Returning Home

It has been many years since I dragged the camera out during a visit home to the Blue Mountains. So often our time is so scarce, flitting from one family to another for the catch-up lunch with the parents or afternoon tea with the grandparents that when we do get a moment to ourselves we just want to sit and, well, do nothing.

So it was a welcome change when we actually had the time to go for a walk out along the plateau from Mum and Dad's house. This was my playground growing up; the pine forest supplied us with trees to fell to build cubby houses and the native forest beyond that was our first introduction to the way the native world worked.

As a kid you can never truly appreciate the beauty or one's fortune of living in a place like I did. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I've sat at the spot where the photo below was taken, but it would number in the hundreds and it has only been in the last few years that it has dawned upon me just how lucky we were to grow up with this as our back yard...

The view looking East toward Katoomba from Radiata Plateau. The bank of low cloud is the approaching sea breeze and signals the approach of the classic mountain weather of mist, drizzle and cold weather.

Boar's Head Rock; not the best angle to see the Boar's
head, but it does show the classic late afternoon sun on
those wonderful cliffs. Mt Solitary, having already succumbed
to the sea-breeze, looms out of the mirky background

A road into the wilderness. The fire-trail over Narrow Neck
is the first leg of many a trip into the Wild Dog Mountains
wilderness area. In the full size print you can just make out
the lone figure of a hiker heading up the trail.

What Makes a Memorable Image?

I remember having a discussion, rather heated too if my memory serves me correctly, with another photographer about the merits of an image and what makes it important, memorable or special in any way to the intended viewer.

He was always critical of the technical elements of an image and judged the quality accordingly. He was very firmly of the opinion that if it wasn't tack sharp, exposed beautifully (read more on exposures here) and composed imaginatively then it couldn't be a good image.

I would agree that for some images this is true; art images, landscapes, still lifes etc. But given that the overwhelming number of image "transactions" are between photographers and clients (portraits and special events such as weddings, christenings, birthdays, etc) for me at least a good image, a memorable image is all about the memory and the emotion that it conveys and invokes.

Quite a lot of people in the past have shown me a photo and asked for my opinion. I used to give a nice critique (it's nicely exposed, interesting subject matter, it helps if Aunty Beryl is looking toward the camera) but after pondering this now for some time, I think this was the wrong way to go about it.

Now, when someone is after my opinion (and funilly enough it isn't as common an occurence!) I ask them, simply, what the photo means to them. Sometimes a smile spreads across their face as the reminisce, sometimes they stare blankly and have no feeling toward it. It is that reaction that I think is important.

What are your thoughts? What makes an image special to you, makes it memorable? I'd really like to get a feel for whether I'm just blowing hot air in a touchy feely group hug way, or wheather there's something to it.

Technically a fairly poor image: crooked horizon, boring sky,
slightly out of focus. But the emotion conveyed is simply
so powerful and as it turned out, sufficiently powerful
to help a nation win a war...