I have spent some time over the past year or so, considering how to make my photos tell better stories. I’ve thought about character, conflict, metaphor and setting, among other things, but listening to Ibarionex Perello interview David DuChemin on the Candid Frame podcast the other day, my paradigm got shifted. So to speak.

David (at around the 6:00 mark) mentions that photos can also be poems. Well, of course they can! Why hadn’t I seen that? Strip the literal from the frame and you are left with a poem. My heart lept at the thought.

Poetry was on my mind as I lay in my bed cursing daylight savings time because the baby wouldn’t fall asleep. How could he? It was practically broad daylight out there at 8:30pm! The drapes were not nearly effective at blocking that late sunlight.

I remembered the Robert Louis Stevenson poem “Bed in Summer” and I pulled my phone out (because of course we all lay in bed holding our phones these days, right?) The result was a moody and poetic image of the drapes, partially revealing the bright early evening sky.

So, photo as poem. Does that speak to anyone else?