Images in our mind - just words - no images

[Jac@stafford.net]

So true, you never see it again. Time changes space.

That's a good rationale for a long exposure, or sequences of the same to capture the demon of entropy at work.
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[LabRat]

Well, the old saying is a picture is worth a thousand words, so the challenge is to allow the subject to speak for itself...

Steve K

[Tin Can]

Well, the old saying is a picture is worth a thousand words, so the challenge is to allow the subject to speak for itself...

Steve K

A few years ago I started an inverse thread. "Images only, no words, no discussion,"

Not popular.

My second mind only picture was a screeching head-on collision on a hilly road, I was in the woods, as usual, I was never near a road. Danger. The first 'picture' is on the same road when I walked home at 3. The third 'picture' on that road was the school bus spinning 360 on snow. We did not crash. But we ran though the T intersection. Adults.

I was perhaps 6 and still hadn't gotten glasses. I ran to the sound and discovered a steaming mess. A cnvertible with top down had collided with a hard top. Speed limit as I knew, was 55 mph. This was 1958, no seat belts, steel dashboards. 8 teenagers, couples, all dead, very bloody. The cars hissed, but it was very still. No groaning. I knew they were dead. No other cars came. There was nothing to do. No houses near. No traffic. Rural. I was alone, not scared, but after checking each body I ran home. Perhaps a mile through thick woods.

Since i badly need needed glasses it was a blurry scene, as I recall, but I didn't know my eyes were terrible. I saw colors, red, white creamy paint and blue. chrome bumpers. Bent metal.Hissing slowing, hot Sun, no wind. Time had stopped.

At home they didn't believe me, so they did not use the phone. I almost never lie. Cub Scout.

I did not go back. It was gone the next day.

Very much like a WeeGee image, except in color. Pictorial.

I can't forget it.

I have many such 'pictures'.

[LabRat]

Sorry you had to see that Randy, and any other disturbing stuff, but we are a witness to this life (and death), and is hard to explain to those who have not seen things that would change them... But, you have the curse of "may you have an interesting life"... But it does remind me a little of the pre-death scene in that movie "Blade Runner" where Rutger Hauer describes what he has see in his (temporary) life... Maybe we need to go back to the mothership to erase that part of the tape... ;-)

My point of the topic is that we can go from the past, present, to future in our mind's imagination, but often it is comparing apples to oranges as to what's there to see and shoot vs what we might imagine to be... (Try telling that to some academic writing critique about some photo...) words can't describe what might be happening (like Randy's accident scene), so we can let visuals tell a story (without words)...

Maybe there is a better story there than we can describe???

Steve K

[Vaughn]

I had a similar vision, much later in life, but not as bloody. Heading down Hwy 101 in the early morning hours, an over-night drive to Yosemite Valley for a show reception. About 2am on one of the few 4-lanes sections, I was slowly passed by a newish pickup truck with just an 60-ish man driving (with cab light on). About 20 minutes later, driving downhill on a 2-lane section, I see a semi-truck a ways below me. I then hear a large banging sound and see the trucks brake lights go on.

It took about 30 seconds to arrive at the semi. He was pulled off the road, no sign of any damage. About 20 yards pass the truck I came to a scene that seemed out of movie. A jack-knifed semi with its flat bed load of odds and ends steel parts spread across the highway, tractor's cab on its side, my headlights picking up the steam. The driver was spread eagle on his back on the road, head mis-shapen, dying. About 30 yards up the road was the pick-up that passed me earlier...in the right-hand ditch facing back up the road. The drivers side half of the truck had been run over by the semi-truck's tires, from the front bumper to beyond the cab -- someone had crossed the line. The roof of the pick-up was ripped off, inside no longer looked anything like a truck's interior nor a human being.

To have taken the scene with a LF camera would have created an amazing artifact. But I am glad I did not -- did not even think to break out the camera. The smell of death would have been difficult to express visually. Lighting provided by semis slowly making their way pass the steel would have been difficult to work with, and eventually there would be the Highway Patrol to deal with, etc. A Highway maintenance truck eventually showed up, and the guy told me to get out of there. So I was relieved to have a good reason to get the hell out of hell and I took off...leaving my old wool blanket over the truck driver that I had covered him with as he died. I drove carefully to Yosemite for the next 6 hours, thinking about the uncertainies of life.