It Didn't End With Breakfast

Last night, having no internet to entertain me, I wrote a piece that was in a small way inspired by having attended a camera club competition night. It was about how difficult photography actually is as opposed to how simple most people seem to believe that it is.

Two or three days ago I wrote something that I have not posted about ‘previsualization’. I mentioned that Ancel was obsessed with previsualizing the image and discussed my more simplistic concept of previsualization.

After posting the ‘Breakfast’ article I was browsing down the blog and the photograph of the werewolf in the New Orleans post caught my eye and in a way it tied the two written pieces together. If the failure of the exposure can be laid aside, the first photograph of the werewolf is a ‘camera’ picture. It wasn’t the picture that I saw in my mind as he approached me (previsualization). I knew at the time that I was taking the photograph that it wasn’t what I wanted the final image to be. Of course, when I ask the young man if we could find another location, which he misunderstood, I was thinking a dark alley or any darkness that he could be coming out of about to pounce on the first unsuspecting victim. I didn’t achieve that but at least I was able to transform a bare chested young man wearing a werewolf mask into a dark creature that haunts the night--partial concept success.

With a proper background it could have been a much better photograph, and as the thought just occurred to me, I just might be able to still supply that background. After all, it has always been my contention that there is no truth in photography only verisimilitude. My question is why didn’t I think of that earlier?

Okay, maybe it is not a dark alley but it is the trash dumpster in an alley behind the Sand Dollar store down the street. Believe me, if you ever saw that dumpster you would realize that anything that would come out of it would be scary.