Angela singer

I’m going to start by saying Angela Singer has a love of photography that few people, even famous photographers possess.  I would not call her prolific clicking away dedication because I feel that implies she was willingly trying to take a lot of pictures.  I believe that she was really more in the mindset that she needs to take pictures and a lot of them.  This mindset differs from mine, I like to photograph things when I go out on specific photography minded walks and for projects I think of.  Something similar is that we both will rephotograph the same things over and over again as the seasons change.  We also take pictures of other people’s art.  While I like my photography to try and grasp the essence of what I am looking Angela truly gets an unnoticed look at like in a southern town.  She is able to get pictures of things that she would see everyday, and if some people noticed her taking pictures because they were so used to it they were just greeting her.  A lot of her shots are also pictures that are just documenting events in her life, common everyday events.  Combined with her telling stories about the context of the pictures it brings a more complete view of a southern town.  For instance her picture of the “Salute” they used to give when one of the boys had their birthday shows that even the elderly who tend to be more conservative in the south were once younger and did raunchy things like that, as opposed to how she may have been viewed by her grand daughter.  Few of her pictures show a technical understanding of composition, however the ones that do are truly great pictures.  This is mitigated by being able to see how she took the picture, the offhand snapshot in the morning of her mailbox to start off the day, or a shot of a random leg both of which explain their situation with little to no need for help from an outside source.  I think it is more of a constant documentary of her life and not a picture archive.  You can literally see what she did everyday and interpret maybe how her day was going.  The videos certainly show how ridiculous of a life she led, raising 6 children with a husband who would beat her.  I think the vast number of pictures that there are attest to how much we as people see, I personally am much better traveled than she is, but she has amassed tons of different pictures of essentially the same things, since she does not travel too far from her home.  This truly shows that photographers do not need to be in darkrooms all the time or editing photos or going to critiques they really just need to love the art.  One day I hope that I will be as diligent as she is enthusiastic about photography and the love of an image.