If you haven't been faced with life-or-death in your own experience, you can at least appreciate the enormous energy, resources, and effort humans are willing to make to survive. The Independence Day film is an example, or in real life, the sacrifices made during WW2. So, when various animals or insects don't seem to mount the same level of struggle we do, or publish their struggles in countless emotion-filled volumes of literature, does that make their lives and deaths less significant, or their adversaries less evil? Our enemies are always evil, and that's not Mr. Nobody saying that, it's the leaders of the world saying that. So if the photo indicates a predator and prey in a killing situation, we should be capable of filling in the blanks. Art should expect imagination in response, like a good novel.
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That is a great response dalethorn.
To Ray, I can only say art is a funny thing (and I make no claim to artistic talent). What I do know about art is that all of it has both admirers and detractors. For example, some people even scoff at the
Mona Lisa to this day, and yet the painting stands as a timeless icon of art to most of the world, so who is right? Art is always a matter of perspective.
As for my photo, two things are true: one was captured in dalethorn's statement, which is
"art should expect imagination to fill in the blanks" ... so if all you see are "two dead flies" then I question your imagination if not your basic knowledge of insects in general. You also said that some people "might not be exactly sure what it is about the shot that (they like)," but you are speaking of your limited perspective as if they are all perspectives.
The other point is you are right: there is
no way I could capture the full drama of what I saw transpire on a mere still photo. The buzzing sounds of the dragonfly as he plummeted earthward with his assassin affixed to his side; his continued struggling and buzzing in his death throes during the photos I took (that you could hear 10' away), etc., etc. I agree with you that I couldn't possibly capture all of the drama I both saw and heard in a mere photograph. At the end of the day what I had were two insects that plummeted to the earth and landed standing on their head, one killing and the other being killed.
Speaking of the differences in the perception and imagination of two people, your saying of this death scene I captured ... that to have your thorax pierced by a giant object of the relative size (to you) of a railroad spike, and to have your juices sucked out of you via this unholy intrusion into your being seems "a benign death" to you ... similar to someone slitting their wrists in a warm bath ... certainly defies all belief as far as
my understanding of death and pain goes. Which again has to do with differences in perspective and imagination of two people.
As far as my being able to capture the moods and horror on an insect, I believe this is impossible, as insects don't have facial expressions of any kind ...
And finally, as to your saying I have "to amplify verbally what the shot is about," in point of fact most wildlife
motion pictures carry with them some sort of verbal narration along with the footage, so certainly a still photo of a rather bizarre killing warranted a narration too, as these aren't exactly the kinds of animals most people see killing each other every day.
Further, the use of words and descriptions can itself be a form of art
Anyway, I do appreciate the comments, though, as I agree with some and disagree with others. Yet they all got me to think and try to see things from a perspective which is not my own. Hopefully my comments do likewise
Jack
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