How We Can Communicate Through Photography

Photography is, in a sense, a way we can communicate with one another. It might not be a word for word dialogue of expression, per se, but it is, after all, a means to share our feelings and emotions with others.

One example of this was a simple image I photographed of a sunflower.

It was photographed last summer on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge auto tour route. I posted it hoping the image would share a bit of hope and happiness during this tragic situation with regards to the coronavirus currently spreading across the globe.

Personally, I have been a bit worried about this seemingly unchecked epidemic and, admittedly, it has taken a bit of a toll on my emotional well being as of late. This social distancing and self-isolating can be brutal for your inner self if drawn on too long as I believe we humans do indeed need some kind, some level of human interaction in our lives, at least to some degree, that is.

Yes, even us introverts, who oftentimes prefer the company of birds and butterflies over people, do require a bit of social interaction once in a while to maintain a proper emotional state of well-being, probably more than we would like to admit if truth be told.

For me, at least, the above image is one of positivity and encouragement, and that is what I hope it conveys to others as well, but that is up to each viewer to decide.

Each person gets to draw their own interpretation from an image, and if the photographer did his job correctly, the image will indeed convey what he wanted it to convey. This is how a truly skilled photographer can speak volumes with just one image and without even saying a single word.

I am not in that category, unfortunately, as I put my photography skills at an intermediate level at best, but there are some truly skilled craftsmen out there who share their thoughts and feelings with a simple click of a shutter button.

Ansel Adams, the noted grandfather of landscape photography, is one such photographer who speaks to me and countless others with his unmatched work of black and white landscape images. His soulful images of the American landscape are what actually brought me to delve into the world of outdoor photography.

Speaking of black and white photography, another image, one I took just a few weeks ago on the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, gives me a little bit of a different feel when I view it as opposed to the brightly colored sunflower image above.

Black and white images oftentimes give a more somber feeling to the viewer, and that is what this image of a pair of resting tundra swans does for me. It’s not one of sadness, of sorts, but one of peace and tranquility if I was to try and put it into words somehow.

This past spring, thousands of tundra swans migrated through the refuge on their way to the arctic tundra for yet another breeding season. I anxiously look forward to their arrival each year in early February, March, and April, and during those months, I usually take a lot of trips to the refuge to photograph these majestic birds.

But, due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus, my time spent on the refuge has been extremely limited this year. I am trying my best not to give the disease another person to infect and prolong its lifespan in our society.

It has been hard, very hard in fact, to self-isolate and stay away from the things I so love to watch and photograph, such as the mass swan migration on the refuge this spring, for example. But this is where photography can be a sort of remedy for us, allowing you and I to still communicate what we are dealing with during this and any other of our life’s struggles.

We can take images to portray our sadness, and we can take images to share our hope and dreams as well. Both are legitimate reasons to grab a camera and go photograph something, anything, in fact, that will help lift our spirits in some way, some manner.

I truly believe by communicating our inner self through photography, we can not only express to others what is going on inside us, but we can also help change what needs to be changed inside ourselves by expressing those feelings in a way we can’t or are afraid to verbally.

I am not one who uses the written or spoken word very well and photography is the muse I very oftentimes turn to in an effort to let something out that needs to be let out. This happens during both the capturing of the image and the posting of it online for others to view.

If truth be told, most of this happens for me when I am behind the camera. Not with all images, mind you, but rather once in a while, I come across a scene that matches up with what I am feeling at that very moment, and it speaks to me. Yes, it literally speaks to me, and it is very therapeutic when I stop and try and capture the scene with my camera.

Sometimes I have been able to capture it, and other times, unfortunately, I let the moment get away before I was able to grab it with my camera. But that is why I love photography so much, the challenge of capturing what you not only saw but felt for others to experience as well.

Let’s look at another image I love but have yet to post it online until today.

Last summer, while driving the bird refuge auto tour loop, I came across this broken eggshell laying on the busy gravel road. It immediately caught my eye, and I wondered how it got there and what happened to it.

The first thing that popped into my mind was the isolation it portrayed sitting on the roadway all alone like that, in a place it not normally would be.

As I was certainly not the first vehicle to come across it, I also wondered how the eggshell survived from being crushed by countless other cars driving over it, as the eggshell lay in the middle of a very busy summer thoroughfare of bird watchers and photographers alike.

It is a symbol of isolation, but yet, one also of survival. To this day, I am amazed how this egg was not crushed beyond recognition when I got to it as I was following several vehicles around the loop.

I had to stop and photograph it before it met it’s eventual demise when either a bird would investigate it for a quick meal or an unknowing visitor to the refuge crushed it with their tires.

This image is a good example of how we photographers can use our gear and skills to not only capture what is in front of us but to help enhance the message as well.

I wanted to really portray the isolation, so I opted to capture it with a long lens and a very narrow depth of field. This bit of creative license is what helps us photographing introverts express ourselves in such a manner.

I don’t know what eventually happened to the eggshell as I let it be for the next person to find. I hope they found it intact and enjoyed it as much as I did.

It is the little things like this, the small moments out in nature I get to see and interact with, that energizes me for yet another day. Life is to be lived and enjoyed, and nature helps us do just that.

That is what I hope to truly convey with my photography, to help encourage others to not only visit nature but to speak out and protect these wild places.

Before I let you go, I wanted to share one last image with you. It is one I will admit has been played with a bit in my image editing program, as you can surely see, but I did so for fun, something we photographers need to take to heart a bit more in our work. We oftentimes take the world of photography too seriously and forget to have fun with it at times too.

At the end of the day, photography is just another way to express ourselves in some way. We can be serious about it. We can be solemn with it. We can be sad about it as well. We can even be lighthearted and jovial with it too if we want to be, but the bottom line is we need to find ways to express our most inner self at times and photography is a great way to do just that.

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Thank you, and I hope you all are doing well and are safe during the coronavirus epidemic.