I have just uploaded my images to participate in the Sony World Photo Award 2016. Easy enough, as participation is free. This is a good start in the photography year 2016 – I am already curious what is to come this year, what we will see and which pictures I will get done.
I have done two series as entries: one for landscape and one for still life.

Here are the landscape candidates:

And here are the Still Life category entries:

Looking back at older photographs of mine, I sometimes wonder what I was thinking when I made those shots. Not only that the technique I used was far from perfect, but sometimes I am astonished why the heck I made this shot at all. Today, I wold either not make it, or I would choose a completely different approach. This is good news for me, an indicator that my preferences have changed and my style (whatever that is) is not static, but continuously changing.

In that process, I also became aware that I am more interested in seascape photography than I am actually in landscape photography. I didn’t conciosuly recognize this until I went through my archives and tried to identify the most interesting pictures that I have made so far. It was actually quite surprised to find out that it were the seascapes that made the greatest impressions to me. Until then I assumed that I fell into the same photography category of Ansel Adams (great landscapes, preferably in monochrome) which I always counted amongst my favorite photographers.

Now I realize that my photography is so much not the style of Ansel Adams – and that I am absolutely ok with that. Quite a surprise to me. But somehow something I should have expected, as my father was always drawn to the sea and sailing boats – it seems at last I have inherited some of his desires to be with the ocean.

Obviously, photography can tell you more about yourself – when you look closer.

For me that means, I will visit the sea more often. I will try to visit coastline wherever I can – at last I have found my personal preferences and know where to look.

To the sea.

If there is one thing that we – as human beings – discussed for centuries and still elude to get the answer, it is the question:

What is the soul?

Everybody has some idea about it. Sometimes we know it is there. Sometimes we feel ist is missing. Interesting enough, we associate it primarily with living beings. However, once in a while, we come across things that are not alive, yet we feel these things have soul. We find soul in the way people make music (is it the sound or the person who has it?), we find soul in art made by craftsmen, we find it looking at paintings and sometimes also at photographs.

It seems like soul lacks scientific definition, it is something we can not point the finger to – yet it is visible in some things we do, some things we create. Things we do whole heartedly, with our complete skill set, seem to become imprinted with more than just the physics. They become art, because we gave something into them. They convey more than just the material. They become somehow more alive beyond the physical sphere.

But this is also true for some things we do not lay our hands on. Some things, left unattended, left alone for years, may become more interesting than they were when we left them. Old paint on a door, rotting, deteriorating, gets more character and speaks to some in it’s own language. They develop some kind of soul – or maybe it is different: we respond to them, our soul reacts and is drawn to those things. Our character, what makes us unique becomes more clear in those situations. We feel connected to those unanimated objects as if they were alive.

Sometimes what we see and what we react to, what we connect with, becomes the mirror of our soul.

We may not see the light of our soul itself, but in creating art, this light casts a shadow of what it really is.

Our photographs are more than just photographs – they are shadows, frozen in time, showing the scheme, the outline of who we really are. Learning the craft and making more photographs makes those shadows clearer, better, more engaging. Though it is not the light itself, those fleeing shadows we should value and learn from them. They tell us a lot about ourselves.

And this is why, if we want to create art, the process must be very personal. As photographers, we see something that deep within connects to us. We visualize something that is not there yet, something within us guides us to the point where we know how the picture is supposed to look like. The result of this process tells us not only something about what was there, but also about what we did see. And this seeing is fed by our inner self, our soul, by who we are. This is what makes us unique and we have to do, to call it art.

Art is the shadow, cast by the light of our soul.

The German language has a different word here: Entscheidung. The German word Scheidung means to separate something. We also have the phrase

Scheiden tut weh

– it hurts to be separated (from someone or something). So if we say Entscheidung, it actually means something good. We end an inner separation, we bring together the things, we make ourselves or a situation whole again.

To de-cide is to end a cision (if that word would exist) – a condition that cost more energy (if we are torn apart within, that condition does cost energy) and make room to move forward. If cision last too long, it drains energy from us, takes us away from the next step, hinders us to be whole.

As photographers, we make decisions all the time. We are used to decide: we exclude, we focus, we choose the aperture, we change position.

We compose the picture by making decisions.

If the pictures do not work out, the decisions might have been wrong – but we made them, nevertheless. We learn, and in future, our decisions might be better. Photographic technique is something we have to learn to know which decisions we can make, to understand what the consequences are. But this is only to help us on the way in our capability to better express ourselves. What we want to say – that is a different story we have to de-cide.

That is, what art(iculation) is about: to de-cide what to tell, and de-cide how to tell it, and finally – tell it.

Anyone who read Douglas Adams knows that number and the meaning. Who did not will just see the number.
The same thing (a number) can have very different meaning to us, depending on our background and our history. Any information is given meaning only in the moment that a subject is confronted with it and makes up her or his mind. Without a person, there is no meaning. That consequently means – meaning is subjective.
If you want to express something more with your art than the sheer visual appearance, you have to provide meaning. Very difficult, because the interpretation of what you show is obviously not up to you. But what you can do is try to translate of what you feel- you subjective interpretation of a scene – and try to express your feelings by using your visual toolbox. Will this convey what you meant to say?
You can not be sure.
But if the result of your craft is something that still resonates within you, at least you know that you are on the right path. With that approach you will not reach everyone, but you will reach the people who resonate in the same way. And that is the main goal. There are many artists that are not my personal taste (e.g. Helmut Newton), they do not provide any meaning to me. Others do. I follow those who provide meaning as their art makes sense to me. If we do things according to our inner voice – even if it seems to be a repetition of something hat has been said before – this is much better than to say nothing at all or to say things not authentically.
Your goal is to stick to your story and not try to be who you are not!
42 is always the right approach.