What's in a Name?

Why do you have single-word titles for your work?

I'm a big believer in the power and magnificence of the English language. Strange at times, definitely non-sensical when it comes to pronunciation, with a prevailing sense of self-worth and tinged with a checquered past. Yet it's fantastic how descriptive words can be, conveying such a rich description of a scene or emotion. For me Charles Dickens was the epitomy of this motive. Beautifully descriptive and painfully poetic, his visions of scenes and characters are faithfully reproduced in the minds of readers thanks to his use of language.

Dickens was, however, a proponent of long sentences. This was really only as a result of the sheer quantity of detail offered within each passage. The English language is laden with sufficient words to be able to capture a physical and emotional description in just a single word. This has been my aim; a challenge to find that word for every image I publish.

In some cases I find the title of the image arrives simply as a straightforward description of the subject or context of the image. Telephone is perhaps the best example of this; the image is all about capturing an historic feature of a historic street in London, in a way which makes the viewer question for a brief moment when the image was captured. This is also true if the word telephone, the shortened version of which, phone, is almost used by every person daily. But the word telephone has fallen from common parlance, much like the telephone box itself.

Telephone

So you just name the image the same thing as the subject?

Not even remotely close. There are times such as in Telephone where the focus is so blatant and obvious that my naming it something else might detract from the subject. But other times what makes an image appealing isn't necessarily the form of the subject or even the way it's presented, but how it makes the viewer feel.

To me, Entourage invokes an emotional connection with sheep as the subject. In my view the image isn't appealing because it's a sheep (nice though sheep are), what makes it compelling is the fact that this sheep is staring directly into the camera, and the tight composition lent itself to some black and white rendering. I find this creates an instant bond with the sheep looking down the lens; to me, this emotion was that of protection. I felt like the way I was being stared down in that field was suggesting I wasn't wholly welcome and that the others needed protection. This sheep was part of the entourage looking after the others.

Obviously, there aren't pigs flying past your window and no, I don't actually believe this sheep is part of some protection ring around the others. But that single word the viewer saw when they looked at the image imparted some impression which colours the way they see the image. And that impression is something I'm in control of.

Entourage

Another aspect of naming images I've only recently utilised is humour or wordplay. As of yet there is only a single example of this in my portfolio, Field. I think the meaning of this particular image has generally been a little too subtle as no one has commented on it, but I still find it amusing. Field was inspired by Cory Graham's brief of 'man-made structures in nature', and with lighting conditions perfect one lunchtime I made a dash for the railway line. The two masts here offer a surpringly balanced image, the whole setting being slightly beautiful and awful at the same time. The word play here is that the subject is most obviously a field, but is covered in the field being generated constantly by the masts, which in this case influences the composition of the image drastically.

Incidentally, this image can no longer be recreated, which makes me even louder of this work; the railway here on the East midlands line has recently been electrified, so the bridge is now obscured with overhead gantries holding the cables. Personally I feel torn about what it's done to be village - it's part of a necessary change in the world to electric technology, but at the cost of beauty and simplicity from the past. As Field is, hardly a black and white picture.

Field

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For me naming images is part of the final fun in editing my work. It's a last chance to leave the viewer with something they might remember, unlining their experience with the image. Would it be easier if I allowed myself to have really long, indulgent names? Certainly. Would the viewer's experience be anything less enjoyable? Almost certainly not. But I really enjoy the challenge and the process, lending a particular succinctness to every piece. This is my commitment to all my images.