Telling Stories With a Photograph | A Conversation With Mother
© 2011 Wazari Wazir | A Conversation With Mother at Kinokuniya Bookstore
I personally think that the basis of a photography is to tell a story with a photograph, that’s why they called it a Photograph Worth a Thousand Words. A photograph is a visual language where most of the times people don’t need any explanation about the picture if it can tells a story on it’s own. Some photograph can be like an abstract where people don’t know head and tails about it until they read a caption about it while others is just pure and simple where people can easily understood about the story of the picture.
I took this photograph of my son and my wife inside Kinokuniya Bookstore in Suria KLCC shopping complex, one of my favorite bookstore in Malaysia. I think even without any captions, anyone will know where this photograph is taken, it is inside a bookshop where you can see a books still wrapping in the plastic cover from the visible reflections from the side and front of the books.
I simply choose to convert this photograph into black and white to simplify this picture, to strip away the unwanted distraction that coming from the books. As everyone knows, books comes in many colors. The subject of this photograph is the mother and the son having a conversation, which in this case is my three years old son with his mother. I can’t quite really grasped what they were talking about, maybe they were discussing about which book to take and which one to leave. Children books can be expensive, maybe because they are made from thick material and have lot’s of pictures inside, compared to a novel which usually doesn’t have any pictures other than on the front and back cover.
Then again the books here are just a supporting element, it is not the main subject here so I don’t need to highlight them with all their colors. I need them to frame my subject and I need the books to show people that this photographs were taken inside a bookstore. Sometimes people called this an environmental portraiture, where we take a photograph of a subject which usually refer to human beings, together with their surrounding, recognizable environment where people can relate to.
One of the reason why I like to take a photograph here inside a bookstore, among the rows of book racks is because I like the perspective, I like the leading lines where it is easy to draw viewers attention to the main subject, and the other thing is that I love readings, I love books. Among the challenge that I have to face when shooting here is the lack of good lighting, the lighting were quite dim, good enough for reading but not bright enough for photography purpose which force me to use High ISO to get this shot. I use ISO 800 for this shot and just to let you know, I’ve to take the shot quickly and discreetly because Kinokuniya doesn’t let anyone to take a photos here. Maybe they don’t want the sound of the camera annoyed their customer. There you go, this is my family story inside a Bookstore.
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