How does one capture an emotion?

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>There's motion, and then there's motion. The same is true of emotion. I feel a lot of emotion when I see the pictures and hear the music. I posted this before, but here it is again:</p>

<p><a href="

[LINK]</strong></a><br /> <br /> There's power here both in the photos and in the music. There is also that residual power of memories of those who were there, or who remember the summer of 1969 (or some similar or analogous era in their own lives). I was not there but I was about to transition out of my world of chemistry, math, and physics into the world of social sciences and philosophy. Change was in the air. Change was in my life. My reaction to it is thus very personal. Others may see "dirty hippies making a lot of noise."</p>

<p>The video has tremendous power (although not everyone likes it), and its power comes from lots of photos strung together, the music, memories--everything that provides the larger context, and CONTEXT IS SO DAMNED PERSONAL. If that one did not do it for you, how about this one?</p>

<p><a href="

[LINK]</strong></a></p>

<p>I am not posting them to prove anything. I am posting them because I like them--and I am sitting here trying to figure out why I like them so much while others can have such a vehement reaction against them.</p>

<p>Context is everything. Context is VAST.</p>

<p>--Lannie<em><strong><br /></strong></em></p>

[Julie H]

<p>Lannie, even though those clips are fantastic ...</p>

<p>... I'm going to be a big old wet blanket and say that those videos just <em>prove the difficulty of the issue of this thread</em>: we're doing STILL, SILENT photography here. We precisely can't use the means of those videos.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>... or, if I think I've got lemons, to make some lemonade ...</p>

<p>Video and music pass.</p>

<p>Still pictures hurt and hurt again. Stills stay.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>But, out of context, what are they?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Lannie, I misunderstood this when you said it and responded that nothing can be out of context. I thought you were posing some sort of ideal situation or omniscient perspective where something like a photo could be seen out of context. Since many on PN argue that a photo should "stand alone" as if it could have no context, I was making sure to argue against that stance. As soon as you clarified it to mean that photos could stand in various contexts and be out of the <em>original</em> context, I realized I misread you and moved on. Nothing you've said about contexts would I rebut and I'm not attributing to you anything else. You and I are ONE on the subject of context and have been since that post.<br>

<br>

Much of the reason you like the videos and others hate them is political. Photos are often political, even when not overtly so. That can cause emotional reactions and differences.<br>

<br>

<a href="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/10628832-md.jpg">EXAMPLE.</a> One PN member had a negative reaction to this photo (which is now in a hidden folder since over the years I just got bored of it) because, as he put it, "there is a part of me that is deeply revolted by this image. And, this has--and here, you can question my sincerity--very little to do with the sexual orientation of the couple. There is, if you want a heterosexual equivalent to it, a Henry Milleresque or Fyodor Karamazov essence to this image, of the old lecher preying on the young and vulnerable that should be unsettling to any decent person. even if this was a man and woman, given the almost 30 or even 40 year difference in age, one would be inclined to believe that this man must have been in his 40s when he started courting the man in the foreground, who must have then been in his preteens."<br>

<br>

His reaction certainly has nothing to do with me, with the actual people who are in the photo (who had just met that day), or with what I thought was being portrayed. But it stopped me in my tracks, not because I agreed with him but because I knew he meant it and I believed him.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Julie, I included the videos in part because they give so many contextual points of reference. They do not prove anything, but the virtual immersion in context does provide a certain power to evoke emotions.</p>

<p>On a practical level, can we learn anything about still photography from watching videos? That is a question that comes to me right now as I writing. I am not sure what the answer might be in every case, but if I watch Carlos Santana or Jimmy Hendrix in a video, it brings back memories and the corresponding emotions--for me. It might not for others. Can stills ever do that? I think maybe sometimes they can. Will the videos help my photography in the future. Hm. . .</p>

<p>At the very least, in this case the videos can give us a larger context for understanding stills from that event (Woodstock) and that era: the Sixties, the counter-culture, the anti-war movement, etc.</p>

<p>Feelings ran high during era about so many things. The two videos together touch on many of the "hot button" issues of the late sixties. They are almost a form of total immersion for me where memories and emotions of that era are concerned.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Lannie wrote: "can we learn anything still photography from watching videos?"</p>

