Developing appreciation

This is something of a sidebar in my Direction series that came about from some recent events.

I got a response to my post on Salzburg:

I really like "the line" (for lack of a better term) in Autumn 4. There is a movement of the eye that makes the photo very pleasing.

Then, reading & responding to Lloyd Chambers' recent post "dichotomy" I said:

I like to look at photos that give me things to discovery & little details.

Finally, I had a conversation with my parents about the photos I'd produced from their 40th wedding anniversary celebrations where they stated that they didn't really like the black and white versions, asking if I could give them a colour version of one in particular.

All of this cam together to get me thinking about what it is I like in photographs, what draws me to images and thus to making certain kinds of images.

They key point to me is, as I replied to Lloyd, all about discovery and depth. I like not just to see the obvious but be led on a "voyage of discovery" that has me coming back to an image to look at it, study it, get lost in discovering the small things. Photos that are obviously about "something" in particular are often too simple and I pass them by.

I am gaining a deeper appreciation of these types of photograph and hopefully it is helping me in my own work.

Increasing interest and preference for complex images - those with extra details, layers etc that encourage lingering study. Appreciation for photographs that go beyond the obvious, rather than simply present a single subject.

I'll get back to the sequential part opf this series in my next post.