Something extraordinary happened to me the summer before I entered the sixth grade. I didn’t recognize it as extraordinary at the time, nor do I recall anyone around me thinking so at the time. Rather, it was one of those quiet, unobtrusive markers driven into the ground that provides insight into the essence of a person’s being.
That summer, I wrote a pretty long fiction story, the contents of which are irrelevant to this post. The point being that I fabricated an adventure story purely from my imagination. I developed the plot, characters, setting, theme, dialog, climax, and resolution. It was written systematically over that summer in the suffocating humidity of the rural South, mostly during the hottest, stickiest part of the day, between the time the public pool opened at our local Recreation Center and the designated date that my Mom, my sisters and I made our annual Back-to-School shopping trek to Teens-N-Tweens in the closest big town to us.
I remember being happily consumed with that story, writing it long-hand on notebook paper, thinking about it when I wasn’t writing, trying out different scenarios in my mind, and occasionally talking out loud about the characters and their antics as if they were real.
Once I was asked a question that surprised me, “Why are you writing this story?” I thought about that for a moment, but not for long. “Because,” I replied shrugging my shoulders with typical 12-year old aplomb, “it’s fun.”
And it was so much fun. The significance being that writing, creating, was pleasurable, that telling a story was joyful. I experienced what I now understand is called “flow,” that place of unbridled creativity where hours spent seem like mere minutes and the process is deeply and thoroughly satisfying to the soul.
That innate creativity, that inbred love of story, that need to connect and to communicate something of value to people, to stitch together life for others to consume, appreciate, learn from, or simply enjoy has continued to run as an undercurrent in my life from then to now. Like a river, it has not always flowed in predictable patterns. At times, like when I first discovered a camera, it overflowed the banks and wound into a new direction, finding a new expression, a new channel.
Today, I am reclaiming that part of me and attempting to focus it in a way that this current season of life allows with ease. In some ways, this blog is a tool in my visual storytelling arsenal. The intent is that it become visual storytelling through editorial photography with an eye for artistic composition and lighting.
I want to tell a meaningful story with my images and my words. These days, I may not be actually creating story; the story (everyday life) is happening all around us all the time. My role is, in essence, is more that of a story care-giver. My passion is to portray the wonders of everyday, the art of the ordinary, and the interactions of people and their relationships in real life in a way that brings respect and dignity and reflects the beauty in everyday life in meaningful ways. Beauty matters. Joy matters. Life matters.
This photo essay is an example of a tool that visual storytellers like myself employ in the creative process. The subject matter, obviously, is simple enough: carrots. These carrots happen to be organic carrots because that is important to me. You might look at these images and think something like, “Hmm. Yummy carrots” but at the end of the day the question I ask myself is this: “What are you trying to say?”
Am I telling a story with this image?
Is it the story I want to tell?
What elements in the image(s) might distract or intervene in the successful telling of this story?
Is there anything else I could use that would strengthen my ability to tell the story I’m photographing?
A photograph is a document, but it is a subjective one. For instance, creative themes of this particular photo essay could be (and are) hospitality (I was preparing them for dinner guests), good local food, healthy food, love of growing food, culinary love, joy of eating the rainbow, etc.
But someone viewing this photo essay may remember their mother once telling them to “eat your carrots” because “they are good for your eyesight” or some other subjective thought or reaction. And, that’s totally okay.