Daffna Shalom is a photographer and multimedia artist. In our short meeting together, we had the chance to learn about how to be better photographers from her. Photography is not just about pressing a button and capturing a small moment in time, photography is about emotions. What emotions are going through the photographer’s mind as they take the picture, what emotions the pictures bring out in people. Many people take photography for granted nowadays because it’s easy to take a picture. Just take out your phone and press a button. But it’s not just about what you see in the pictures because the photos can also be poems or metaphors. They’re meant to bring out feelings and emotions in people, confuse, and make people think.
With Daffna, we did an activity where we all sat in a circle and she placed several photographs on the floor in the middle. We each took a picture and tried to figure out what it was, what was going on in the picture, and what kind of emotion it made us think of. When I looked at my picture, I originally thought it was a sheet covering something. It was actually a cabbage. The coolest photos were the ones that looked like something completely different than what they actually were. The only thing my picture brought out in me was confusion, but that’s ok, a lot of us didn’t know what their photo was either. It was really just meant to make us look for the deeper meaning, or the “bigger picture”. Because in the end, that’s what photography is all about.
With Daffna, we did an activity where we all sat in a circle and she placed several photographs on the floor in the middle. We each took a picture and tried to figure out what it was, what was going on in the picture, and what kind of emotion it made us think of. When I looked at my picture, I originally thought it was a sheet covering something. It was actually a cabbage. The coolest photos were the ones that looked like something completely different than what they actually were. The only thing my picture brought out in me was confusion, but that’s ok, a lot of us didn’t know what their photo was either. It was really just meant to make us look for the deeper meaning, or the “bigger picture”. Because in the end, that’s what photography is all about.