I have to start my reflections on the photo challenge that Shelly presented on December 6th by being frank and tell you the truth: I don’t like writing about my pictures. I believe strongly that my pictures should be able to stand by themselves. Words are much stronger then pictures and we’re trained to take in the words before the picture so I tend to be rather moderate in my writing. So this challenge  was difficult for me and I wouldn’t have chosen if for myself, so thank you Shelly for getting me out of my comfort zone.

I’ve been practicing my writing for the entire month of December with the christmas project (nothing with toys) that I’m doing on my “Swedish blog”.  As a part of that portrait project I write about the meeting with my model that is a result of every picture I take. I don’t describe the picture directly, my writing is more of a description of our meeting; what we talked about, what I thought about.  I then choose a quote from my model as the title for that days post. I don’t want my words to be an illustration of the picture, or the picture to be an illustration for my words, and that is a difficult balance to find.

My practice ended with me writing a short text to this picture I took Saturday.

DSC_3355

Secrets…

We share a secret that we never talk about. It’s there, and I think about when you’re far away from me, but when we meet I pretend like we don’t have that secret. The secret we share is ours and it connects us. It’s a bond between us, invisible, unspoken but still there, the secret that connects us.

After these three weeks of writing text to accompany my pictures I have come to the conclusion that I like to write.  But I also think it’s hard to know what to write… I can’t decide if I should write about where I took the picture, what I think about when I look at it or if I should make up a story as it comes. My willingness to write also frightens me because maybe the words will be more important than the picture, and I don’t want that. I want the picture to be the main piece. This challenge will probably get me to write more and also my writing will give more insight to my viewers.

Kristina

How did the challenge work for you?

Tomorrow I’ll post the next challenge and we’ll have approximately two weeks to try it out.