Double surprised

The smell of the bread as it is baking in the oven behind me, as well as the brilliant sunshine outside my window, does not resonate with those pictures, not at all.

Aggressive prickles, monochrome edit, a close up look in a strange microcosm. When I took those pictures they seemed charming. The macro lens is ideal in revealing a parallel reality, a reality that we can hardly grasp with our senses and magnify it in an impressive, extraordinary way. The lack of colour makes the distortion of reality even bigger and the dark tones that I like so much, contributed into a moody and vaguely ominous result.

This is not what I had in mind though.

I like the result but it is much different from what I was expecting. I should have known better. One of the first things that we learned in the college of photography is pre-visualisation. The term may sound irrelevant in the era of digital photography. You just take a look on your camera’s screen and try again if you don’t like what you just shoot. But I was learning photography before digital cameras and smartphones invade in our lives.

Ancient history for many of you :)

Anyway since we didn’t have the luxury of peeping in the screen and correct our mistakes, we were trained to do so into our mind. Pre-visualisation is the ability to “see” in your mind, the photograph you just took, without actually seeing it. Not the reality in front of you but the two-dimensional representation of it, with all the limitations and distortions of the equipment you used and will use in the development process.

Nevertheless the outcome surprised me. And the fact that after decades of experience, I can still get surprised by my own photographs, surprised me even more! I guess that after twenty years with a digital device in my hand, the analog knowledge is getting rusty and my mind a bit lazy :)

At least the landscape shots came out exactly as I was expecting them to be!