Shooting with a purpose

It's great to just wander around in the world taking photos as you go. Once in a while you happen to be in the right place at the right time to get an interesting shot.  However, I find that those opportunities are rare.  To me, the point of photography is more communicating a message than just making pretty pictures.  Don't get me wrong, I like pretty pictures.  Love 'em, in fact.  But I suppose the journalist in me is always looking for something else going on.  The image should pull you into the story and make you wonder what is going on - maybe fill in the blanks for yourself.  Take this series of shots, for example.

My daughter and her husband were visiting yesterday, and at some point decided to break out the instruments and play a little music.  Guitar and banjo, in the old time style.  They are both good musicians and it's great to hear them play together, particularly when they are working on an original composition, like they were when I took these shots.

Now, I was really just playing around with my Olympus PEN camera with a Nikon 50mm lens, shooting totally manual, and I decided to use one of the built-in art processes and get some grainy black and white shots.  But when I looked at the proofs, I decided I would string them together like this to try to communicate a little bit of what making music is about.  You can begin to understand a little when you look at this arrangement.  It's fun and it's work.  Music demands some precision, and of course skill, but the point is to have fun creating something ephemerically beautiful.  You weave a tapestry of auditory color that hangs in the air for a moment and then exists only in your memory.  And when it's over, both the performer and the listener walk away a little richer.