How One Photograph Completely Reshaped my Mind
A guide to the new dimension of life
I used to be a very analytical person.
I believe in facts, logic, and data. Rationality is much more important to me than emotionality.
I did not think there should be anything valuable in the photographs, anything worth exploring. Photos are not equipped with any context, and how can we tell whether they are good or bad, correct or wrong?
Every day, there are tons of photos and images produced, just because people need to record their mundane life, or want to attract attention with pretentious photos.
The Moonrise miracle
All of this ended up when I ran into this photograph:
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) by Ansel Adams
(Because of copyright reasons, I can only provide the link for you.)
Please take a look at this photo, on the biggest screen you can find.
It attracts my attention at the first look. I somehow know that it is completely different from the kind of works that rely on exaggeration to attract attention.
The longer I stared at it, the more I liked it.
I feel an unprecedented sense of peace when faced with this photo. If I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, it would be to appreciate this photo.
Everything in this photo just lies there, so calm and natural.
The moon hangs high in the night sky,
clouds softly and smooth moves underneath.
The village under the moonlight stands quietly in the wilderness,
with the cemetery yard slightly illuminated, echoing the moon in the sky.
Most of the picture is dark, but it is surprisingly balanced.
I curiously stare at every element in the picture, imagining what Ansel’s feeling when he discovered and pondered at this scene……
Something that I’ve never seen
I thought over and over again about why this photo is so magic. I turn to a lot of books and videos on photography for an answer, and finally I know where the problem is:
I rely too much on one tool to understand the world: language.
I speak, I write, I read, and all of these are just based on language. That’s why I value a lot on facts, logic, and data, all of which can be described by language.
However, we can also use other senses to interact with the world: hearing, seeing, taste, touch……
What this great moonrise photo teaches me is that
Besides the world described in words, there is another big fascinating world that we can only use our eyes to observe and explore.
Also, we do have a great visual system to observe this beautiful world, so why not we use it, in a more careful, in-depth way?
Ongoing Journey
So I started borrowing photograph albums from the public library in my city.
Why not just read photos on the Internet? There are many reasons why I decided to read the physical albums: these photos have been carefully arranged, and the size and color of the photos are confirmed by the photographers themselves, that I can better guess the author’s original intention. Of course, another important reason is that borrowing is free!
After seeing more and more photograph albums, I started to notice the other important visual elements in our world: color, tone, perspective, lighting, line and shape, etc. I also started to notice the styles of different photographers and how different people saw this world……
I highly recommend this method to you.
Just take a look at the photography albums at your local library, and borrow the ones you like.
Believe me, there are many treasures waiting for you in the visual journey!
One Free Image to End the Story
At last, I just realized that there is not a single photograph showing up in this story which is all about photography. Let's end this story with one of my favorite photos on Unsplash so far.
Thanks for reading!
