a thousand words

I began to fall in love with photography around the age of 16. My love for photography didn’t come about like my love for the story, I didn’t just sort of fall into it because I had not much else to do. Unlike my love for stories, my love of photography also didn’t come from my ability to excel at the skill. By four months into grade one I had read twenty books on our yearly book list - that was pretty good for a five year old. But if you ask to see my photography skills, I will be the first to tell you that my equipment is more advanced than my brain is when it comes to taking the perfect shot, and that I am not deserving of the two beautiful hunks of black and silver metal and glass that sit on the shelf in my room. Photography was more of a secret hobby that my dad handed down to me. I had always loved snapping pictures of my friends at school. To be honest, I think most of them thought it was a bit annoying. I didn’t even do my makeup today, I can imagine them silently grumbling. But I didn’t care, because looking at photos gave me a joy that I just couldn’t get from much else in those days. Then one day I was scrounging around in my parent’s bedroom when I stumbled upon an old “how to” book on photography. It was then that I remembered that I had seen some photographs that my Dad had taken when he was younger, and I felt a tug to enter into the world of seeing life through a camera lens.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and these days that saying has become so cliché, but it’s one that is still powerfully true. I often wonder if less people appreciate art because it’s more taxing on our minds. Stories are, in general, easy. It’s easy to identify the narrative in a story, to come out at the end with some kind of lesson learned or conclusion gained. But art is different. Artists don’t let their audiences be lazy (I would argue that great writers don’t either, but that is another discussion for another day). Art requires the viewer to put some mental effort in and interpret the images that they see before them. Like a writer, the visual artist gives their audience some kind of clue, but these hints are often subtle, and easy to misinterpret.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Some could look at a photograph of a leaf and ask where the words there are. But I would argue that they are merely waiting to be found. Behind that leaf is an entire lifetime of stories. Though they are ones we have not necessarily seen or can identify clearly, they are there. Because every leaf must journey, beginning as a seed on some other tree and transforming over years into this wide and tall and strong being that towers over the rest of nature. And that’s only half of the story. The other half lies with the artist. There is a story behind why the photographer finds that particular lead to be worthy of a photograph. Perhaps it is merely to engage in creative experiments with pigmentation or aperture. Or perhaps it is much deeper than that; that the feeling that that particular leaf emits is one from a childhood full of autumn forest adventures.

Currently, by desktop background is of a parking lot. Sure, each streetlight is a different color and the overall effect is pleasing to my eyes. But behind this photo there too lies a story. Maybe not for me, but for someone; for the girl who can vividly remember summer moments spent in the parking lots behind the mall back home. It’s the place she learned to drive, where she had her first kiss, her first heartache, and her first episode of retail therapy. A photo itself may not be worthy of a thousand words, but the memories it evokes are.

I think that I’ve fallen more deeply in love with photography now that I’ve come to that realization. Anyone can appreciate the beauty of a nature scene, or a well lit face, or the contrast of leaf veins. But entering into the story behind the photograph? That promises the viewer a different experience; one where they are no longer a bystander, but an active participant in the evolution of the picture’s narrative. There is something adventurous about that.

photo via (we heart it)