Great Basin School of Photography

It's getting cold here at the lake with a storm coming through.  On day this week the high is forecast to be 30 degrees, with a low around zero.  I captured this a couple of days ago.  

I had gone outside to capture Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy and hopefully ISO if it survived, but growing fog on the lake started to block my horizon so I drove up on Monitor Pass to see if I could see the remnants of ISON sooner coming over the horizon.  At this point ISON seems to be more of a debris field, fading in brightness, so it wasn't visible, but when I got back down to the lake the sun on the mist created some nice scenes.  

Most people are sleeping or getting for work during sunrise and golden hour, but there must be a nearly endless supply of unique opportunities out there that we never see or record, simply because we're not there.

No doubt someone will develop a Web cam which can zoom in, provide it with software endowed with the "rules" of composition, perhaps even teach it to break those rules at times.  But I don't think that even the same photo would have the same meaning coming as the result of software.  Photos reflect the moments the photographer experienced, and when we share photos we share those experience.  People seeing the photos can enjoy the moment vicariously, and they take away some portion of the feelings of wonder or peace that that such moments instill in us.  

This sharing of the feelings, the emotion, behind these moments requires empathy, identifying with photographer.  Can we feel empathy with a Webcam?  Certainly the scenes they capture can be stunning at times, but without the protagonist, the photographer implied behind the camera, much of the meaning is lost.  Perhaps we can still feel inspired simply seeing such images, but that requires inventing a theoretical photographer, perhaps imagining ourselves playing that role, enjoying that scene.  

Humans are social beings.  For centuries we've valued storytelling as a means to share experiences, knowledge, and learning.  The first incarnation of the public rise of the Internet  saw stories treated like text and data, indexed for keywords and regurgitated upon command, stripped of meaning.  The Web 2.0 world has people connecting on social media networks, telling stories to each other in words and pictures, but that's still torn apart by technology and treated like the meaning is somewhere in the words.  Our journey through life is the source of our stories, and each story has its own meaning, and that can't be separated from the storyteller.  

Photographers can feverishly circle the world, capture sights, Instagram them up with HDR and filters and produce dramatic images, but if they have no story there's something missing, like an orchestra limited to a few instruments and notes.  That gets boring.  

By all means chase the iconic national park views to your heart's content, but there's a story behind your pursuit, and it's the story of you: your life, what's important to you, who's important to you, why you do what you do.  

What's your story?

Photo: Nov 30
Canon 70D
Canon 70 – 200mm f/4 IS L lens
handheld

Blog: www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com
More photos in my Topaz Lake area album on G+: 
https://plus.google.com/photos/+JeffreySullivan/albums/5675675387196096801

It’s getting cold here at the lake with a storm coming through. On day this week the high is forecast to be 30 degrees, with a low around zero. I captured this a couple of days ago.

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