Well people, this month’s theme’s proving to be a bit of a brain-teaser isn’t it?
So I thought it’d be a good idea to offer some little insight into my thinking behind it.
Truth of the matter is, we can all blame Mark for it actually! Heh heh.
Y’see, I quite took to heart what he’d said last month about some of our themes having been a bit specific, and going with something more general in nature.
Hmm.
But even “Texture” was still a tad on the specific side, so I started pondering what we could have that’d be truly general (as in pretty much anything you like) yet still focussed around some sort of topic.
And not too easy of course. After all, there’s no challenge in easy is there?
Tricky.
Then suddenly, completely out of the blue, it pops into my head… “Ramblings of a Deranged Mind”. Wide open to any sort of interpretation you care to put on it. But with a slant. And a sufficiently twisted slant moreover to appeal to my perverse sense of humour.
Must admit to having had some second thoughts about it before announcing it. And I tinkered with the wording a bit, substituting “Visions” for “Ramblings”. But it didn’t seem to have quite the same connotation so finally I reverted to the original thought.
Great. Have a chuckle. Announce it. Chuckle some more. And then it suddenly strikes me “Bugger! I haven’t a clue what I’m gonna do for this!”
“Hoist with me own petard” is the expression I do believe.
Bit of brain-racking called for then. And after pondering the matter for some little while it occurred to me that it all comes down to a question of approach. Determine that, and the rest should all fall into place.
So the approach I opted for was to try to put myself inside a deranged mind. Some may say that should be fairly easy for me. Heh heh.
What that led me to was thoughts of various compulsions, obsessions, fixations, fears, anxieties, distorted views of “reality” and so on. (Though of course those aren’t the only products of a deranged mind… er… not that I’d know anything about it of course!)
How best to convey this, any of this, in images then?
Once I’d started thinking in those terms the rest was fairly easy. Come the end of October’s first week or thereabouts I’d already knocked out three pics, and the month was shaping up to be one of those very rare occasions when I almost wished we hadn’t agreed on a “five pic cap” for the project.
In fact I was sorely tempted to create one of those slideshow thingies that I’ve been messing around with recently, and upload that. Would that then count as simply one contribution (regardless of how many individual stills comprised the slideshow) or not? But then I thought that would’ve been a bit of a cheat (even though the overall effect may have had more impact) so decided not.
Oh well. Yet another (probably naff) idea bites the dust. And likely just as well really.
So, the major challenge I faced was in deciding which particular images, of those that had occurred to me, to settle upon. And the next challenge wasn’t so much in capturing the raw images (raw as in source images rather than raw as in file format) but in manipulating them to get the various effects I had in mind.
Almost inevitably I s’pose the results are more symbolic than literal… and it may well prove they’re only symbolic to me.
But hey, that’s what its all about isn’t it?
Also, originally I hadn’t intended to upload my pics until very last thing… letting everyone else have a fair old crack at it first.
But as we’re getting towards the end of the month and the only person to have waded in so far is Darren with his rather brilliant pic (and what a super interpretation eh? Sort of looking at the topic from the “outside” rather than trying to get “inside” as I’ve done) I thought I’d help things along by bunging mine in now.
Just don’t expect any explanations of what they’re symbolic of though!
