AR 4 - Scenes of the Forest

The woods are messy and seemingly chaotic. They are thick with undergrowth, vines, and a general tangle that's hard to comprehend sometimes. Small openings and pockets offer views inside the thicks, and often light makes its way through in splotches to further "messy-up" the scene.

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Continuing from the last post:

I'm attracted to the woods (or "brush" as we called it where I grew up in south Texas) where I walk, but it's a difficult subject due to the visual clutter. I pass by many scenes during each walk that grab my attention, yet I often fail to capture those scenes in a meaningful way.

Getting back to the subject of attraction, how do we identify what attracts us? What is the cause that results in us stopping to take a photo?

Generally speaking, if you take the subject-specific part (i.e. what type of subjects are of interest to us) out, then what exactly happens during the process of attraction (i.e. when you're immersed in, or in the vicinity of, a particular subject of interest, how do you go about identifying what to shoot)?

I remember when I first became interested in photography. I enjoyed landscape photography, as my general subject of interest, but the photos I made did not reflect my enthusiasm or capture the emotion that I felt while out in the field.

Years later, after thinking about the process and studying it intensely, I became aware that a lot of it has to do with how I was attracted to something and how I responded to it. What I had been doing was basically responding as an after-thought and putting very little conscious thought into what I was shooting.

Basically, it was a crude process of thinking, "oh, that's cool!", and then snapping a quick photo a bit later to capture that initial enthusiasm. To be continued....

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I'm not sure what kind of snake this is, but it was a lot more colorful than the usual water moccasin (cotton-mouth) that I encounter along the trail.

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