A guide to blending poetry and photography to create stronger emotional visuals and impactful words.
Poetography
Photography & poetry, two artistic worlds where one is freezing a moment in time, while the other is creating a story with burning emotions. When these two worlds collide it births a new artform in poetography.
Photographers desire for their photos to create an elevated level of emotion, and combining it with poetry takes the visual impact to new heights. For poets where their words speak with power and touching emotion, adding photography visuals will support the words like a beautiful melody accompanying a nice voice.
Linking Photo & Words
Perfectly matching photos with words/phrases that compliment each other is a key factor in poetography. The viewer will no longer see words written on a photo and will view it as an experience. The below video displays examples of matching these two artforms together.
I prefer to create the photo first and use it as inspiration in piecing together sentences of poetry that pairs well with the photo.
Does it have to Rhyme?
The thought of poetry is generally followed by individual sentences interconnected through rhyming words, yet poetry doesn't always have to rhyme which unlocks a greater range of creativity and direction to be used when writing. the famous quote by Ruby Akbarian - "Poetry doesn't have to rhyme, it just has to touch someone where your hands couldn't".
Rhyming is a powerful tool and should still be used at your discretion otherwise it's a missed opportunity to add fairy dust to the written words that gives it a magical effect.
Being Original
In the current world where AI is replacing human intelligence, writers may be enticed to use to platforms like chatgpt to create poetry. This may accelerate the production process however it removes the human element from poetry which is what makes it powerful in the first place. From poem to poem your thoughts leave an artistic trail that makes in unique, yet if your work is patent after AI your trail will mirror the next person who takes the same shortcut.
Using a dictionary, thesaurus, or searching up what rhymes with a certain word is perfectly fine.
5 senses
A powerful writing tool is the 5 senses description technique, this will result in the reader substituting themselves into the character in the story and having a great connection to what the are experiencing. The goal is to use some or all of the 5 senses when describing a scene or a character, i.e. taste, touch, sound, sight, smell. The application of the technique is to transition your writing from telling to showing, for instance "Jenny sipped her coffee but realised it was too hot", now to transform this into showing the reader what happened "Jenny immediately burnt her tongue while tasting the freshly made coffee". In the second example there is no specific mention of the coffee being hot, however the descriptive events focusing on the sense of touch leads the viewer believing the coffee is very hot.
Linking start to Finish
Linking the start of the poem to the end provides that surprise factor that increases the overall storytelling quality of the poem. This involves using a particular word, idea, or concept at the beginning and creatively referencing it at the end. When successfully completed it feels the viewer has been taken on a journey throughout the poem and produces a full circle moment where part of the end was hidden in the begin all along. A perfect way to end a poem and this blog article - the artistic world of poetography is now your oyster.
Thank you for your time and effort :)
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