Worn
Before truly beginning my first blog entry, I’d just like to thank Roger for providing me another means of sharing my art (both visual and verbal) with others. For the last couple of years he’s graciously hosted my photography gallery/portfolio/whatever you’d like to call it. For that, and now this, I’m very grateful. For my first entry, then, I’d like to address a comment he made about my photo “Worn”:
He said, “I love this piece. I don’t know what inspired it, but I think it is fantastic.” I suppose the good thing about being the photographer is that I do know what inspired it.
However, it isn’t quite that simple. My method is different than any other photographer I know of, and arguably very backwards. With very few exceptions, all of my photos exist simply because I thought they looked cool, for whatever reason. My primary motive is to capture beauty, be it natural or man-made. Once I have photos that I like the look of, I prepare them for exhibition on my site. After resizing them and making some subtle contrast/brightness adjustments, it comes time to name the image, as “untitled-1” just doesn’t cut it in most cases. When coming up with names, I’ll sit there looking at the photo (sometimes for a very long time) trying to come up with something suitable. I don’t have any set criteria. Sometimes the winning name is something I find particularly witty to do with the photographic subject. Sometimes it is something to do with the color, composition or general aesthetic of the image. Sometimes I find significant meaning in a photo, which I did not put there intentionally, and name it accordingly. This often results in a symbolic name, or one with a double entendre.
This was the case for “Worn”. The photo itself came about because the morning I took it I had been at a friend’s house. We wanted to play football (soccer, Americans) in the street as we often did, but the only shoes I had with me were a pair of flip-flops: not ideal for kicking a ball and running around. I played barefoot, and in the process got my feet very dirty and quite literally worn. Skin was falling off and scraped everywhere. When I got back to my house later I was looking at my feet and thought to myself, “Hmm, this would make a kickass black-and-white.” (Roger: this was the true moment of inspiration for the photo.) So, I took out my camera, played around with poses and, when I’d settled on the composition I snapped the shot, went to take a shower, and then downloaded the photo onto my computer. I did a little editing and once I was ready to name the photo I put my hand to my chin and sat, pondering, for a while.
At the time that this particular photo was taken (August, 2004) I had just recently finished the first of two years of the International Baccalaureate Diploma. This program is one that causes great anguish for many high school students worldwide every year, as it is simply just a lot of work. People who don’t normally cry can be brought to great sobbing fits frequently because of it. In August, the new school year was drawing near, and I was dreading that it would be harder than the last year (it turned out that it was). It should also be said that I went to a British international school in Hong Kong, and it is their tradition to set homework over many holidays, including summer in this case. I was feeling emotionally and mentally drained at this point, and so when I was naming the photo I was struck by its potential symbolic meaning: I was worn internally from the stress just as much as, if not more than, I was worn externally from running on pavement barefoot for hours. That is how the photo came to be called “Worn”.
Now, two years later, I’ve graduated high school - IB Diploma in hand - and finished my first year at college. Looking back, those last two years of high school were incredible, and I wish I’d recognized it at the time. College has been even more work, but I’ll be damned if I’m not the happiest I’ve ever been.
Or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that to help remove some of the sting of the cost of tuition.
