Wednesday, June 04, 2008
A picture’s worth…
Well, many of my editors don’t think a picture’s worth a thousand words when it comes to invoice time. But I’m re-discovering the joy of taking proper photographs again, after some time away from the area.
I used to have a clunky old Russian (Soviet) 35mm Zenith SLR as a student/teenager and I enjoyed taking photos with it, but I didn’t really enjoy the weight of the beast (I think the same guys who designed the T-72 tanks went to work on this thing), but it taught me the elements of aperture, shutter speed, lighting, depth-of-field and all the rest of the jargon that you give up when you move to a point-and-shoot (either digital or film), as I did for far too long after ditching the Zenith.
But recently I got myself one of the smaller digital SLRs on the market - it was the model before the current one from this maker, so I got a really sweet affordable deal on the camera and two lenses, and it’s a new world for me. I re-discovered the joy of accessorizing—I’ve bought bits and pieces from eBay, including an adapter allowing me to use old Zeiss lenses (my wife’s old film SLR lens, and one I bought for next to nothing second-hand from a camera store here in Japan). And I am now a shutterbug—the camera goes to most places with me, and digital “film” and processing is so cheap that I can easily end up taking over 120 photos on a Sunday afternoon stroll. And, though I say it myself, I’m getting better at it.
Has this got anything to do with writing, you ask? Well, yes, it has. I’ve found out that since I have started freezing instants of time and recording particular patterns of light, I observe much more closely. On one level, I’m looking for the play of light and shadow, the contrast in color, the patterns that shapes make, that make up a good abstract picture, and I’m also developing the courage to point a piece of glass at a perfect stranger and capture the shape of their face for my own personal amusement. But while I look with my eyes, the verbal part of my brain is ticking away, writing captions, rationalizing just why a particular scene is a subject for the camera, and phrases complementing the visual image swim into my brain. Sometimes these are memorable enough for future use, and I turn to my other “go everywhere” memory aid—a Moleskine notebook, which contains the verbal gems I come up with.
The sheer act of concentrating on my visual surroundings seems to send the rest of my creative mind into overdrive, in a way that listening does not (and since I also record for fun and profit, I listen harder and more accurately than most people). Is this a function of my being left-handed? I ask myself. Can anyone come up with evidence for or against such a theory?
But whatever is going on here, carrying a camera really does seem to have improved my writing skills, and even if editors aren’t prepared to pay 1,000 words’ worth of fees for my pictures, they certainly do seem more ready to accept my words as I write them without further polishing. So… carry a camera, and become a better writer. It’s working for me.