A symphony of sound awakened me this morning as the birds around my home greeted the new day.

Bird song ebbed and swelled in concert as the different species shouted love songs to their mates – or ran off invaders. There was so much going on it was hard to tell exactly…

But I digress.

The avian songs were the inspiration for today’s Sunday Photo/Art Quote as I was reminded that music informs the art of photography. I have been trying to get more ‘notes’ AKA nuances into my images. We have the musicality of notes in the form of light and shadow. The staff that we write upon consists of shadows. The bones of an image so to speak. These bones are overlaid by color in different hues and saturation. Accents can be added by dodging, burning and selectively sharpening areas of an image. Some images have such good bones they can sing their song without the color added as shown by Ansel Adams who gives us today’s quote.

ansel adams photography qoute

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print the performance.” Ansel Adams

Ultimately as the birds inspired the subject and some of the words for today’s Photo Art Quote they also woke me up and I found myself moved to see what yonder light brings. I slipped on my boots and jeans, grabbed my camera and tripod along with a few accessories to see if there was music waiting to be shared.

And now it’s off to the digital darkroom to see if I can come up with a decent performance from the score I created this morning.

Yours in Creative Photography,       Bob

Ansel Adams in 1930 had been training to become a concert pianist while considering a career as a photographer. He decided, after seeing the photographs by Paul Strand, that “the camera, not the piano, would shape [his] destiny.” His mother and aunt both pleaded, “Do not give up the piano! The camera cannot express the human soul!” To which Adams replied, “The camera cannot, but the photographer can.”