This is an image from a recent hike in nearby Michaux State Forest taken with the M11 Monochrom and 35 mm APO Summicron ASPH, my current favorite for casual photography in the woods. Even though this is a relatively light and compact combination, why drag an expensive, extreme high quality kit into the woods on a Sunday walk with the dog?
Photography is a practical art. It documents the world, preserving a split second of events in visual form. So it’s useful to journal our lives, from personal moments like this hike on a misty early fall day to events of global significance like war and natural disaster. Of course, this kind of personal image may resonate with others as an image or as a reminder of the quiet of the woods. That’s art as communication where I’ve made some image or artifact and by sharing it, I connect with other people. A basic human need that transcends the particular medium used.
Somehow, beyond the need to communicate with others, we also have a need to create. I assume it’s one of those behaviors that humans are born with because its contributed to the success of our species. We’ve got these big brains involved in a deep, abstract understanding of world unparalleled in other species. But what good are these novel thoughts and insights if they aren’t expressed in the common culture? I believe the urge to make art facilitates the creation of our shared intelligence through culture. The sharing of stories seems an obvious way to enrich thought through saying things in a way that is more subtle and compelling than an explicit telling of the how and why.
While words convey much, our insight comes through other sensory channels so we also communicate visually and acoustically through pictures and music. These channels can have great power, being closer to experience than the abstracted semantic world of language which evokes experience. My photograph here is closer to lived experience than a poem about the misty woods. I can imagine an even more powerful experience through music that communicates how it felt to be there.
Of course, being in the woods is the only real experience. Looking at the image reminds me of the experience and compels me to load the puppy in the car and seek out more life.