The Narrative Image

Note: Larger versions of posted pictures can be accessed simply by clicking on the images “Ladies and Gentlemen, I stand before you now because I never stopped dawdling like an eight-year-old on a spring morning on his way to school. Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn. I am a very happy man. Thank you.” Dr. Hoenikker's Nobel Prize acceptance speech (in its entirety) Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut Old jealous corn skeletons stand in disciplined rows - sheathed in brittle armor – and make their last stand against the rising forces of spring. Water percolates into the earth The clouds … like swaddling cloths. Birds draw arrows in the sky…eventually Save for the grass-stained chin, I frequently see this expression at the daily 10 o’clock scheduling meeting. It was Mr. T who saw Bill Monroe’s bird watching article in the March 18 th Oregonian – an article that chronicles the current s...

Imagine this. Suppose you have a growing collection of photographs and you need to make a portfolio that would be representative of your best work. Or say someone asked you to make a ‘coffee table book’. How would you pick the ‘best’ images? I can’t figure out how to do it. Inevitably, when ‘other’ people look at a given collection of photos, they always pick out favorites for reasons that can only be described as mysterious, questionable or ….just wrong. It goes way beyond the obvious to suggest that we all have personal preferences. Photos are seldom just artistic compositions – they are really more like snippets of memory. Most of us simply aren’t trained to subjugate our memories and the emotions they trigger for the sake of judging a picture by something as abstract as strong compositional design elements. Note to self: Maybe a good narrative image is one that combines snippets of memory with design elements to better preserve the emotional content of the…umm…sorry – ...