How do I want my images to be ?

I am not sure exactly when this question started bothering me a lot more than it had in the past.

It could have been while I was lost in the skillful use of colours and the play of light and shadow in The Storm, painted by Pierre Auguste Cot. It might have happened while I gazed in awe at the insouciant, defiant pose of a young dancer that Edgar Degas so movingly captured in his sculpture. Or, possibly, when I sat in a room at my cousin’s home and marveled at the light and deft work of Monet in a print that was on their wall.

Or it might have happened while I watched Anthony Lamb’s video of his refreshingly different images of Venice.

Or, maybe while listening to one of the numerous podcasts that I finally got down to listening while on the road.

 Look at the way the light falls differently on the youth and how well that play has been captured plus the skill in showing the transparency of the dress...phew

The past few weeks have been a lot about roaming, absorption and contemplation.

I started to reflect about a growing restlessness in me - what is it that I really want to create when I am out in the wild with my camera?

For a while, there was an urge to create something different, something that will catch the eye. In these times when there are countless photos that are being taken, the question was - how can my images stand out ?

Of late, however, there has been a nagging sense of dissatisfaction with that approach. The approach of How can I capture this scene differently didn't necessarily answer the basic question which always is - what do I want to say about this scene ?

The question persisted,  how do I want my images to be ?

I think it was an Australian photographer, Adam Williams, on a podcast that I accidentally stumbled upon, who said that true art would move the viewer to tears.

That line stayed with me.

I thought of the moments that I sat on a bench at the Met in New York and gazed at a painting in front of me, feeling that I could sit there for hours staring at it. Or when I choked up at both the beauty of a sculpture and the skill of the sculptor.

I could not really put down the emotion that art evokes. It was also difficult to attribute my response to anything common across different works. Sometimes, it was the intricate level of detail that the artist had captured while capturing a victory procession into a conquered town. On other occasions, it would be the geometrical precision and the staggering understanding of light while depicting the scenes inside a palace. It could be the breathtaking realism in a sculpture, where it feels the piece can springt o life. Or , it could be the imprecise brush strokes that when you stare at, suggest a train chugging along.

Mourning Victory ( L ) was a piece commissioned by a Boston businessman to honour his brothers who had died in the Civil War. There are two moods that are portrayed here - grief for the dead brothers in the downcast look and triumph in the flag and the laurel she is holding.

Struggle of the two Natures in Man ( R) - "I sense two men in myself", a truly stunning piece of work

 JW Turner's gorgeous art of a train running along the tracks. For me, it so vividly captures the feeling people might have had in the 1800s at this new engineering marvel

( "Rain, steam and speed. The Great Railway of the West" (1844)

Art has that quality of moving you in an unspecific manner that you will struggle to articulate.

The same piece of art obviously can work differently for different people.

I was curious to see what works for me the most.

I knew what I want to say. I want to convey the same emotions that I feel while being at a place to the viewer through my images. It could be  sense of peace and calm while sitting in a Zodiac in the freezing cold in the Arctic with a polar bear dozing in front of me, or the feeling on anxiety that you sense a herd of zebras are feeling when they know that a pride of lions is nearby. Or the simple delight in the grace of a red crowned crane.

If I convey what I feel like in a manner that works most for me, wouldn’t that be different in itself ?

The question was how should I do this ? How do I achieve this objective in a style that is me.

I started looking back at many of the paintings, sketches and photos that have stayed with me. What worked most for me ?

These are the four themes that emerged.

Simplicity.

 Even as a child, Namboodiri's simple lines had fascinated me. I still marvel at them. A quizzical expression has been captured in such a simple way here!

My parents were voracious readers and we always had a lot of Malayalam magazines at home. An artist, Namboodiri, used to sketch for some of these and I remember being enthralled by his craft. A few deft strokes and an expression or an act of a person would emerge. Nothing elaborate, it was absolute economy at work. A simplicity, a directness in style that cut to the chase.

How can I communicate with the utmost simplicity ?

Drama

 Be it a painting or a movie, the use of light and shadow can be immensely powerful. Rembrandt above and a scene showing Lincoln deep in contemptlation

Nothing fascinates me more than the way light and shadow do their dance together and create drama. It could be in the way the Old Masters used it to depict an ordinary household scene or a portrait. Or it could be in the way it is used in movies. One of my favorite movies is Lincoln where the usage of light and darkness has been absolutely brilliant. The scene above, shot wide, with such arresting use of light, shows the pensive mood of Lincoln so effectively !

How can I bring that interplay effectively in my images ?

Impreciseness.

 Light, airy brushwork resulting in you feeling the skirt billowing, the grass swaying...

Monet's Woman with a Parasol

One of the first impressionist paintings I saw was either the Irises or Impression – Sunrise, I don’t remember which one. Much later, I learnt about the artist, Monet, and the name of the movement he had created. The beauty of the style had such a profound impact on me. There was no fine detail, just an impression of light, of water, of movement. A style that felt like poetry. Impreciseness is naturally not limited to the Impressionist movement. Look at the casual strokes in the splendidly illustrated The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse. It's mindblowing.

Can I spend more time in mastering impreciseness through slow shutter and ICM ? I have strayed from both techniques in the recent past, maybe it's time to get back to it.

Calm.

 Doesn't this just feel incredibly peaceful ?

Biwa Lake Tree, Study 2 by Michael Kenna

I like space. I like quiet. Minimalism, a sea of negative space calms me down. It makes me feel less crowded, less hurried, as if there is all the time in the world.

How do I translate calm to my images ?

Can I keep these four elements as my goal posts for my images ? Either singly or as combination of one or more ?

As I was jotting down notes during my travels and later trying to make sense of my chaotic thoughts and translating them into barely coherent sentences, I stumbled upon another realization.

I could rarely ever remember the artist of the piece of work that I was referring to. I have had to do some furious search to get the right references fort his post. Often, I even only had a hazy recollection of how the work looked. What I clearly remembered was how I felt while looking at it.

That was another piece that connected with me. As a photographer, I want to recede into the background. I don’t want to be saying – look at me, what a great photo I made. The ideal reaction that I would like to evoke is to the moment I was capturing.

Maybe, that was what was the reason I was not really feeling good about simply clicking images that are different for the sake of being different. Those images might be drawing more attention to the style and not to the scene.

I may not have all the answers yet on how to translate this while in the field but I these endless hours of musings have given me an idea on how I want to create. Equally importantly, they have given me some clarity about what I don’t want to do.

Now, to try and put this to practice. It should be fun. And frustrating.

The Boy, the Horse, the Fox and the Mole.