Remembering back to my University of Utah senior year I recall walking into my very 1st photography class. Dave Albrand displayed confidence and knowledge I craved for my own photography. I knew a little about taking pictures but that’s all it was; push the button and hope something good appeared. I didn’t know a good picture’s make up.
I stumbled across a few good shots as taught by my dad & my uncle. Summer, 2018 brings me to over 45 years’ shooting experience and heading into my 19th year teaching photography at University of Utah’s Lifelong Learning department. While long ago, I recall my drive to make better photos to this day. I still feel it. Driving down the road I’ll see a sunset and think, “That’d be great at 200mm, f8, and 125th second, ISO 400.” Beautiful flowers at Red Butte Garden bring up, “Cool! Shallow depth of field & fill flash would perfectly bring out that red petal edge creating great background separation.” I want to bring all my University of Utah digital photo students to that same level. It's great fun to have each student introduce themselves describe their photo activities up to this point and state their reasons for being in my class. All students from my first taught photo class to my most recent want the same thing: Better photos. I think one of the best things I can pass on concerns looking at reasons for wanting better photos. That reason resides in each of us as photographers. My students’ job consists of one and only one thing. That thing is not only the need but a requirement to create what I call emotionally resonant images.
What? This means creating pictures bringing out the same feeling intensity in your photo's viewer as you felt when creating your image. Your camera and all those buttons only serve as your tool for accomplishing this goal. But still, why? Time flows in only one direction. We can't stop it or turn it around. If you ask yourself, “How long is now?” I hope you each the conclusion that there is no,”now.” We have only our transition from past to future.
This is where I find photography fascinating. You do your best to capture that transition. During that moment, light struck your subject a certain way. It came to you as a color, shape, expression, memory jogger, or whatever. You might put your emotional resonance generator to work keeping only shades of light and dark through black & white or, "monochrome," rendition. You saw action or lack thereof, some scene elements strike your consciousness while you ignore others so you choose lens focal length or subsequent image cropping. You saw it from a high vantage point or low. You had friends with you or no one with you. You just want to capture it so you can transfer your emotional state to someone else through a photograph. There is no one perfect way, only your way.