel plans. Hopefully, the images here will inspire you to explore some of these amazing corners of our world and bring back your own images and stories.
–Bob Demyan