A further thought on the exercise I gave you all today that will constitute your first official blog post on Friday:
The relationship that thin description (recording the evidence of your senses with as little interpretation as possible) has to thick description (observation that provides context and interprets/discovers/creates meaning) is a little like the relationship between a photo and its caption. The photo presents you with a view of something, but you may not be able to fully understand what you're seeing without the context a caption can provide.
Of course, a photo can, and from an artistic perspective should, be interesting enough to attract and fascinate and perhaps inform even without a caption. So from this perspective, even thick descriptions should rely heavily on the tools of thin description (vivid and concrete nouns, energetic action verbs, sensory images, and the rough, smooth, or striated texture of its language), which are then "thickened" just enough to invite the reader more deeply into the place described.
This comparison also reminds us that strictly speaking, it's impossible for any description to be "ultrathin," just as a photo is never simply a recording of reality but a selection and interpretation of it.
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