That seems like an unusual idea, doesn’t it?  That wield­ing a cam­era to cap­ture sin­gle moments in time really has any­thing valu­able to add to the process of writ­ing sto­ries?   But it has, I think.  Each time I pick up the cam­era, I think about writ­ing, and each time I write, I think about the cam­era.  The two pas­sions have odd syn­er­gies between them.  There are com­mon­al­i­ties among all cre­ative endeav­ors, per­haps.  Here are a few prin­ci­ples that I feel have worked their way into my work , or become stronger, because of my pur­suit of photography.

• Economy
  Powerful pho­tographs can be cre­ated with very sim­ple ele­ments.  Isolating your sub­ject, focus­ing on it, and elim­i­nat­ing areas of dis­trac­tion.  The prin­ci­ple comes eas­ily in pho­tog­ra­phy after prac­tic­ing for a while.  Then, when I return to the page, I start see­ing things with the same eye for econ­omy.  This sen­tence isn’t really nec­es­sary.  What’s really impor­tant in this scene?  What can I sim­ply hint at to pro­vide depth, with­out dis­tract­ing from my pri­mary purpose?
• Balance
  Visual images carry weight, and a well-composed image bal­ances this weight to be pleas­ing to the eye.  Plots require care­ful bal­ance too, between the pre­lude, ris­ing action, and denoue­ment.  Too much of one and the bal­ance of the story can be thrown off entirely.
• Focusing
  You would think that focus­ing these days is a mat­ter of half-pressing the focus but­ton and let­ting the cam­era auto­mat­i­cally cap­ture the sub­ject.  For a lot of pho­tos, this is all you have to do.  But some­times, you need to change your focal points.  Sometimes, you delib­er­ately want things out of focus for effect, to con­vey a mood.    It’s easy to rely on the cam­era, but mas­tery comes when you push past the auto­matic set­tings and into the deeper fea­tures of the camera.

  Pushing past the auto­matic set­tings in writ­ing means dis­card­ing early ideas, and dig­ging deeper for more essen­tial truths.  Writing not on autopi­lot, but with care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, tweak­ing until the men­tal image is just right, with the sub­ject in focus, and dis­tract­ing ele­ments not.

• Capturing Action
  Capturing action in pho­tog­ra­phy requires a quick trig­ger fin­ger and being in the right place at just the right moment.   You have to plan ahead, choos­ing your angle and hope for the best.   I find that I plan my scenes now like I plan my shots, ahead of time, think­ing about the best angle to approach from, and how I can get that impor­tant moment down on the page
• Hinting at a Story
  In some of my pho­tog­ra­phy, I actu­ally want the image itself to con­vey a story.  The lit­tle details of an image, back­ground ele­ments, tiny details, the way light hits just right to lighten or darken a mood–everything in your image can add up to tell a story, to hint at events that hap­pen before and after the frame has snapped.  In writ­ing, I think it’s impor­tant to know what came before a story, and to be able to work in those details that cre­ate a piece that feels like a small glimpse of some­thing larger, some­thing con­nected to a greater con­ti­nu­ity.  I often say that your story should be about the sec­ond most impor­tant thing to hap­pen to your char­ac­ter.   If their life starts when you start writ­ing, then they aren’t as inter­est­ing and rounded as they per­haps could be with back story.  Too much back story, how­ever, and your story can become bogged down in what was and not what will be.  Just like how pho­tographs can hint at a story, you take a light touch with this aspect, devel­op­ing your back story and world build­ing just enough to give the impres­sion of some­thing larger, with­out try­ing to force the whole thing onto the reader

Do you find that your inter­ests teaches you unex­pected things about one another?  What inter­sec­tions between dif­fer­ent arts and activ­i­ties have you dis­cov­ered, and what have these dis­cov­er­ies illu­mi­nated for you?

Some day, I’ll write about how writ­ing and fish­ing have many things in com­mon.   For one, both require tremen­dous amounts of patience to get what you what.

Tagged as: My Writing, Photography, synergy