State Fair, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2003
Clutching a bag of popcorn and wearing a western style hat, a young fellow enjoys posing for Santa Fe Workshop photographers at New Mexico’s State Fair. Using a colorful background of stacked hats, other photographers set up their shots as straight-on environmental portraits. I crouched off to one side, and used a low camera positon to feature his enthusiastic response, and make the towers of hats stacked behind him seem to soar as high as his spirits.
As a teacher of photojournalism, I have always stressed the importance of conveying ideas through pictures that express basic human values — those emotions, beliefs, traditions, and knowledge that we understand and share as human beings. To me, expressive photography is built around a triangle of principles. Abstraction, a principle demonstrated in Gallery One, runs down one side of that triangle. Incongruity, demonstrated in Gallery Two, runs down the other side. And at its base is the principle of Human Values. Without the support of Human Values, demonstrated in Gallery Three, expression can not really take place. In this gallery, I’ll share with you some of my travel images that will show you how Human Values express ideas, selected from the portfolios of digital travel narratives I’ve posted at http://www.worldisround.com/home/pnd1/index.html. I welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas, and questions, and will be delighted to respond.
