Personal Essays
The Semantic Photographer
--Phobia. Common specific phobia. An intense fear of something that poses little or no actual danger.
As far back as I can remember the thought, sights or sounds of birds has sent me cowering in a corner feeling decidedly sick to my stomach (ornithophobia). Oh yes, I can intellectualise the concept of pretty looking and sounding birds but in my mind’s reality they are evil vicious creatures out to get me: rats with legs and beaks at best.
Fast forward 30 years of avoiding the vile creatures, to the first bird picture in my Flickr stream. OK, it was taken from at least 30 foot away using the longest zoom I could lay my hands on at the time but instead of flinching and feeling sick I looked at it through the viewfinder, took the picture and even edited it when I got home. It’s not the kind of picture I will go back to look at again and again, but it so far has survived many ‘cullings’.
Since that first picture there has been many more and I am finding it much easier to view, take or edit bird photographs. I guess it’s fair to say that I am re-ordering my emotional response to the sight of birds: something I didn’t have the ability to do pre-camera. I use a completely different response framework where the links to emotion run alongside those that register Interestingness.
As far back as I can remember the thought, sights or sounds of birds has sent me cowering in a corner feeling decidedly sick to my stomach (ornithophobia). Oh yes, I can intellectualise the concept of pretty looking and sounding birds but in my mind’s reality they are evil vicious creatures out to get me: rats with legs and beaks at best.
Fast forward 30 years of avoiding the vile creatures, to the first bird picture in my Flickr stream. OK, it was taken from at least 30 foot away using the longest zoom I could lay my hands on at the time but instead of flinching and feeling sick I looked at it through the viewfinder, took the picture and even edited it when I got home. It’s not the kind of picture I will go back to look at again and again, but it so far has survived many ‘cullings’.
Since that first picture there has been many more and I am finding it much easier to view, take or edit bird photographs. I guess it’s fair to say that I am re-ordering my emotional response to the sight of birds: something I didn’t have the ability to do pre-camera. I use a completely different response framework where the links to emotion run alongside those that register Interestingness.