User ID

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Getting back to the thread title, I'm
thinking that "being a witness" won't
help you to express much. It's a very
constrained perspective. A playwrite,
of a play that "moves" the audience,
lets the audience become witnesses.

The playwrite might have witnessed
something ... not a brief something
as a camera shutter captures, but a
thing of some duration and maybe of
some "evolution". Same applies to a
movie or a novel that moves people.

But then an illustrator is tasked with
making a still image for the cover of
the book or a poster for the play or
the movie, and that illustrator does
a good job of expressing something
relevant about the movie/play/novel
[or he won't remain in business too
much longer].


It's not the WHOLE experience but it
is a successful illustration. A camera
is supposedly an illustrator's tool, at
least for the preliminary sketch, but
often also for the finished image. No
need to "capture an experience". All
that's required of the still image is to
"express something relevant" about
an experience.

Soooo .... don't get hung up about a
total capture. Go for relevance. Let
your audience participate. You don't
want a passive audience, do you ?

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dickwilber Loc: Indiana (currently)

They can not, but they can be recreated by a memory jogged by a decent photograph.

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It doesn't even hafta be a decent photograph
to do that. A memory can be jogged by any
"key that fits the lock", any relevant souvenir.

OTOH, emotions NOT from memory, elicited
by an image, elicited in random viewers, are
an indication of a very effective image. Such
an image does not contain within itself some
"captured" emotions. Emotions live in people,
not in pixels. And artists can, and do, arrange
pixels, or sounds, or plastic, etc so as to elicit
emotions in people. People are like "emotion
machines" and you just hafta switch them on.

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R.G. Loc: Scotland

A photo can evoke feelings, but if your objective is to use a photo to evoke specific feelings in another person, there's much room for things to go wrong, and the more obscure the feeling, the more room there is for failure. It can be done, but success is going to depend on the third party making the right interpretation of the photo. What is more likely to have universal success is using photographic and editing techniques to enhance an atmosphere or a mood. Storms can be made to look more foreboding and menacing, lighting can be made to look more dramatic/mysterious/intriguing/sinister etc.