What Lies Beneath

A portent of the times.

Just when we thought it was safe to step back off the sidewalk...

(I sure wish I could see the world like you do!)

Classic Jack McRitchie find.

Jaws! 17 or whatever the number they're on now.

Little did the car know ....... its shadow created a two-dimensional asphalt creature.

What, indeed, lies beneath...? Well, it seems fathomless....I mean your perception of things. A unique angle, as usual, leaving the observer, well....in the shadows. 

DG

I think I have seen this under my bed 

Well seen and presented.

Classic :)!

Thanks for your response to this picture. Some pictures I have to work at to connect with and others it's like....whoa! where did that come from? I'm an admirer of the work of Carl Jung and this seemed like a rather threatening shadow archetype. The illusion was aided in no small way by the fortuitous positions of the rock and cigarette butt. Here's an interesting question: how much do we project our interior world on the canvas of the world at large?

That is an interesting question, Jack--the world as a Rorschach test... I suspect the answer is "a lot," and I suspect that that's the basis for so many photographers having their own individually recognizable styles. I can be standing right next to someone, looking at the same thing they are, and yet be seeing something completely different than what they see; we end up with two completely different photos. What we see depends a lot on what we want to find, and what we want to find depends a lot on our inner worlds. And that's one of the reasons that looking at someone else's photos is never boring--as viewers we're learning a lot about other ways of seeing the world.

Thanks for your always thoughtful comments. I think I'm more interested in the photographer, how he or she sees things, than the photograph itself as a stand alone artifact, as fascinating as it may be. I consider the photograph more as an inevitable projection of the personality and character of the photographer. I think that photography, as with all the arts, is tied up with the idea that we are responsible co-creators of the world we experience and think that our perception calls forth the world, filtered through and in line with all the programs and associations we've assimilated over our lifetime. I believe as we become more aware that what we see is not objective reality but merely a personal (and largely subconsciously chosen) representation, the possibilities shift. We are able, at least for a brief few moments, to escape from the tight confines of the fire lit clearing we call reality and peer a little deeper into the shadowy forest which is the domain of the unimaginable and the magical. For me, that's an intriguing though daunting proposition and I'm always looking for fellow travelers along the way, people who are more interested in questions than answers. After all, it gets pretty lonesome on the trail when you have no one with whom to share your ideas and suppositions.

There’s a lot of food for thought there, Jack, and one of the things your comments made me start thinking about is what it is about the process of making a photo that is so satisfying, exhilarating, and in some way essential to my being happy. I guess some would say there’s a need to express oneself, but  that doesn’t seem to quite fit—that implies that there’s an audience to express oneself to, and it implies, also, that the reward comes with displaying the image instead of in the making of it. For me, it seems like the most potent moment is as I’m first arranging the image in my mind, before I even click the shutter—the kind of “aha” that comes with seeing something that speaks to me, and puzzling out how to turn that “speaking to me” into an image that also speaks. For me, that’s the moment at which reality gets re-visioned into the projection of possibilities from the inner world of my imagination. Making the photo in some way makes visible the world that I want to be there, and that, in a sense, makes it more real to me, whether or not I look at the photo again (I’m reminded of the roll of 72 images I took with a half-frame  SLR on which the sprocket holes tore on frame #4—I’ve still got the images in my mind that would have been on a sizable proportion of the 68 frames that never existed—the magic happened when I was designing the images in the viewfinder). How about you?