Visiting the Welsh coast the other week we came upon a gorgeous quaint 'Reading Room' on the seafront. I wasn't quite sure whether or not to enter as it looked private but had the words 'Please close the door' posted outside so this told me otherwise, I bravely stepped inside to find the most unusual public reading room, just like someone's parlour with stunning ocean views. What a wonderful community facility I thought imagining myself getting comfy in the armchair by the window reading some mysterious seaside adventure novel. This dedicated reading room made me think about the power of words and writing...
Did you ever fall in love with a few little words that tumbled out of the blue sparking off some random synapse connections giving you that 'aha' feeling? An epiphany that perfectly encapsulates something hidden, some concept that up until that point you only knew intuitively, that you had never joined the dots before? I heard such a sentence recently ~
"Photography literally means ~ writing with Light".
I was stunned by this definition for I had never heard of it before and was immediately enthralled by the notion of photography being a means to writing, writing with light! The idea of writing with light conveys a fullness that is much more than mere aesthetics, being on a deeper communicative level. This revelation is conducive to self exploration I feel in finding out why an image impacts, why we are drawn to some images and not others and the reason for this connection...
I am a newby to Instagram although I've known about this photography platform for years I haven't as yet posted any of my own pictures but am fascinated by the volume of imagery out there. Through this new to me medium I'm finding myself scanning for connection, that is any image that enters my radar of interest. This activity is very useful to understanding what it is I am connecting with and why, I am 'reading' the photographic 'writing' so to speak. For example following the Instagram hashtags I have picked up and put down groups of images that I thought I would be interested in but soon realized I was becoming bored, although the images may have been amazingly beautiful they seemed to lack that little bit more personal connection to me... This made me wonder what exactly is it about some images I click with? You might ask why I think this is important to the photographer? My answer would be that this exploration helps to uncover or discover our own unique individuality which in turn stimulates our own creatively at the deepest inner levels. It is at this level we are able to create our best work! These creations put out there become reciprocal to the ones we connect with, or those who 'read' our images as it sparks off their own creativity. We are communing with others who are on our wave length so to speak by writing with light! By such communication we are appreciated and valued for expressing our unique!
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