Photography of Music: Utter Symphony

Last Updated on July 21, 2016 by Patrick

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Victor E. Frankl.

In the previous chapter I talked about the concept and about the impressions we receive through visuals that trigger one or more concepts within our mind. This is a work of recognition that we undertake but what if we recognize a symphony? How odd is this? And what do I mean?

Now, what is a symphony? Trust me, this is not a dissertation about music or about a certain aspect of music. Let’s just reflect upon this a little, shall we?

I was somewhere in the mountains, in winter, last year, even though this is quite late to talk about it and not my style, I was on a trip filled with moments of awe. I get really inspired, to tell the truth, by these spare moments of otherworldly stimuli which fires my brain and chakras of a higher emotional response and make me contemplate. Now.. though it is summer while I am writing about this, I can’t stop thinking about these kind of events, little moments of je ne sais quoi that happen from time to time, especially when I open my eyes, heart and mind while hiking in Nature.

I can recognize a musical aspect everywhere, whether I’m in town, outside the city, in the countryside, in the forest, in the mountains, wherever.. They’re all out there, whilst they’re in here, within me. One can always recognize what one has, of course..

So, what am I saying, that I have a symphony within me? I do not know yet, but all I know is that my body, my mind, my conscience are like a chord resonating with these kind of quantic events, I may say.

So, what is actually a symphony? I can define it as a complex piece of music, with complex sounds, with complex tones and so on. A chemical formula can be a symphony, as well as the source code of a computer program, also a mathematical formula can be a symphony. For this latter, it would be interesting to have a device which we could type in a math formula and than press play to hear how it sounds: a decoder device for mathematical formulae into music.

But this complex piece of music has many other things that couldn’t be considered quite musical, by some, or could be. Just like the arm of a human body is not the body itself. The twig of a tree, though, looks very much like the tree. The scale of the things here are not to be taken in consideration. We speak in other terms.

I was hiking into this forest, in the mountains, and as mirific as it was, it was also symphonic to say the least, these trees dressed in white. Nature has a way to cover them with snow in such an artistic way that emphasizes all of their little twigs, branches, dead leaves still hanging and so on. It was an untamed symphony of white, resonating in the forest in a paradisiacal and mysterious way.

Music theory has it that a symphony has four basic movements that comprises it: an opening sonata in allegro, a slow movement in adagio, a minuet or scherzo with a trio and another sonata in allegro, or a rondo. These are the basic rules of the composition of such a musical work. But in the fabric of reality no such rules exist. Though I wonder: how to decode a symphony in photography? I think by merely staying present in Nature and willing to receive what Nature gives you.

And so I did. Opening my eyes to the vastness out there and to the local, so to speak, visual elements around me, to the cathedral of Nature when the symphony manifests I see and hear what an image can say and words cannot: an untamed symphony.

Did I recognize it? Sure. This is my symphony.

Waiting was no longer an issue. Visualization never existed before but after the impact of the impression of Nature on me. Did you ever notice that when you listen to a music, that music sings within you? It is not you identifying yourself with it, though could be if not aware of yourself and the surroundings. It is the pure law of resonance.

Framing the small was not easy, but framing the picture in front of me, not vast but a few times bigger than me was a little bit easier. I had those four pilars of the symphony mentioned earlier and the harmony of the untamed composition, of the drawing of snow on the branches. It’s the white that draws the eye.

What is a symphony in white? Some say today that art begins with a white canvas, but no work of Creation exists today that began on white. White is the maximum of tonalities whilst black is their minimum.

Everything starts with a pause, a break. On the canvas of the pause everything is gestated. There isn’t any value that would have a value if darkness wouldn’t second it, if it had no shadows.

The symphony was born from a seed, but the seed is not the end nor the beginning it is the point of return. The symphony returns to the very silence that gave birth to it. That silence is the seed…

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