Spring-The Return

Spring-The Return

Hello again good people! After 6 weeks or so of not thinking about writing, 6 weeks of not thinking about blogs, or worrying that for the past year maybe I was thinking about both too much I feel I am ready to start back up again. Before I get into that I wanted to mention that I really appreciated the support I received after my last post announcing the break. It meant a lot to have people tell me in comments or in private that they appreciated my words and photography. I realize I may have scared a few people into thinking I was going silent for good. Writing these words now is the proof that I have not. Thank you to all of you who reached out. I’m still working things out on the personal level, but it feels right to be doing this again now.

I did spend some time thinking if I wanted to do a rethink of this space along the lines of changing the theme and color scheme again. I ended the last post with the realization that I needed to find out what has been missing for me in putting these words to the computer. To find the ways to feed creativity again. This is a tentative step back today, and I am unsure what and where it will lead me. But I realized something important during this break. In lamenting the state of blogging today, I forgot the crucial part. Being myself. At its peak I was heeding the advice of others-writing often to build an audience. Writing shorter posts so as not to lose an audience. Tagging, doing weekly features, trying to copy what more successful bloggers did.

Soundtrack Of A Photograph, Part 12

“Harmonizing For A Photo”

PART 1- The Photos

Harmony-noun, plural harmonies.

1. Agreement; accord; harmonious relations
2. A consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts; congruity
3. In music-any simultaneous combination of tones especially when blended into chords pleasing to the ear.

Harmony is one of those tricky words I think. In the first definition above, we come across it as an ideal worth striving for, yet as a global culture we never seem able to achieve or attain. The second and third definitions we seem to understand and appreciate more and we do better with for whatever reason. Most of us have been moved in some way by music of some sort that utilizes harmony, be it a gospel choir or bands such as  the Beach Boys. I have touched on this sort of harmony in a few blogs already. But before I go into the musical portion of this blog, the soundtrack, I wanted to explore that second definition above, that consistent, orderly and pleasing arrangement of parts. That definition is useful in describing almost anything that has a sense of orderliness to it. Everything from rows of books in a library to place settings on a dinner table seem more pleasing when defined by a sense of harmony and balance.  The objects complement one another into a unified whole. When one portion of that balance is upset however; a single book laying sideways instead of standing upright, a glass missing from the table setting at a restaurant, the harmony that should exist is broken. It is the individual elements or components that allow that second definition of harmony to exist and when it breaks down it does not feel orderly or pleasing. So jarring is the missing object that usually our eyes go right to it.

In preparing this installment I began thinking about objects in the photography world that did not suffer from that sort of problem.  Objects that fit that definition, of consistent, or a pleasing arrangement of parts. My mind thought large scale at first, in part due to living in a large city. What could I use? The skyline of New York City itself perhaps? Spread out wide on the 13 miles of Manhattan with peaks and troughs of tall skyscrapers combined with the smaller apartment buildings such as where I live when viewed as a whole have that sort of pleasing arrangement. If all the buildings were 5 stories high, or 50 stories high it would not achieve that sort of harmony however. But when viewed as a panorama it does because one building compliments the other.

However, showing that here seemed to be very complex to me, so I thought about other areas where objects are repeated and achieve that sort of balance. Rows of lamp posts on a path, or pylons on a pier were thoughts. The crisscross pattern of steel work on bridges and buildings were another.  The possibilities seemed many, but also very daunting as a photographer without certain equipment and access to photograph them. So I began thinking instead on a smaller scale, for something that could effectively show the photographic equivalent of ‘harmony’ and yet be something more manageable. As I have gone further along in these posts I have had flashbacks to writing papers in college. I remember stream of consciousness writing was discussed but I have to admit it rarely works for me. I do however seem to have a lot of stream of consciousness thinking, and lately I have taken to carrying notebooks around with me to jot things down as the inspiration hits, and I realized just the other night that the answer was in front of me the whole time, and I knew what to do for this post.