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I decided to create a short post about a few aspects that inform my photography. Largely unconscious, these elements have become organic within me.
On Editing and Image Experience
‘Editing’ can mean so many different things.
Here, I am referring to the way I choose to manipulate the image in the ‘digital darkroom’.
In the series of images below, you can see that the ways I’ve played with the editing of a single image has altered your experience of the image; there’s a different impact and Story now. The resultant visual affects your body and psyche differently.
Often my images are layered; multiple edits atop one another. For me, this adds both texture and resonance. Sometimes, a sense of movement. Sit with the images above, and notice your body’s experience. Notice which you prefer.
And ask: why?
Note: Editing can also mean the ways I go through a collection of images I’ve made in the field and cull those of them that don’t make the cut. I’m not great at this! I keep way too many images.
On Orientation and Relationship
Note that this isn’t simply the way you orient the camera. Whilst these two images in this section, are the same scene with the camera oriented portrait and then landscape, orientation can also be the way you choose to orient the image in post processing. And I’m not simply talking about cropping.
Sometimes switching the image’s orientation post production can look strange, surreal, and intriguing; tricking or challenging you out of your usual perception. I love this; it shifts your consciousness! Sometimes however, it doesn’t work at all, and simply looks contrived.
Ask the Image; what does it want?
Each one of these (and more), are creative choices, made instinctively, or deliberately. Some, co-creatively.
Where are you Standing?
This mostly applies to the type of images I make; ecosystems that echo the tissues of the body.
Consider the conversation you’re actually having with Place.
What - or Who - is before you, is a living sentience.
You wouldn’t look at a person from just one angle. You’d watch and you’d listen and you’d maybe walk together. You’d take in Gesture. The sound of their breathing. Their facial expressions, their tone of voice, their shifting of weight.
Why not the same loving curiosity with Place?
Before you make a single image (I know: the beauty!!), pause. Take in this Presence. Move your body. Up and down and around. All the angles. Cultivate curiosity. Let the presence Who is before you speak Itself to you.
Time, In Flow
Because I work with water, I often choose to make several images close in time, of the ‘same thing’. I like this, because it gives me a chance to see the ‘breath’ or the movement of the ‘scene’:
It is alive!
Sometimes I’ll make a Video, and I might choose to edit that as a ‘double exposure’, with the still image underneath the Video clip. Why?
Because the Place has layers, many of which I cannot ‘see’, although my whole body can sense.
I walk,
I listen,
I make images;
I write about that.
This, is how I pray.
Narelle Carter-Quinlan is the Foundress and Steward of the Saltwater Songlines Project.