Visual Interest right at home
By Jay Matusow
19 June 2007
What makes us like a photograph? Why do we choose to favorite some and not others? It's not necessarily just the technical qualities, although these certainly don't hurt. Beauty can make a good photograph, but doesn't always, and great photos are certainly not all beautiful. In the end run its a magic combination of visual and conceptual interest that sparks our imagination in some way or another. An ordinary object, viewed at an unusual angle or in a unique perspective catches our eye, and we play with a host of variables, light, focus,framing, and exposure to name a few. hoping to translate whatever we saw in our minds eye, to a reproducible image that will interest others as it interested us.
Now, like many jpg magazine addicts, I look for these images everywhere I go, but I tend to think of photography as something that happens when I go somewhere. The further I travel, the more likely I am to hope for some interesting things to look at and photograph. Novelty also sparks my interest, so that I feel a new location, never before visited is bound to provide great new optical material.
But the more I thought about what qualities did cause me to "favorite someone's work, or to linger on an image at a gallery, the more I thought that I shouldn't really have to go anywhere to take good pictures. Now, I'm not talking about studio photography, in which we build our own environments. I'm talking about those shots we find by looking carefully at what's around us, and trying to make art out of it.
So, in this photo essay I turn the tables on my natural tendency to go somewhere to take pictures. Each of these shots were taken right on my property or in my house. Turns out there was plenty to attract my camera, that I had looked over and over again without really paying any attention at all. All I had to do was focus on my environment I managed to wile away many happy hours photographing bricks outside my front door and glasses in my sink. True, the rest of family looks at me strangely as I duck into the potting shed, camera in hand, but I certainly had fun putting these shots together. What more, I tend to be home at least some part of everyday, and there's really no reason to stop!
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