<p>Mmmmm ... thinking about it. If I imagine shooting the scene, maybe.</p>

<p>What emotional photos do to me is invade my space; they stand too close. They are a little bit rude.</p>

<p>I may love it or I may hate it, but unlike other kinds of photos, the effective emotional ones are unavoidably (have been made to be unavoidably) in my personal space.</p>

<p>[Edited to add: Fred, I like that picture. Good example. Thanks.]</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>I've been heavily influenced by my love for and familiarity with movies. It's one reason I love the storytelling aspect of photos and am often trying to expand that aspect in my work. Because non-documentary movies are often staged and utilize actors, I'm moved by how theatricality translates into authenticity and can capture very real emotions and truths. That's influenced my work as well. Because cinematographers are often on the move, their sense of composition has a kind of built-in past/future to it. They're always coming from somewhere and going to somewhere, moving into a room or out of a window, getting closer or moving further away. I think that can have an influence on still shooting, a sense not that you are still but that you are moving from and to. If you feel the "stillness" then the contrast with a movie can be profound as well.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>One PN member had a negative reaction to this photo (which is now in a hidden folder since over the years I just got bored of it) because, as he put it, "there is a part of me that is deeply revolted by this image. . . ."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, as you and I both know, sometimes persons don't know their own motives--or the reason(s) for their own emotional responses or reactions.</p>

<p>"Reaction" was the appropriate word in this case.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Philip, I cannot get sound where I am right now, but <a href="

photos</strong></em></a> are extraordinary!</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>Outstanding Phil, and the music really tones the images. Must also agree with you with regards to "Solitude of Ravens". That set of photos would seem to go very well with the kind of music in your set, contemplative and moody and I think you much more elegantly expressed somewhat of what I was trying to say about the project the OP linked to. Thanks for that.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Thanks, Phil. The music does create an interesting experience.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Fukase's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/24/masahisa-fukase-ravens-photobook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Solitude of Ravens</a> feels more true as a photographic example of <a href="http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=89" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">heartbreak</a>, especially when viewed in retrospect. That's not because he photographed or illustrated the concept of heartbreak but because the sense of heartbreak was with him when he was out photographing all the things that didn't necessarily had anything to do with heartbreak at all.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I have often wondered to what extent my own emotional state when taking the picture really does come through in the picture. I am not totally convinced that my feelings at the time of the shoot are the most important thing about evoking a similar feeling in the viewer.</p>

<p>That is, of course, a separate issue. I do love the pictures that you have given us, and the effect that you have given us with the music together with the images.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>Lannie, its not always just the feeling at the time of taking the photo, but I always considered the production of the photo to be part of the process of creating the overall photograph.</p>

[Sandy Vongries]

<p>25 pages -- wow! Hasn't the "chewing gum lost it's flavour" yet?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Sandy, obviously not. That OK with you?</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Picking up on what Barry said, making the photo often does help produce the emotion. It can be kind of a back and forth thing. </p>

[Sandy Vongries]

<p>Fred G., not pejorative, I just haven't the fire in the belly for it anymore. Bit of a chuckle, self directed as well. Cheers!</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Steve Gubin said in another thread that my photos sometimes show a kind of sadness and loneliness, but I can't ever remember feeling depressed or sad at the moment of taking the picture.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Not disagreeing with the above, but they're not in the photo. I'm more interested in what's in the box. </p>

<p><img src="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/box_frame.jpg" alt="" width="560" height="413" /><br>

I also think that that frame per se is a big part of the challenge to what we're discussing; it needs to be foregrounded. Emotions are everywhere all the time, but they flit. A lot of the work we're considering seems to me to be like bird feeders; it offers an attractive perch, but I'm looking at bird seed and only occasionally, and momentarily, at a bird.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>The type of photography that I mostly do is one of responding to whatever is out there and comes into view when I'm photographing. If anything, it requires a pushing back of emotion ( to the level of the subconscious ) in order to be more receptive.</p>

