Getting to Know Images

I have never really considered the implications of including an image in writing.

On the first day of class we looked at some abstract images that really caught our eye. Here is the one I chose:

It took me a good minute to figure out why I was so mesmerized by it. It is hard to look away from. (Even as I am writing this I am having a hard time concentrating on my typing because the image is so distracting). I think the feature that initially caught my eye was the contrast. Parts of the image are so bright they are almost white and other parts are so dark they are almost black.

More importantly, however, this image not only caught my eye but didn't let it stray to another image. The illustration so clearly contains layer after layer after layer after layer of color and dimension. It seems to go on for miles despite being 2D. You have to wonder what is hiding behind so many layers.

At first I thought it looked like space, but, of course, it is an abstract image and it is of nothing in particular. So the longer I looked at it, the more things I saw in it. It looked like a mountain with the sun rising behind it. It looked like an angry and stormy sea.

I see how powerful a good image can be and how it can impact something. I have always considered writing to be words on a page, but one week in Multimedia Authoring as well as a Digital Creative Writing course, I have come to see that writing can be much more than words. Including media such as images in my writing can really help evoke the emotion I want to.

Images are powerful and beautiful. I have always respected that, but I also have always considered them to be a very separate art form from writing. Perhaps combining the two can create the most powerful art of all.