Very like a whale (v. 3)

I’ve been thinking about my photos lately, trying to answer the question, “What’s the photograph about?” On one hand it should be easy: It’s a photo of my mother or the dog or the sunset last Tuesday after a rainstorm. This photo, for example, should be simple to label: the exposed roots of a dead tree surrounded by dry leaves rendered in black and white. We humans, however, want more: I see a big toe, a bird’s neck, bones, a sleeping dragon, a kneecap, a nose. As Polonius says to Hamlet (Act II, scene ii), it is “very like a whale.” There’s a word for this —- pareidolia, our tendency to seek specific forms and meanings in an ambiguous image.

But a photo isn’t a Rorshach test. There’s no “answer.” Look at this photo again. I chose to frame it a certain way, square. No doubt there be more dragons and toes and whales outside of the frame. But this seemed right to me. A form, bleached white and moving in a S-curve from upper right down through the frame; smaller curved and wrinkled leaves accentuate the S; other textures and straight branches contrast the smooth, white S. Shadow and light, shades of grey, texture, movement, depth, contrast, details —- all this drew me to this place, at this time, to make a photo.

It’s the same for even seemingly unambiguous images.

Here I was drawn to the contrast between the twisting stiffness of the dormant trees and the free flow of new grass, two opposing movements, one dark and still and the other vibrantly green and now.

As I write this today, it’s all I can do to avoid metaphor, to keep from beating some meaning out of these photos. What I hope for is that I help you understand how I felt about each at the moment I snapped the shutter.