Brandi Hoffman, Reaction Paper #2

This article by Emmet Gowin really shows how genuine of a personality he really has. Also, this article really influenced me by his love for his family and his acceptance of new people. Having a family and being married is having someone there to share with your excitement, joy and laughter with. When he said that he loved the generosity and the simplicity of his wife’s family, was really neat thing to say, and that he excepts something that is different from what he has always known. Manipulation seems to play a key role in this society whether it is intentional or not. People have a way of influencing people, like they may inspire someone through something that they do or say. I like that he admits that he is inspired by other authors and that they fuel some of the ideas for his work. I can relate to that because I am inspired by a lot of people. I believe that every picture is unique and beautiful in its own way. I get a lot of my ideas from other art work that I would not have thought of originally. The next thing that I really agreed with in this article was when Emmet said that the photographer is part of the picture. I 100% agree with this, because without the photographer, the picture could not have taken place. The setting on the camera, the color tone, the aperture setting, how zoomed in you are, whether or not the background is blurred and the energy that is captured in the picture is all dependent on the photographer. The energy and the subject matter caught in the picture I believe is also part of the identity of the photographer. I love nature, and a lot of my photographs capture nature at it’s finest and most vibrant colors. The quote that stuck out the most to me from his article was when he said “as things teach us what we already are, we are gain a vision of the world.” What is unknown to us is beautiful! Once you realize that you can do something, that you never thought you could do.

His pictures are all really intriguing to me! I absolutely love the angles and the color tone of the pictures. One of the pictures that that really stuck out to me was the picture of her son and his pregnant wife. The first thing that I noticed when I looked at the picture was the circle from his lens. He talks about how he used to trip the pictures to disguise the pictures but then he left it, because he described it as a “powerful form”. I think the circle and the faded background, adds emphasis to the his wife and son. It also struck me as interesting, and I want to know why he positioned them as he did, and for the setting.