<p>Even in happiness, there's a sadness - a longing - in the <em>memory</em> of it, something that no longer is. The photograph being proof of what is gone, not what once was.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Phil, thanks for clarifying. That makes a lot more sense, but I am still trying to reconcile it with your post (to which I was responding):</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Fukase's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/may/24/masahisa-fukase-ravens-photobook" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Solitude of Ravens</a> feels more true as a photographic example of <a href="http://www.gallery51.com/index.php?navigatieid=9&fotograafid=89" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">heartbreak</a>, especially when viewed in retrospect. That's not because he photographed or illustrated the concept of heartbreak but because the sense of heartbreak was with him when he was out photographing all the things that didn't necessarily ha[ve] anything to do with heartbreak at all.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>That last sentence in particular is still puzzling to me, especially "the sense of heartbreak was with him."</p>

<p><em>It is interesting that in these last exchanges we are analyzing the state of mind (emotional state?) of the photographer rather than the emotion that is either (1) evoked in the viewer or (2) is visible as facial expressions of the subject(s). <strong>So we have talked about viewer's emotions and the subject's emotions, and now we are suddenly talking about the photographer and his or her emotions.</strong></em></p>

<p>I really did not anticipate that the discussion would go in this direction, especially with your somewhat puzzling statement about "the sense of heartbreak was with him." Perhaps I am misreading or simply misunderstanding.</p>

<p>I do confess, however, that this is a fascinating turn in the discussion for me.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>Julie, I love your photograph of an emotion shown in the frame above, but whose emotion am I looking at? That of the viewer, the subject, or the photographer?</p>

<p>(While I'm at it, what's the back story on that photo, Julie?)</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I wonder how emotion is related to mood. The same question above arises, I suppose: <em>whose</em> mood?</p>

<p>Here is one of my moody photos, for what it's worth. Does it betray my mood of the moment or of that epoch in my life? Can one possibly infer anything at all about my mental state (including emotions) while taking it? processing it? (I darkened it in post.)</p>

<p>All that I remember is that I was happy that day. I had gotten myself a nearly new D3s on eBay for about half price, and for me shooting it was like driving a Cadillac. (I had never shot a professional grade Nikon before, although I had once owned a Canon 1Ds II.) So, in this particular case, I do remember something about my mood and/or emotional state. I'm not sure that any of that is relevant to "understanding" or responding to the photo, though.</p>

<p>For the record, the title is a blatant lie. A storm had passed, but much of the day remained. The "imminent nightfall" was strictly something I decided to try in post, later in the evening. I think that I was still happy. I doubt that it shows. This is Julie's bird feeder, I think. You can see it, but you can't see the birds.<br>

Not only is the title a lie here. The whole photo is in some ways a total fiction. I doubt that it resembles either what I saw or what I felt. The final product is what I imagined during post-processing and was able to realize in the finished photo as presented. Looking at it now, I am not so happy with it. The darkness looks forced to me now. </p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

[Julie H]

<p>Lannie, not sure about emotion, but that is an interesting picture. That road has character; it has skin; it looks like the (hump)back of a whale.</p>

<p>Here's one for you to ponder: <em>Holding Virginia</em> by Sally Mann [<a href="https://unrealnature.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/mann_holdingvirginia.jpg">LINK</a>]</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Lannie, though there often might be, there often is not a one-to-one correspondence of photographer's emotion and emotion evoked. It's not that formulaic. You said it yourself. Remember the fiction part!</p>

<p>A photographer may create something drawing from his emotional life in general rather than in specificity. I think many artists actually (re)create feeling rather than representing the feelings they have at the moment. Chopin knew melancholy and so could draw from those feelings to write the Nocturnes but I don't know that he was feeling melancholy precisely when he wrote each one. And I don't know that he was thinking about melancholy when he wrote them either. He was drawing upon it.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<blockquote>

<p>Fred sums it up nicely, in how the photographer can draw upon feelings rather than represent them directly.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's sort of like acting, I guess, Phil. Or teaching, which can be like stand-up comedy, especially when it fails. My late class seemed to be dragging today, and so I told the students that it was not their imagination that a fifty-minute class seemed like a two-hour class. I told them that I had gained so much weight that I was beginning to slow down time. (Their vacant stares told me that they didn't get the allusion to Einstein's relativistic effect, but I keep trying.) We have our emotional repertoires every time we go "on stage," which we are often doing, somewhere.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>