Pictures of

Ron Jones

My CREATIVE PROCESS

I have worked as a professional composer creating scores for many popular TV series. I have always been interested in landscape and spent much of my childhood playing in the forest behind our home. Creating music for Film and TV involves finding musical ideas such as melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo and orchestration that evoke in the listener the right feeling or emotions to support the visual story being told. I have tried to figure out in my landscape work what it is in visual information (photogrphy) that evokes meaning, feeling, emotional response as people look at images. The visual, frontal lobe of our brain does not generate the endorphins or interal chemicals of emotion as effectively as the audio processor part does. When I ask the professionals who create images, they really have no clear answer as to why we respond to one image rather than another. I believe there are many common aspects that both music and visual information share. There is line, shape, rhythm, color, noise, harmony, dischord and all the rest. Since we have evolved to process the world as a multi sense stream of information, we see a car drive by, but also hear it and our memory might stur an emotion based on our feeling. The light as it illuminates the landscape is a transient thing. How wonderful that we can freeze time and explore that moment. I love seeing what the path ahead reveals and discovering not only the deep wonder of our world, but though appreciating the Earth, I become changed and more informed. The wind, the smells, the sounds, the light, the tastes and touch for me are as much a part of the image. An image is mearly a side effect of the mind as it seeks to express, communicate, document and create. It really is a visual music. I hope you enjoy the score.

Appreciating our connection to the Earth and Universe

Landscapes demand a deeper and more informed attention and to me, a realization inside of our connection to all things. We are not walking around as outsiders, as observers. We are part of the landscape and part of its meaning. In a world that grows more noisy and spinning in all directions, we can stop time. A still photograph slows it all down so we can really see or catch a part of the wonder of life, of living, of being. I know that sounds silly to some, but to me, we are the camera. The landscape takes a picture of us. Each day is very different from any other day. So is each moment different. Being out there trying to see, I stop more and more and strain to listen, to let all that sound speak. Light is a vibration, an occilation as is sound and music.Photographers miss so much if they act like they are deaf, only seeing to capture images. Imaging and composition deals with perception and sound and light are two of the most important vibrations. Everything matters, the light sings it's song. We capture things best when we hear and well as see, maybe even touch the trees, the land, the sky, the rain and wind. If our images successfully resonate in the viewrs mind, then we have communicated what they already felt, heard and seen. We remind them of a beautifl morning or a colorful painted sunset. It is endlessly fun to see what is out there and the greatest joy to connect with the universe in this way. Yummy.

Photography is not a religion

There is no right way or wrong way to create an image. Liking it is not important. We are not exporing images, but meaning and trying to (hopefully) communicate through a static, visual equasion (millions of pixels) beamed upon a sensor. The thing that matters is the Human Receptor and it's sensors. Photograpgy will grow if we break convention and look past our limitations and dream hard, imagine wildly and act upon posibility, not conventions and rules. A gallery is not a temple. Photography is man made, not granted or handed down from the saints. Ansel Adams, if he was alive today, might look at the sacred cows and walls we have created and feel regret. We have no excusses, no where to hide. The tools are ours, they start and end in our creative imagination. You can not buy a bigger imagination, or buy softwere that reveals the soul. We don't dream big enough.

Ronald Jones