Textual Photography

11 August 2010

(Around a month or two ago I was introduced to Michael David Murphy's unphotographable.com and his concept of photography using words. I tried it out on my own, and it's pretty cool and useful as an exercise especially for describing settings in fiction and non-fiction and in detailing panels to an artist in comic book writing, here are some of what I came up with.)

This is a picture I did not take of a girl walking in the middle of the street as a light drizzle falls from the night sky. The curving street was lined and illuminated by deep yellow light from street lamp after street lamp. Her face glows at is passes the each lamp post, her hair sways with the falling leaves, and perhaps in recognition of the humming music of wind and drizzle to the asphalt, she twirls at the balls of her feet.

This is a picture I did not take of a boy checking his cellphone with his back turned to the bulletin board of Palma Hall Lobby at the University of the Philippines. His yellow shirt drooping over his shoulders and his jeans spilling on his white sneakers, his backpack hanging heavily on one shoulder, his glasses reflect the flourescent bulbs of the Palma Hall Lobby, masking his eyes. Behind him is a recruitment poster of some student org, featuring lovers holding hands.

This is a picture I did not take of a cockroach inside my black canvas school bag. Which I found on my yellow notebook as I pulled it out before my Creative Writing class starts. Smaller than the average roach and not the usual brown color, it's abdomen was striped black and white. It's head tilted towards me as I stared back at it, not with disgust, not with surprise, not with fear, but a mutual amazement.