Photographers

"For half a century, photography has been the 'art form' of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?"

- Gore Vidal

"Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has 'cast up' in my time -- this art by which even the 'poor' can possess themselves of tolerable of their absent dear ones."

- Jane Welsh Carlyle

I had an art teacher, who I respected (not a word I use much at all) and who had a lot of respect for me. He said that he didn't view photography as art. His reason, as I can best recall it, was that photography was simply recording scences and subjects; the photographer is just recording scenes. Art, on the other other hand, gives us an artist's unique interpretation of the subject.

I would have to agree with his arguement. Artists depict the world in a different way. Photographers see the world in a different way to begin with...one moment and one frame at a time.

Into The Woods, Into My Night

"The impossible it possible tonight."

- The Smashing Pumpkins


One reason, if not the central reason, for making the switch to digital (or selling out as I belief I may have...though still not bowing down to the the almighty Photoshop) was that I wanted to know if what I was doing was that the pictures that I took lived up to my standards of what I believe I was capable of.

Six years into this photography interest and I have to admit that I have never taken a clear, detailed shot of the moon...until a few weeks prior to this post. Back home in Garrett County, where my summer nights were cooler and my night sky clearer, I watched the moon rise over the hills and break through the trees. For the next 30 minutes a shootout between me and the night broke out. There was trial, and error, and trial, and error, and trial...

Finally, I got the settings dead on, the shutter went, and I got the shot I wanted. And after that, the shutter closed and opened, closed and opened, the camera winking at the night sky now that it had warmed up to it.

In this early night shootout I scarcely had the time to notice between shots the adjustments I was making on the camera. I knew I was getting closer and closer to perfect until I had it...

Luckily for this ignorant photographer, my Sony Cybershot allows me to go back and look at the settings for each image.

For the next lunar display, I think I'll wake my film camera from its sleep and and zoom it in on the subject, getting close enough I believe I can reach out and touch it.

The first image you see is titled "No One Knows About The Midsummer Night's Dream." The second one is titled "The Past Does Not Exist."

Photography involves endless discovery in more ways than one, thank God for that.

Hearts in Towson

These are the first good images I have ever taken down here in my new home of Towson. It has been almost a year now. This path is long and uncertain and many times a lonely one, but this afternoon, when the early June sun was descending....

"Simple pleasures aren't as special but I won't regret it never."

- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Beat Blog : What Photography Means

To everyone in MCOM 258, I have now created and published my beat blog for the class, titled "What Photography Means."

Hey MCOM 258

For those of you who have not met me before, my name is Benjamin Knepp and I just finished my junior year of college, and my first year here at Towson. I come from the rural and peaceful Garrett County, MD, and transferred to Towson from Garrett College. My hometown of Oakland, MD (and the surrounding lands) makes a plethora of appearences in this blog. I am currently a MCOM major here at Towson in the journalism and new media track.

As apparent from this blog, I have a passion for photography. Almost all of the images in this blog tell a story about myself. This is what I love about it; the ability that one image has to narrate an entire story. What I do in this blog is to relate to the readers the stories that the images hold for me. For every picture I take, I want to be able to relate the readers the stories behind them, and the feelings behind each image that means a lot to me and who I am.

And so photojournalism is my favorite way to tell stories. This is what I wish to incorporate into my news beat for MCOM 258. I want to report on and write about individuals who share my passion for telling stories fwith images. I think that the most important part of journalism is the storytelling aspect of it, and images are vital in doing this. I will create a new blog for this specific beat when I start reporting on it, and will let announce the web adress as soon as I start.

From this class, I want to most of all build on my knowledge of all the technology that goes into multimedia storytelling that is so dominant in journalism today. I hope to increase my ability to incorporarate audio, film, and images in order to create effective news stories. Also, I want to be able to learn the differences in writing stories for different media platforms, such as blogs, online, and broadcast journalism. In this class, I will improve my abilities for writing across all the different platforms.

The Air

"Because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to us."

- Bruce Springsteen

Say it on the midnight air.

Turn around love, and she's not there.

Tucked in, soft and warm somewhere.

Her perfect form to soft brown hair.

And your feelings are laid bare

Shifting restlessly on the midnight air...

The Mind When It Dreams Of Stars Aligning

"All I do is kiss you through the bars of orion,
Julie I'd do the stars with you anytime."

- Dire Straits


It is the same night that a carnival became a succession of still images when my mind is running at the speed of light. It is act one of the stars alligning in my late summer. I don't know it now but I will know it looking back. Do you ever have the fleeting moments where the there is imperceptable forces at work in your favor and you become untouchable? Call it a helpless romantic who believes such things in a world of rhyme and reason but helpless to believe this I will remain.

It is now one in the morning. And while the world sleeps, my mind races on into the warm stillness of post-midnight August. This image represents how the restless mind doesn't stop in the night when it is dreaming of a world of dissolving limits.

These dreams bleed out onto the film tonight, and they will always be here to remind me how it feels to believe that this night is mine alone. A part of me lives in tonight forever, living on the tails of shooting stars, and never wanting to come back.