Step-Men
Thoughts and advice for holiday photographers
It's hard to argue that photographing loved ones and happy moments serves a rational purpose. After all, memory functions without the aid of visual aids. Nonetheless, we photographically capture these minute samples of our lives, which we often doubt we will revisit, or even when we do, if they will bring back the countless other details that composed the scene of the photographed moment.
However, there are two reasons that drive us towards photographic commemoration. The first relates to perhaps our worst fear: the loss of our memory, that is, the loss of our past, which equates to the loss of our identity. We are what we remember. The second relates to something much more complex, which is the combination of memory and imagination. Our imagination is stimulated by our memory, which in turn is reshaped by our imagination. This mechanism allows us not just to regain the past, not just to enjoy communicating with our younger years, but to go even further in processing our memory through the filter of our imagination. Leafing through the family album replaces a lame memory and allows our imagination to reconstruct our life. Then, the photographs of the past become the memory itself.
Few practical applications of photography come as close to artistic photographic creation as commemorative photos. They have a passion for the subject of photography, the personal perspective of the photographer, the significance of time, the connection of the past with the present, the view of the photographed world, and only lack the knowledge and discipline of an artistic photographic language.
If the innocent holiday photographer wants to improve his performance and begin to form a rudimentary photographic language, the following brief tips may help in this direction. Above all, he should not lose his original and sincere motivation. He does not attempt to make a good photograph to reap laurels, nor to record a always dubious beauty. But to stop time on a happy moment that is lost or on a loved person. He should then realize that what he sees before him can never be what he will see in the photograph and that, therefore, he does not need to try to faithfully reproduce what he sees. The result will always be a transformation. Thus, let the photograph surprise him and show him another version of the moment and another side of the loved person. When he raises the camera to his eye, he should shake off the allure of the center and quickly check the corners of his frame. If the corners have a reason to exist, then necessarily the center will have interest too. There are also infinite angles for every photograph. Let each photographer search for the one he thinks is best and impose it convincingly on the viewer. Only he must know that the best is not necessarily defined by his height or random position. A few centimeters shift can make all the significant difference. And he should not rest on the first shot. Perhaps it's not the best. Give another chance to a new attempt. Finally, he should not judge his photos too soon after taking them. Let time disconnect reality from its transformation.
Plato Rivellis