What does a photo that you take reflect?

 

What does a photo that you take reflect?  Does it reflect your subject, the lighting used, the position of the subject, the location of the shot, your statement conveyed or just some meaning that the photo scene will have to the viewer when they see your shot, and will no explanation from you be needed explaining the photo? 

Playing as Ghetto Policeman, 1943 Henryk Ross http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/ross.shtml

I love old photographs, and I think that the reason that I do is that when old, real, photographers took pictures they took them out of love for stills.  I believe that they took so many pictures in their careers that this perfected was their view of what was important enough to catch a glimpse of.  I think that after many years of taking good and bad photos that over time they would take stills without seriously thinking about the shot would really come out.  I bet that their minds worked on automatic, their reflexes knowing which great shot to keep a permanent record of for future reference and viewing. 

Forest in black and white, 2008 Maria Vargas

New photographers do not think, and I do not count myself in this group, because I do not feel I come close to calling myself an amateur or definitely not a professional.  New photographers just shoot, and they want to make a collage or statement, a pose, a manipulated lighting shot, to make some unknown statement from some unknown subject.  Photographers do not or cannot understand what the old true professional photographers learned.  They do not learn how to use natural light at dusk or dawn, how to use fog, hues, and reflections found naturally in the wild to make a photo that makes the viewer love the photo for some unknown reason. 

I think that new photographers remember those old photos that made statements on their own standings without explanations, and the feelings that filled them by just looking at those wonderful stills.  They through photography try to reproduce those effects and feelings, but are not sure how the photographer did it. 

Why are they not sure, because good, real geniuses of photography come few, and far between.  We all can take classes for art, photography, film and advertisement at our respective local colleges, but just as charisma and leadership, VISION, is not something that we can be taught, one just has it; IT comes naturally, or we get it later through our love of photography or one can obtain it with experience through time. 

Henri Cartier_Bresson

Vision is too difficult to explain, ignorant to think that you can buy, empty when artificially posed, and impossible to teach.   You know; however, when you see it, because you can feel its fear, the sadness, all the excitement, its grotesqueness, you can almost taste it, and you can feel the pain brought to your view by the still photograph, taken by someone with a true love of the camera and life!  In reality, photos reflect what the viewer sees.  The viewer can be you the taker, or the public, and we as photographer want-a-be's needs to just take pictures for the love of photos and life, and let the still explain itself, don't you think?  If you need to explain, what you meant in the photos that you take you didn't take them right?