Making Stories Behind the Pictures

So, for those of you who don't know, I live near Seattle. Yesterday, there was the Big Sportsball Game, in which our local team did very, very well, and won a championship they'd never won before. Naturally, this has led to much rejoicing on the West Coast, and many, many tears of lamentation pretty much everywhere else.

Watching the game last night, I found myself focusing a bit more on the expressions of the people on the sidelines and in the stands than the action on the field. (This, of course, is in no way related to my general apathy towards all things sportsball-related.) Through most of the game, I kept making comments on the faces I saw, making up what I thought they could be saying and thinking.

I realize this is something that I do frequently, and I'm wondering if I'm alone in this. I feel as though there's a lot of inspiration to be had in a captured moment of time, even if it isn't something as dramatic as losing the Super Bowl. It seems like the reverse of my acting training, where I always tried to express certain emotions through my body language and facial expressions. Learning how to do that myself makes it easier to recognize when it's being done by others, consciously or not, and it helps me figure out a story behind those expressions.

While the inspiration is there, I find it difficult to capture what I see in the picture when I translate it into words. It doesn't feel right to just describe the details of the picture, because then it reads as dry and technical. I know it helps readers to determine what's important by what's described in detail and what's left out, but it all seems important, which is less than useful in this arena.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks on capturing an image in words? Do you have a similar problem with determining what's important and what isn't? And did anyone else fear for the lives of everyone else in the box with John Elway during the game?

Comments

Wanna Hear Me Talk?

I mentioned in my last post, but now I'm doing the official promotional thing. I'm going to be doing a couple of presentations at the Flights of Foundry convention next weekend! Specifically, I'll be doing a game demo for Rolling Realms on Saturday, September 28 at 1pm Pacific. On Sunday, September 29 at 3pm Pacific, I'll be doing a panel presentation on copyright and public domain basics; finally, also on Sunday, September 29 at 5pm, I'll be on a panel sharing my handwork (specifically my crochet, cross stitch, and blackwork) with a few other fantastic people. This is my first time doing this kind of presentation, and so I'm a wee bit nervous. Still, I'm super excited, and the fact that it's all online means that I'll at least be in my home, and the cats may or may not make an appearance on camera. So! If you're interested in what's looking to be a fabulous online convention (that's FREE!), come join us next weekend!

Calm Your Mind with Needle and Thread

I was fortunate enough to be able to host a workshop at GeekGirlCon last weekend, which went extremely well. My friend Erin was in town for the convention and was kind enough to co-host the workshop with me, which worked wonderfully because she was able to answer some questions that I didn't know how to answer, and also keep us on time (she's a professor, so she's experienced with dealing with classrooms full of people). I thought it would be a good idea, for my own benefit if nothing else, to document the first part of the workshop, which was a talk about embroidery and mental health. I've made the PowerPoint and list of resources available on a separate page of this blog ( here ). I don't know about you, but the last few years have not been especially kind to my mental or emotional health. I discovered early on in the pandemic that going back to something I learned when I was a child, cross stitch, was something that could help ease my anxiety and give me somethi...

Hope is a Four-Letter Word

I've been bouncing around with this for the last few weeks, ever since I read a couple of quotes from the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The book overall had some interesting ideas about reframing the idea of trying to get everything done. Even though there were a couple of things that made it clear the author was not approaching things with an eye toward neurodivergence (his discussion of distraction, for example, only talks about the "choice" to be distracted, and not how some people's brains simply don't focus the same way others' do), I was feeling generally positively toward the book until I got to the last chapter, and read this: "Hope is supposed to be 'our beacon in the dark,' [environmentalist Derrick] Jensen notes. But in reality, it's a curse. To hope for a given outcome is to place your faith in something outside yourself, and outside the current moment - the government, for example, or ...

Search This Blog