Slow Photography #68 Exploring Haiku Photography
Copyright 2015 Jim Austin
Words and pictures can be more potent than either alone. Haiku photography combines an image with a short poem to link the essence of nature with human life. The idea is not to describe, but to allow readers to experience, in their imagination, the same feeling.
This alluring form appeals to a spectrum of artists: there is urban haiku, Spring haiku-- even Hawaiian haiku.
Why are photographers exploring haiku?
Nature photographers in particular are drawn to haiku to capture singular moments. Street photographers also find that these poems expand their glimpses of human nature. Creating haiku challenges all of us to observe details in the immediate moment, with sparse, simple language.
At the end of this article, I'll describe 6 steps to creating a photo haiku in Photoshop®. First, let's briefly explore haiku origins and then more modern haiku forms.
Haiku Past: a wordless poem
Traditionally, haiku poets wrote about nature and our oneness with its winds, seas and sensations. Sometimes serious, often comic – haiku began with scholars in China, and spread widely in Japan. Visually, it was usually a single vertical line of text on the page. It did not rhyme. The theme often referenced a season of the year.
Haiku went far beyond scholarly writing. Long called the “wordless poem,” haiku was a way of life, often linked to spiritual practice. Poets and common folk alike wrote haiku to praise nature, and to open the mind and heart. Matsuo Basho, the best known haiku poet, was a Japanese samurai who devoted his spiritual life to writing poetry.
Haiku Present : wit and human nature
Since Basho’s time (1644-1694), Western writers have more recently altered haiku’s structure and content. Jack Kerouac wrote haiku. Richard Wright, African-American author of Native Son, also wrote a series of haiku.
As an example of modern haiku, George Swede's haiku sparkles with wit:
Thick fog lift's
unfortunately, I am where
I thought I was
So, not all haiku is serious, and today it often does not follow a set number of syllables. Photo haiku has taken it into a new realm.
Making Photo Haiku
How do you make photo haiku? Begin by observing a
passing moment, like a lightning bolt or a moment of human
relations. Start with an image. Think about what
you perceived, heard, or sensed during your experience.
Your short poem can be about what happened. It can capture what you imagined might have happened. Use simple
language when writing your haiku. Let the words give
your viewers a new point of view on your image. For instance, on a walk I saw a dog, cradled in the arms of someone inside a limo. The dog seemed like he was less than thrilled with the ride. Thinking from the dog's point of view led to a thoughts for a haiku.
A Soulful Poem
My dog in a limo haiku departs from the rule of 5-7-5 syllables. Why? Today, haiku does not need to use a tight 3-line structure of 17 syllables.
Some Western haiku translators may have misunderstood the Japanese meaning. For instance, in Japanese, " sound-symbol" was translated to mean "syllable" when Japanese haiku was translated to English. However, sound symbols are not equal to English syllables, and 10 to 14 English syllables, not 17, more closely matches the length of the haiku poem (Cor Van Den Heuvel, 1999).
Modern haiku can be one, two or three lines; what counts in understanding haiku photography is keen insight into a significant moment. Creating haiku photography means taking the viewer into the full import of an experience, not writing fancy poetry. To paraphrase the poet John Keats: poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
A Path to Photo Haiku
The web is an easy path to learning about photo haiku.
The father of the photo-haiku genre, Abe Museki, writes: “photo-haiku has succeeded in the Internet world because photography matches haiku so well."
The web has also become the forum to show new arts like tag-team haiku photography, in which one person can upload a photograph and a different person writes the accompanying haiku.
Since a digital image can be changed, we can be flexible, and match color to the mood of our photo haiku poem. For instance, for the picture of an orangutan at Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, wiping a tear from her eye, I changed the coloring of the picture to match the haiku’s mood. The orangutan has the blues. Sometimes a poem expresses nuances of the natural world not seen in the image itself, such as the complex emotional life of the great apes.
One question to ask when writing haiku: "Does the poem let me see the photo in a way I’ve never seen it before?" Another inquiry to consider when making a haiku photo is "Can I sense a meaningful presence in this haiku photo moment?"
How to Create a Haiku Photograph in Photoshop: 6 Easy Steps
Step 1: START Open your photograph using File > Open.
2: Add your text. Click IMAGE > Canvas Size. Change width to 300 pixels wide. If your picture was 800 pixels, make the width 1200 pixels.
3 : Likewise, add 400 pixels to the height. Note that you can customize the canvas color by clicking Canvas extension color: drop-down menu at the bottom of the Canvas Size dialog box.
4: Click the Text Tool in Photoshop’s toolbox. Select your font style from the upper toolbar. Type in the text of your poem. If you want to move down a line, hit the "enter" key on your keyboard. Click Photoshop's check mark to commit your edits (the check mark is at the top of Photoshop's display, in the middle of the Options bar that runs horizontally across the top of the screen). To view your text layer, open the Layers palette by clicking WINDOW > Layers ( F7 ).
5: Position your poem by using the move tool in the toolbox.
6: FINISH
With text and a picture on two layers, save the file as a .PSD file so you can edit it later. For instance, you may wish to change the color scheme, and this is easier with a Photoshop native .PSD file.
Summary
Haiku photography is a thriving art form in the information age. The rapid growth of digital imaging will support new forms of haiku with fresh possibilities. As a throng of young artists publish their diverse work on the web, haiku photography will continue to grow.
5 Links
1) For excellent haiku with accompanying images, find Shoji and other poets at Haiku Poets Hut (haikupoetshut.com/haikuphotndx.html).
2) Michael Rehling’s work is true to the spirit of haiku: http://www.haikuhut.com/Photo%20Haiku%20-%20Michael%20Rehling.htm
3) Enjoy the diverse art of Mark Brooks, Roderick Stewart and Ray Rasmussen at Rays Web http://raysweb.net/fall-haiku/
4) Ron Rosenstock’s excellent large format black and white imagery is joined with Gabriel Rosenstock’s haiku at: http://www.worldhaikureview.org/3-2/rosenstock-photohaiku/pages/01.html.
5) When we enter "haiku photography" into Google search, over 1,000,000 web entries appear. Google's directory of haiku related links is here: http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Poetry/Forms/Haiku_and_Related_Forms6) Cor van den Heuvel is the editor of 3 editions of Haiku Anthology.
Thanks for your visit. Jim
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