Photography first started to capture all the emotions and objects that are beyond the sight of a human eye. It seizes all the finest moments of life, from the first footsteps of a baby to the last memory of a deceased.
When the shutter button of a camera is clicked, photographs are formed. When these photographs are shared, it generates an audience. The audience always looks for something in your images.
Whether they find it will often have as much to do with whether you understand who the audience is. The audience is a main aspect of photography because they are the ones who decide whether your photography has a story to it, or if it’s valuable, memorable, moving, etc.
Photography is something that connects with people’s feelings, desires and emotions and it literally speaks to the audience. It is been truly said that “a picture paints a thousand words,” which means that if a picture is too weak or not meaningful enough, the image might not connect itself to its audience.
The image above depicts the joyful emotion of a girl having a little fun in the water. Even without the caption, this image gives a clear meaning of the message it conveys to the audience. For example, just by looking at it, one can observe the emotion in the interplay between water and the girl. The main point here is that there’s always a meaning behind a captured photograph, and it expresses how we all can perceive things in a similar manner.
Credits: Shoaib Ahmed
Photography can also help bring desirable changes. Numerous pictures have given voice to the voiceless. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then some pictures have spoken loudly.
One of the example is a picture that was captured by a friend of mine after the deadly floods that took place in Pakistan in the year of 2010.
This picture was titled “The Blind Beauty.” When you look at this picture, you see a beautiful young woman smiling innocently. This image looks just like any other normal picture but the story behind this image makes you question her smiling nature. This is a picture of a lonely survivor, who had lost both of her parents at an early age. I talked to the friend who captured this image and I was told, “She is disabled with hearing and also cannot talk.” I was also told, “She is blind by birth.
Many times we look at situations and interpret images differently. We interpret them and decide whether they’re telling the truth.
I think it’s important to keep in mind the needs of the people and the audience viewing your pictures, because they closely look for the reality and the truth behind each and every picture.
Elina Gress
Being a “photographer”, I completely understand where you are coming from. Photography, to me, is a means of communication that is like no other. However, it has changed throughout the years with new technology and and the constant need for people to express themselves through images on what we call the internet. I think you could have expanded a little more and dug a little deeper, perhaps talk about how photography has changed or maybe hasn’t changed. Otherwise great opinion story!