The Story Behind The Image: “Local Swiss Farm Shed”.
Even though images are all around us - and we use them for various purposes from explanation aids to pieces of art - we rarely delve deeper into how an image came to be.
As a photographer, when looking at images, I often find myself wondering how they were made. Of course from a technical side (shutter-speed, ISO, aperture, focal length, etc.), as this is one of the central aspects of the craft, but that’s not what I mean in this case.
What I mean is:
More and more I find myself wondering about the things that lead up to the image being made, the life events, the decision process.
In other words: the story behind the image.
And this can be many faceted:
Why did the person decide to capture that specific image?
What events lead up to the image being captured?
Was it by chance?
Did it encompass days / weeks / years of planning?
Etc.
Quite often the stories behind images are just as interesting - and sometimes more interesting - than the images themselves. And on occasion, the story behind the image and the image itself combined, presented together, elevates them as a whole.
So for this weeks blog / newsletter, I thought I’d share the story behind one of my images.
(Hmmm, maybe this will become a regular series on Alpine Dispatches 🤔).
Ok, ready?
Let’s go.
The image above was made with purpose, but I could only do that because of a chance encounter.
Let me explain.
We were on a family bike ride - like we often do on days off from work - when we made a quick stop to regroup and catch our breath (our son is four, and he loves to stop regularly to inspect insects / plants / poop / etc. 🤷🏼♂️).
This is when I noticed the shed, and that it’ll make a nice landscape image (having cycled past it many times in the past without stopping).
But we were on a bike ride and I only had my phone with me, which would normally be fine under the circumstances, but I wanted a higher resolution image for potential printing.
So I made a quick image with it only for reference.
And we carried on with our ride.
Later in the day, after having arrived home and carried on with home stuff (never finished, am I right?), I realised the light might be quite good to go and make that image of the shed.
Fortunately I had a moment to spare.
So I jumped in the car with my “professional” camera and drove close to where we were on the bikes earlier, then walked the rest of the way to the location.
I already had the specific framing in mind, so it was quick to capture (handheld, a few variations in framing).
Then I headed home.
And, that, as they say in the classics, was that.
It may actually look good on our wall, too 👇🏽.
Lesson learned?
Everyday things we take for granted also make good / interesting photographs.
And always be observing (I wrote about it before actually, here).
When I edited the image, I thought a black and white conversion might look quite good.
So I tried that.
It did (in my opinion).
So I kept it like that 😊.
Below you can see a quick composite overview of the editing process (L-R):
Original capture (RAW)
Edited image
B/W conversion
And a video showing the transition between editing states:
That’s it for this week, hope you enjoyed a little insight into the the story behind the image!
Do you have any interesting stories behind your images?
Simply hit reply and let me know / comment below.
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Until next time ✌🏽.
Cornelius
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Love the story behind the image & the final product too!