We can photograph our subject simply as it is, a faithful record. We can get creative, perhaps using black and white or playing with tone and structure, to produce an image close to the original but not purely representational of it. Or we can interpret the subject with such freedom that it becomes something other than it once was, an abstraction.
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When I told people we were going to Mexico, a frequent piece of advice was, make sure you visit Oaxaca. It’s beautiful, they said, and the food is amazing! The advice however was unnecessary, as the city was already on my must-see list. And Oaxaca de Juárez, to give it its full name, definitely lived up to my expectations.
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It would be unusual if we weren’t motivated to pick our camera when we see a beautiful flower, an awe-inspiring landscape, an attractive or characterful person, an elegant building. But it would be a shame to restrict our photography only to those more obvious subjects. We can also look for the photogenic in everyday objects, looking at them with fresh eyes to appreciate their forms and textures.
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How does it feel to stand in the middle of a living geology lesson? To see for yourself the many ways the world’s surface has been shaped over the millennia into often fantastical shapes? Go to Iceland, and you will find out. There almost every view tells you something about the power of fire or water to carve, split or even destroy rock.
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I have a theory about penguins, which is that no one can watch one for any length of time without smiling. Certainly the truth of that theory was proved when we visited Antarctica and saw them for ourselves. Part of the appeal is that they walk upright, looking almost human. And they’re always so smartly dressed!
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In 1531 a peasant, Juan Diego, reported seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary on the hill of Tepeyac, today swallowed up in the metropolis of Mexico City. The Virgin, he said, spoke to him in in Nahuatl, his first language, asking that a church be built on the site in her honour.
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How do you feel about editing photos? Do you believe that the image you take should be the only one you present to the world? That it’s wrong to mess with the reality of what you saw? Or are you perhaps happy to tweak a shot a little, straightening a horizon or cropping out that person who wandered into it as you pressed the shutter?
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Sometimes a few words can enhance a viewer’s understanding of an image. After all, what else are captions for if not to explain?
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Dereliction and decay are natural subjects for black and white photography. The lack of colour adds to a sense of aging, perhaps because we associate it with the photos taken by past generations. Also, the textures of decay stand out more when colour is subtracted.
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Sitting on the plane that brought us home from Mexico we were congratulating ourselves on our timing. Tomorrow would be the first of March, and spring, we thought, just around the corner. We should have known better! Although in the fairly recent past (most notably the lockdown spring of 2020) we’ve had some wonderful March weather, this time last year I was writing that, ‘With a slow start to the spring this year it’s felt at times as if March was coming in more like a polar bear than a lion!’ And so it was again this year.
