The Dubai Life

These days I'm starting to make myself think differently about what I am trying to show in a photograph. I have never thought of myself as a deep photography thinker. I am not attracted to photographs with agendas or messages, and certainly not pretentious arty photographs. I think I instantly know if I like a photo or not, and that is usually down to the visual beauty of the picture. Of course, a photograph can be emotional, but as most of you know, I am not really a people photographer. I do like processing those photographs, but I am always much more interested in a particular scene, and if people are in that scene then great, but for me, you don't need a face to feel emotion.

One of the aspects of a photograph I am hearing more and more of though, and it is this aspect I am trying to get into my head when I take a picture, is storytelling. I'd have never agreed a couple of years ago that a photograph can tell a story. Maybe I would have said it can represent a particular time and circumstance, but it can't actually tell a story. What makes me think differently now though, is that telling a story with a photograph is different to telling a story with words. The story in the photograph does not have a narrative, and it is up to the viewer to write it. But what the photograph does give you are the elements to create that story. The story of a time. The story of a place. Not of course with a beginning, middle and end, but of a moment that has just been frozen in time.

However, you look at this picture, I always kept thinking that it tells a story. Again, not necessarily a deep and meaningful one, but of a certain place in time. The story I think it tells is of The Dubai Life, but that's the great thing about photography - a different story is created for every single person that sees a picture.