About Creating Emotional Photographs

 Photography encompasses such a wide range of creative styles, it is all but impossible to define all of them. There are axioms that apply to all styles of creative endeavors such as light being the driving force behind all compositional arrangements. However, for myself, capturing an emotional photograph is one of the most difficult in all of photography because it requires something extra, something that must come from within, down deep inside the hidden places that at times may offer the most vulnerable of expressions. Every photographer possesses this instinct. Every photographer expresses it in their own unique way, and every photographer must come to grips with how to express what resides within their own expressive state.

The exciting thing about creating emotional photographs is that it allows for a full range of expressions and offers any photographer the opportunity to reveal a part of themselves that may not always be readily or easily expressed. It also allows room for just about any form of expression and is not locked into a set scale of do's and don'ts. In other words, you can create an image any way you want to express it. It is less about capturing reality, and more about expressing emotion through a creative outlet.

I suppose the most difficult part for a photographer is figuring out how to capture emotion. Most of us, myself included, tend to look for details of reality, you know...that spark of light in a deer's eye, the veins of a backlit maple leaf, the magnificent antlers of a bull elk highlighted against a snowcapped mountain. These in their own right express an element of emotional value and there are many photographers, many of them I know personally, who do a wonderful and amazing job at capturing these kinds of photographs. I'd guess that 90% or more of my photographic efforts fall within that scale of photographic attempts.

However, every once in a while, something else get stirred inside of me. I struggle to define it. It is difficult to effectively describe how it works. It's just a feeling. You know it when it's there. I call it an art, The Art of Being There, where all the elements suddenly come together and deep within yourself, you don't just see it, you visualize its significant impact on the moment. It almost like the moment suddenly reveals itself. Sometimes it last for but a short time, other times it lingers on for a while to evolve toward a climax of light. Sometimes, there is an instinctive urge to turn around and look the other way just to see what is there. Often, when that happens, the light becomes softer, more diffused, with deeper and richer color, in a different way from the more direct, contrasting, lighting sources. The impact of such an image is often profound and stirs the emotions of who may linger their own visual moments to absorb the true nature of the image.

The nice thing about creating emotional photographs, well, its all about personal expression regardless of what the norms of the photographic art world tell us to do. It also provides one of the most rewarding and satisfying ways of expression.

Keith