Wednesday, September 14, 2011

What's In a Name?

        When naming an image I sometimes will choose something that is simple, like 'Barn Cat' or 'Rugged Mountain', something obvious. Other times I might use a play on words like 'Rust in Peace' (thanks Chris) or 'Ole Nash'.
        For the image below, I decided to get a little more thoughtful. Many times I will seek input from my family and we will bounce ideas off each other. But for this photograph, I already had a pretty good idea of where I wanted to go with it. To some, this may just be a picture of a tree surrounded by rocks. But having been there, I know that there had been a landslide of large rock that had taken place there probably decades ago, possibly centuries ago. And I also noticed that there were few trees of that size in the area. Originally, that is what made me want to photograph it.          
       As I was looking for different angles to get a decent shot, I realized that the bend in the tree seemed to follow the arc in the cliff wall. Then I couldn't help but notice that to the left of the larger tree there was a small tree that was starting to mimic the larger one. I wanted to make sure I could get all of that in the image.
      'Peer Pressure'. I came up with that name because I wanted others to see what I saw. While many have hiked that trail, saw that tree, looked at that mountain; how many had seen what I had seen. This is why photography can be considered an art form. Not only does 'Peer Pressure' describe the scene, but now when someone looks at this photograph, the name may cause the viewer to contemplate something even deeper and more meaningful than if the image remained unnamed.     

 

3 comments:

  1. You do such a great job of finding those unique and different views -it is truly an talent.
    Mike Kap

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  2. You do such a great job of finding the unique and different views -it truly is a talent.
    Mike Kap

    ReplyDelete
  3. Perfect name for this pic. It is so true that photographers look at things with a different "eye". A creative person will notice details that others just don't see. Great job Andrew!
    Babs

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