It was a glorious morning waking up at the Rose Cottage B&B in England to the call of gulls and smell of the sea air. Our hosts, Mic & Sue are just lovely and the breakie they put before us, spectacular! With hot tea in hand, we easily fell into the groove of the countryside as we headed out. We are incredibly fortunate to have Brent & Katt with us so with time to explore, off we headed (with Jake joining us shortly). I have my favorite “holiday” shooting outfit with me, the Df / 24f1.4. We went over to the Fleet Museum as it was in the direction of our ultimate for our day, a life long desire to experience.
We made it to Stonehenge after a lovely meal in Yoevel where with our “accents” we stuck out. After showing photos of our snow covered home this past winter, the inn keeper shared his ideas of things to enjoy in the area. Over a million folks a year come to Stonehenge, we are certainly not the first. And I am definitely not the first photographer to make a click or two at Stonehenge. Should knowing that affect the way I shoot, the story I want to tell? Should that add pressure or totally remove any photographic “success” pressure? I bring this up in part because of a discussion that’s been going on over on the KelbyOne Community board rising from my Light Class. Because to me, the story in the photo in large part has to do with the memory.
When you tell a story, one of the important aspects of telling that story is considering your audience. Now if your audience were part of the story to begin with, they know all the facts behind the story, then their insider information feels in all the blanks perhaps not in the photograph. Your photograph doesn’t have to have the whole story illustrated in it because folks know. These photographs I think of as refrigerator memories. Those are the photographs you attach to the refrigerator and those in the know can walk by them and without even a real glance, know all that’s going in an smile. The photo doesn’t even have to be in focus because those few who you share that photo with know all that’s happening so the photograph regardless of what usually we worry about as technical and aesthetical qualities. But what if you want to share your memory, which is what photos are, with those not in the know?
That’s when hell can break loose! It’s then those memories have to spell it all out, the photograph has to tell the story so those not there at the moment of the making of that memory know the back story, know the inside story, are taken along for the ride so they know the story after looking at the photograph. So I think of photography as two types of memories, refrigerator and those for the world. So when shooting at Stonehenge the photographs I was taking was for the refrigerator, not the world. So knowing that comparing what I was taking to any other photograph ever taken there was irrelevant because they were just for me. Now all of this might not make any sense to you and that’s OK. It might make total sense to you and that is actually the point. In making that photograph we tend to get all wrapped up in f/stops and Likes rather the real reason we took the photograph in the first place, to record the memory. So the question you might wanna ask yourself in the process is simple, who’s memory is it?