Lens-dropping a Conversation

Fragments
Of a conversation
Unheard

My mind
Fills the emptiness
Unspoken

Creates
Stories imagined but
Untold

Fragments of a Conversation
La Rambla
Barcelona
Catalonia, Spain

Taken during travels, 2019

6Comments

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1

Carly on May 20, 2019 at 1:36 pm
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Nice photo and poem! 🙂

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- 2
  
  Patrick Jennings on May 20, 2019 at 1:38 pm
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  Thank you, Carly! =)
  
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    Carly on May 20, 2019 at 1:45 pm
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    You are welcome! 🙂
    
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4

iidorun on May 20, 2019 at 9:23 pm
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I love the rhythm of this poem – the shortness yet profoundness of the last line in each stanza. I love your landscape photos but these photos of people are quite intriguing. They are not “beautiful” like landscapes; instead there is always the question of what’s going on in the photo.

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  Patrick Jennings on May 20, 2019 at 10:22 pm
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  Thank you, Irma. It’s good to know the form and word selection were powerful for you.
  
  I’ve spent most of my life *not* taking photos of people. In fact, very few of my photographs have any people in them at all — and that’s something I often have to be either very patient for, or work very hard to achieve.
  
  I much prefer landscapes, architecture and abstraction.
  
  It was bicycling across China for 6+ months in 1998 that that began to change. I suppose there are so many people everywhere in China it was almost impossible to *not* have someone in the frame, so to some extent I just began to give into it. Also, lots of people were *asking* to have me take their photo, especially children. But too there was this sense that I was ignoring the most interesting subjects the country had to offer, and as much as I was adverse to getting in people’s faces with a camera, I needed to start trying to do so.
  
  India in 2017 was even better for that. Again, soooo many people in such close proximity that I could station myself at a busy spot and use a relatively wide lens to just capture the grand parade of fascinating humanity streaming by.
  
  Most of these Spanish photographs are with the 55-200mm zoom, and because of that theydon’t intimately tie the subjects to their environment because the subjects are in focus but their setting is not. As a result, they lose a bit of the street photography cred. The viewer has a feel of, well, “camera-dropping” on the subjects. A better street photograph offers the viewer a sense of being in the scene with the subjects.
  
  Still, I’m pretty happy when I manage to capture an intimate moment. Something about this one gets me more than the others I’ve recently posted, even with such obscured subjects. It’s a good moment. 🙂
  
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  - 6
    
    iidorun on May 24, 2019 at 8:20 pm
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    When there are lots of people around, I agree that the people do tend to be the landscape of an area/country. I find these intimate moments fascinating since they evoke such different feelings when I view them versus when I view a nature landscape.
    
    You have traveled to so many places! I am envious! My poems too often seem mundane but that is my landscape for now. Although, seriously, how many poems about getting kids to sleep can I write??? I should change it up and write about doing laundry next…
    
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