They are called snaps, grab shots, captures, images, photographs, pictures and pix. Most of us don’t quibble about the words, we just know we love them. Everybody in the world takes pictures these days. Its a good thing that the chemical processing of film has been replaced by digital means. Just developing the selfies taken daily would choke photo labs around the world.
Why do we love photos so much? Because they contain images of people, pets and places of interest dear to us. Also because they show the human community. It’s triumphs and trials. And its work. Yet, I suggest it is more than that. We love photos just as we love using our voices. Because we have come to accept and rely on images as paragraphs in a language that communicates in surprising detail.
We value each picture as a source of details and facts, as a vehicles of communication that goes well beyond Aunt Bessie’s concept of the value found in her snapshots.
The rapidity that many exhibit cycling through a cellphone album testifies to the ease they feel when it comes to the visual language of photography.
As easily as we scan a home page for the headlines or the sentences that might interest us, so too, do we easily scan images. When it comes to commenting upon the facts of a dress in a photo, suggesting a revision to a construction project based on a cellphone picture, expressing disbelief regarding bystanders in a news shot, the photo literate scan and react simultaneously.
This point was brought home to me standing beside a farmer as we both looked at the deli selection in the local grocery store several years ago. After clarifying that I was the one who took pictures for the paper, he detailed why he liked one of my pictures that had appeared the day before. Most folks are eager to talk about who they know in the pic or what they thought about the issue that was the cause of it or what they were doing when the photo was snapped. He didn’t. He launched into a discussion of the composition and the photographic influences that seemed at play in my style. My ironic intentions that I thought were buried, that hinted about the character of the person in the photo, that tinted the viewer’s understanding of the event, he saw easily.
This gent was scraggly, rubber-booted, fence-wire thin old school. What kind of discussions was this guy having with his cows at 5:30 a.m.?
Few have read ten thousand book pages. However, most of us have looked at a million or more images. When it comes to the language of photography many people believe they are inarticulate. Because it is a visual language, words are not a priority. So this is understandable.
With the online portal, you can also buy the medicine through internet services. Kids are the most creative creatures because they let their imaginations run wild. This drug works well when taken with light meal and the user abstains from alcohol. Smoking, alcohol, poor nutrition and a whole train them symptomatically going to very serious complications.
But press people and you will see — once they step beyond the obvious facts of an image — they can be articulate about its intentions and organizing details. They weren’t dragged to this achievement. They got to it because they love the language of photography.
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