When photography & poetry infuse, they unlock a new powerful and expressive form of art. Learn how to blend these two worlds to create more impactful and emotionally resonating art.
Poetography
Photography and poetry are two artistic worlds where one freezes a moment in time, while the other ignites stories through emotional words. When these two worlds collide together it births a new artform entitled poetography.
Photographers desire for photos to have greater emotional impact on the viewer, while poets desire for their words to speak with greater volume, and poetography provides the perfect solution.
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 instead view it as an experience. The below video displays examples of matching these two together.
I prefer to create the photo first, and draw inspiration from it to create poetic sentences.
Does it have to Rhyme?
People generally associate poetry with interconnected lines that rhyme, but poetry can exist without rhyming, allowing writers more creative flexibility and direction. 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 that should be used to add magic to the written words, yet magic becomes more magical when used at the right time and not overused.
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 it unique, yet if your work is driven by 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 results in the reader substituting themselves into the character in the story and having a great connection to the overall story. 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 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 extremely 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.