Behind Open Curtains

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

United Kingdom | Thursday, July 4, 2013 | 5 photos

Two photographs in particular have had a major influence on me. One is the shot of a running herd of animals from a travel magazine I loved to read when I was 10. It may have been water buffaloes or just normal cows, it does not really matter. What matters is the lung-drying dust and the sound of hammering hooves emerging from the shot and how much I wished then (and still do) to be right in the middle of it to catch the flight of the grains of sand. The second photo is by Cartier-Bresson, an elderly woman wrapped in a Flag-cloth. It was the way it was displayed that struck me - it was uncropped with the black rim and holes of the film well visible. And the composition worked perfectly. This deeply impressed me and when I started taking pictures myself I tried to follow the principle of edge to edge composition. I admit I have strayed from my ideals, since I eventually started cropping where it seemed to help focus a storyline. It may well be that I first need to unlearn some of this and I will do so happily for at the core I am still hoping to one day learn to image the smell of thawing snow and the sound of idle heels on cobblestone that travels slowly through summer air.