Two Ravens . . .     One sits on a coconut frond. The other flies around the tree. It’s a simple image, just the kind I like.

Most of my images contain more information than I prefer. Art, whether I’m writing or presenting images, speaks to me about freedom. I’m free to present whatever amuses me or whatever I wish to say. The reader is free to ignore it, interpret it, comment upon it, or copy it and change it into something else. (Have a look at the Creative Commons copyright notice in the footer.) The Two Ravens  shot, in a sense, transcends the subject of ravens and coconut trees. What would happen if I showed the image to one hundred people and said, “Tell me a little story about what you see.” Of course, I would probably get about one hundred different answers. Some of them would be mundane. Some would be revealing. Some would be transcendental.

This is what makes Two Ravens  more interesting to me rather than, for instance, the next image – a spider eating a bee:

I suppose that it is probably amusing to nearly anyone except the bee, but it is not the same kind of image as Two Ravens.

Well, what about a grasshopper:

Same thing. Oh sure, it’s pretty, I suppose. But, it’s too specific. The story is too obvious. It is an image of a grasshopper on a budding flower. That’s about all you can say about it. It requires no interpretation.  Therefore, it is less interesting.

One could say the same thing about the bee hovering at the heart of a hibiscus flower, its hind legs fat with pollen:

Once you have described what is in the image, the story is over. There is no mystery, no enigma, no gestalt.  Just a bee and a flower. The bits and pieces don’t add up to more than their sum.

I’m a compulsive image maker. One might say that I am an Image-O-Matic. Something catches my eye – out pops the camera. What you don’t see, patient reader, are the thousands of images that are pure visual drivel.

I save those for when I have time to make them more interesting.

Related posts:

1. Put a Little Chili on My Bees and Grasshoppers, Please Today I had a breakfast in my garden of a grasshopper, some bees dusted with hibiscus pollen and a sprinkling of chilis all washed down by an Orange Fanta....
2. Like a Bee to a Flower What’s a tiny mushroom got to do with bees and flowers? Absolutely nothing. There were a bunch of these popping up in our front yard after a heavy rain last night. They seem to favour spots that Sheba also favours when she feels the need to lighten her load. After...
3. Blue Dusk – Red Dawn – White Thistle Down and More Contrasting a blue dusk in Madang with a horrid red sky in Sydney. A very scary image of the Harbour Bridge. Some bugs, shrubery, and a dam fill out the day....
4. Invasion of the Creepie-Crawlies When flies fall in love. When bees wrestle for flowers. When strange bugs drop acid all day. When spiders lie in wait for the unwary. We've got it all for you....
5. Aqua Sea – Willow Tree Movie night with our friend Jo Noble begins with a stunning aqua sea. I define the term "final approach". You'll get a grasshopper and a sick willow tree....

Tags: bee, grasshopper, raven

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 11:36 and is filed under My Garden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.