Program

Photography conveys both vision and emotion.  Whether we know it or not, each of our images contains a piece of who we are as individual human beings.  We each see the world around us in different ways and, because of our individual thoughts, feelings, experiences and imagination we each have different emotional responses to the subjects in front of our lenses.  Whether we are taking a photograph of a friend or stranger, our pets, our backyard or the grand vista of our national parks, we are not only photographing what we see, but also what we feel.  While successful photographs accurately recreate what we see, the truly stunning photographs are those that stimulate the senses by recreating what we feel.  Like the author of a novel has a responsibility to capture the attention of the reader within the first few paragraphs of a book, as photographers we have a responsibility to capture the attention of our viewers the moment they see our images.  Taking the book analogy one step further, the novels we enjoy are those that draw us into the imaginary world created by the author.  We develop emotional relationships to the characters, places and events because they remind us of people we know, fears we have, places we have visited, and our own personal experiences in life.  Our photographs must do the same, but without the words.  Our challenge is therefore to create images that not only represent what we saw but also depict our feelings and our imagination in a way that the viewer can relate to.  While visual elements tell us something of the subject, emotional elements add depth and meaning to the subject.  We need to put our viewer in the scene and make them hear the wind rustling through the leaves of the trees, feel the cold of a winter’s day or smell the ocean spray from waves crashing onto the shore.

In this presentation we will depart the colorful world we live in and enter a black and white world filled with emotion.  We will transcend the technical and discuss how we can get in touch with our own emotions and introduce them into our images.  We will discuss how our photographic style evolves as we cultivate and grow our emotional intelligence.