Mood, Emotion and Photographic Meanings

Antonio Aleo

I am a passionate about landscape photography; I live in my birthplace, Calabria, a wonderful place with almost wild flavour, combining sea, mountains, lakes, waterfalls, forests and hilly landscapes. I find my greatest inspiration in photographing the heart of the forests of the great Calabrian parks, experiencing a huge sense of creative freedom.

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If there is something I love about landscape and naturalistic photography, especially the most intimate, it is the possibility of being able to describe my mood in the images; the result of which is a photograph that fully describes my current or long term mood. I spent the last few years trying to study the best conditions in the field that could best describe my feelings and moods, such as fear, joy, happiness, sadness, etc., personal feelings and general sensations, which reflect private life, values and social relationships.

And here is how an expanse of sunflowers at sunset, which with its bright colours could mean happiness, can take on different colours, tones and meanings. Using the backlight, and with certain focal points that isolate the subjects, one can describe the solitude of some sunflowers full of life in contrast with other sunflowers that have completed their life cycle. The contrast that many of us live with constantly - a sense of surviving in a world surrounded by the collective malaise (perhaps thanks to political and social conditions, the human being towards self-annihilation). The photograph will be distressing, almost catastrophic, but at the same time, thanks to the subtle light that caresses the flowers, it will be wrapped in a veil of hope.