Embrace the Shadows in Your Writing
Take some time to search deep into the shadows of your story. It’s the shadows that shape the light of your writing.
Looking up through a window at downtown Vancouver tower blocks. Photo: Tanya Clarke 2021
Embrace the Shadows
I have a confession to make. I haven't been writing much recently.
I feel as if I've been blown off course and now I'm drifting in no particular direction. Have you ever had that feeling?
I'm trying not to panic. Some days I've wondered what I'm doing with all of this (meaning this website, trying to write, trying to take photographs). Other days I don't think, I just do.
A few days ago I fell down a rabbit hole generally known as ‘the internet’ and found myself watching some videos by photographer Sean Tucker. His videos are wonderful mini-classes teaching ways to take better photographs. He has a deeply philosophical approach to photography which imbues his videos with a compelling charm. His video Embrace Your Shadows: A Lesson for Light and Life I find particularly prescient.
The video runs for about twenty minutes where Tucker explains his thoughts on metering for the highlights and allowing the shadows to fall where they will. If you’re not a photographer and you’re wondering what all this means, I will try and explain. Light falls along a spectrum. If you think of a black and white photograph it’s a little easier to visualise. The bright highlights are at one end and the darkest shadows sit at the other. On a sunny day, those shadows will become deep absorbing any visible detail but the contrast with the highlights might bring shape and beauty to your final image.
Tucker explains the difference in dynamic range between the human eye and a camera lens. The human eye can appreciate so much more in terms of colour and tone, seeing right into the shadows, determining all the mid-tones and seeing into the brightest of highlights. A camera, by comparison, comes nowhere close. This is why if you want to take better photographs you have to accept this limitation and work with it to realise your visual intent.
At about fifteen minutes in, there’s an edit, a change of scene. Tucker sits on a park bench faces us and talks about some personal difficulties and his relationship with the shadows in his life. He urges us to embrace the shadows of our own lives:
“I think we are forged in the shadows. And that’s not to take away from the fact that when you’re in that space it can be incredibly painful and when you can’t see a way forward, because it’s so dark, it can be very despairing as well. But if we throw our vision a little bit wider, as if our life is actually a picture that we are creating and exposing for, that we need the shadows to shape the light to tell a better story.”
Sean Tucker - Embrace Your Shadows
The Shadows Shape the Light
This week, embrace your shadows. Look carefully at this week’s photograph. Peer into the shadows. There are things reflected there. The shadows in your story might feel frustrating in terms of your writing. The details aren't clear, you only have half the picture. But those shadows are shaping the direction of your writing. The light on the other side might be sharp and clear painful even. Or it may fall softly, leaving a thin veil with little clear focus. Either way, your story is there. If you have a bright clear sense of your story, is that clarity hiding something? The bright light might be blinding you to the truth of your story, the guts of your tale. You may need to turn away from it and find the shadows.
Trust yourself. Play in the shadows and feel your way. None of it has to make sense right away. And when you find a crack of light, follow it.
Until next time.
