How it Was v. How I Felt & What I Thought

A friend will help you move; a good friend will help
you move a body!
(From my days as a police detective/forensic photographer
in the 1970s)

Please take a look at my website, found here, to see more of my images.  Thank you.

I don't often talk about what my images mean to me.  I normally add a fresh image, sometimes relevant to my commentary and sometimes not, without any fanfare about meaning.  But, I wanted to make a point here.

In regards to the image I used to illustrate yesterday's blog post.  Before I chose the image for posting, I was looking at the image file straight from the camera and comparing it with the image file I posted.  There is a dramatic difference which I thought could be used to illustrate a point.  The difference is what the scene looked like while I was there and how I felt about the scene while I was there.  Two different concepts, entirely.  And, that is okay.

If I were a photojournalist, a documentary photographer (as in the illustration above) or a wildlife photographer where the image must reflect exact reality, I would post the image as recorded.  But I like to think of myself as a sort of artist and create works that reflect my "feelings" and "thoughts" about the images I make.  I don't want to create images that say, "I was there," but I want to create images that will want to make you go there and experience what I experienced.

Mabry's Mill
Images straight out of the camera, no adjustments

This image was straight out of my D800E.  It reflects the dull, gray, lifeless, cold and humid day I experienced that morning while I was making the image.  This is reality.  But it is not how I felt while standing there carefully composing and making the image.  I saw history and culture and felt the hard, manual labor that went into grinding corn and wheat into flour.  I thought about the times when this mill was constructed, not having electricity and working from early morning until late in the evening. I felt like the place was alive with a lot more character and color than the day provided.

Mabry's Mill
As I felt while there making the image

This is the final image after editing.  This is how I felt about the scene while I was there.  It doesn't reflect reality of the flat, gray day, but it reflects my emotion and says to me, this is what I saw!

Thanks for looking.  Enjoy!

Dennis Mook


All content on this blog is © Dennis A. Mook.  All Rights Reserved.  Feel free to point to this blog from your website with full attribution.  Permission may be granted for commercial use.  Please contact Mr. Mook to discuss permission to reproduce the blog posts and/or images.