They tell you that a good photographic image, a “Fine Arts” image, must tell a story – “They” being photography experts, judges and teachers. While I don’t disagree, I’m not convinced that the story needs to be much deeper than the story of the beauty of a sunset over the Indian Ocean.
There are times, however, that the story in an image reaches out and slaps you across the proverbial face.
This is one such image that I call – or rather, that it called itself as it was slapping my face – “Transitions – Spring’s Promise.”
The transition in this image is about life itself. It is about nature’s repeated ability to create beauty out of decay. It is about the optimism that comes with the onset of spring. It is miraculous to me that something as beautiful as the budding clematis flower can form out of what looks like a dead branch of the plant.
I can’t help but feel a surge of optimism in this image. Optimism that nature will survive, that nature will thrive, in spite of the damage we inflict on it. I just hope we’re allowed to stick around to continue to witness that beauty.
A fun thing about this image is also a good lesson in photography (one that I continually need to be reminded of). I walked to take this image, just as I did for the Prague Penguin Parade. It was a much shorter walk – out the back door of our house to where we have an amazingly resilient and beautiful clematis plant that continues to create the most beautiful flowers, year in and year out.
The lesson? It is not necessary to travel great distances to exotic locales to find compelling images. Rather, it requires looking for those stories that are waiting to reach out and slap you across the face. Those stories, those images, can be found wherever you are.