July opened with a conversation about atmosphere — how to translate the feel of a place into an image. It’s harder than it sounds: what we experience standing there doesn’t automatically carry over to a viewer who wasn’t. Members shared how sounds, smells, and other sensory impressions shape the atmosphere they try to capture, even if none of it ends up literally in the frame.
The themes were Traveling and Symmetry. Traveling suited the group well — plenty of us love being on the road, and it showed in the range of places represented. Symmetry sparked its own discussion about perception: our brains read left/right symmetry much more strongly than symmetry across a horizontal axis. The exception is reflections, where we’re used to seeing the world mirrored over the horizon.
