[Leica] observation on the LUG photo contest

[pswango at att.net (Phil Swango)]

Okay, Ted.  Football game over and I've come back your question and also
gone back to Mads' photo and many of the other entries as well.  First, I
need to hedge a bit and admit that I hadn't really looked at all 72 pictures
and chosen Mads' image as the very best, but I still like it a lot and would
have placed it at least *among* the very best.  The reason is this: it made
me work a little to see just what he saw that made him want to submit it for
a contest, because it wasn't obvious at first.  I know Mads to be a good
photographer and I know that he must have a ton of great images he could
have submitted, so why this one?  It took a few seconds before I even
noticed the bootprint in the frozen mud, but when I did I heard in my mind's
ear the crunch of ice under a bootsole and felt the bleak chill the soldier
must have been experiencing on a day so dull and featureless that the eye
might have been drawn even to the barren earth for some sign of meaning.
The point is that the photo didn't grab me at all, I had to come to terms
with it myself, and that was something I enjoyed doing.

Now I realize this isn't the way most of us work.  We want to reach out and
absolutely knock folks off their feet with our dramatic images.  That's
especially true if we work as journalists because we're competing with other
pictures and have editors to please, and so on.  So I understand the reason
we work so hard to "grab" people, and readily admit that Mads' picture
didn't fall into that category.  But for me that set it apart.  So bravo! to
Mads.

As a photographer, one of my favorite quotes is from the American poet
William Carlos Williams: "No ideas but in things."  So I look for things
that embody ideas, and Mads' bootprint embodied (for me) the idea of
"cold".  Brrrrr!  I felt it!!

Now back to Brian's original post.  I originally said that I would have
chosen Mads' photo even without knowing the details, but I'm not so sure
that's true.  As Brian pointed out, knowing the picture was from Mads in
Iraq was part of the context in which I saw the image.  If I had seen the
picture in isolation I'm not sure what my reaction would have been.  So I'll
end with another quote (not sure from whom):  Art is a journey that starts
with the artist and continues with the viewer.

-- 
Phil Swango
307 Aliso Dr SE
Albuquerque, NM 87108
505-262-4085