Monday, October 8, 2012

Photo Book: Wild & Dismal

As far as I'm concerned, you can never be too melancholy or too bored as long as you have your camera with you. I think most photographers would agree with me that the camera becomes something of a comfort object; when you're too tired to face the world, you can sort of melt away behind the lens. 

It's also effective in social situations when you don't want to make small talk. Secret's out- half the time I'm standing at the edge of a party with my back against the wall, frowning at the view finder in concentration, my camera's not even turned on. I'm just trying to avoid talking. (Oh, and one more thing- about a third of the time I was 'taking a picture with my camera' on the boat, I was actually clicking around my email, begging for a flash of service out there on the ocean. It happened occasionally.) 
Of course I neglected to bring my camera to Ireland, even though it's the most wild and dismal and gorgeous country (an excellent trifecta for photography) because I didn't have to time to pack. Anything. It was crushing to walk through the haunting fields of nettles and sheep, the dizzying little convenience stores of day-glow candy and the town full of old stone and dark pubs without it- I was constantly thinking about angles and lenses and framing. I did, however, have my phone, and so I captured Ireland the best I could, and instead of brining home one thousand rich, saturated shots on my computer, I have one hundred little tinted, filtered squares on a phone screen:


I've been getting a lot of questions lately about storytelling and what kind of stories I told. I'll get into that in the next post. For now, I'm too busy coughing and complaining about the wicked cold I must have caught on the airplane. Avoid me. 
  

1 comment:

Kelle said...

These are beautiful, story-telling photos. I can't wait to hear more about your story telling event in Ireland. It was so much fun to see it through Instagram.

xo