(no subject)
Being without cameras is a little bizarre for me at the end of 2012. I really began enjoying taking pictures in 2006 but at the beginning of this year it became something I HAD to do, something personally defining. Photography became a way of being, for me. I never once left the house intending to take pictures of anything, I didn't take pictures every time I left the house, and truthfully I didn't have a concrete philosophy on how or when or why to take pictures. But often I would feel primally, cosmically compelled to take pictures of the world around me and I wouldn't be sure if the captured image was a gift from me to God or a gift from God to me. (God/Mother Earth/Universe)
I feel like since the cameras have been broken (and AWOL charger for the one I fixed), I've had these moments, encounters, and/or experiences that I never would have been able to photograph in any way... for example, one afternoon in November at the Oceanside Pier, I found this strange dotted trail on the beach, a tiny ruffled line, and I traced it 20 yards to a shoe print. I turned around and followed it in the other direction, another 20 yards past the point where I started. The line began to loop and curl, getting thicker and deeper, and there at the very end was a bee, at death's door, legs barely still twitching.
I looked around to see who was near me. There was no one, really. But I wanted to grab someone and say, "Come look at this!!! Do you see that this bee died under that shoe and just kept going and going and going? Did you have any idea a dead bee could crawl so fucking far?" I craned my neck around in every direction, trying to catch anyone's eye. I just wanted to acknowledge this discovery and without a camera I didn't know how.
And then I looked behind me at the late afternoon Winter sun, and a thin layer of clouds stretching over the entire western sky caused a massive circular rainbow that ended at the horizon but was about 85% ring.
I took it all in at once with my eyes- the bee's funeral march arching across the sand that was freckled with empty opened mussels like stone butterflies, under the massive hazy rainbow ring, in the shadow of the breathtaking pier in silhouette. There was no way in a trillion years to photograph that scene. Trying would have been an epic waste of that moment.
Since I have had no cameras, this type of thing has been happening to me all of the time.
-=-
Photography has taught me a lot about how the mind works, pertaining to vision and subsequently informing all other aspects of brain function. A lot of things you cannot photograph because it is a trick of the light that is fooling your brain in a way that the camera can't be fooled. Your brain takes a lot of things into consideration other than the visual input when it is interpreting what you see. A lot of things you can't photograph (especially in the natural world) because the visual essence of the thing lies in its motion (I have discovered this to be true regarding the vast majority of clouds). And certain colors can't be captured- dimensions of colors expand at the ocean in their own way (like they do in the forest of the desert or at really high altitude. Like I found photography in the Sequoias to be almost totally useless).
I suppose that it was time for me to step back from photography and reflect on what it means to me. Why I do it. How I do it. The purpose of the images... to step back from Being A Photographer to just Being. Just seeing and taking notice of things without feeling like I have to do something to be a part of it- being part of it just by being physically there, being a human, existing. Not needing the captured image to feel like I received the gift. Not needing to acquire the image to give/offer as thanks. I have learned real gratitude, I have learned real being.
I feel like since the cameras have been broken (and AWOL charger for the one I fixed), I've had these moments, encounters, and/or experiences that I never would have been able to photograph in any way... for example, one afternoon in November at the Oceanside Pier, I found this strange dotted trail on the beach, a tiny ruffled line, and I traced it 20 yards to a shoe print. I turned around and followed it in the other direction, another 20 yards past the point where I started. The line began to loop and curl, getting thicker and deeper, and there at the very end was a bee, at death's door, legs barely still twitching.
I looked around to see who was near me. There was no one, really. But I wanted to grab someone and say, "Come look at this!!! Do you see that this bee died under that shoe and just kept going and going and going? Did you have any idea a dead bee could crawl so fucking far?" I craned my neck around in every direction, trying to catch anyone's eye. I just wanted to acknowledge this discovery and without a camera I didn't know how.
And then I looked behind me at the late afternoon Winter sun, and a thin layer of clouds stretching over the entire western sky caused a massive circular rainbow that ended at the horizon but was about 85% ring.
I took it all in at once with my eyes- the bee's funeral march arching across the sand that was freckled with empty opened mussels like stone butterflies, under the massive hazy rainbow ring, in the shadow of the breathtaking pier in silhouette. There was no way in a trillion years to photograph that scene. Trying would have been an epic waste of that moment.
Since I have had no cameras, this type of thing has been happening to me all of the time.
-=-
Photography has taught me a lot about how the mind works, pertaining to vision and subsequently informing all other aspects of brain function. A lot of things you cannot photograph because it is a trick of the light that is fooling your brain in a way that the camera can't be fooled. Your brain takes a lot of things into consideration other than the visual input when it is interpreting what you see. A lot of things you can't photograph (especially in the natural world) because the visual essence of the thing lies in its motion (I have discovered this to be true regarding the vast majority of clouds). And certain colors can't be captured- dimensions of colors expand at the ocean in their own way (like they do in the forest of the desert or at really high altitude. Like I found photography in the Sequoias to be almost totally useless).
I suppose that it was time for me to step back from photography and reflect on what it means to me. Why I do it. How I do it. The purpose of the images... to step back from Being A Photographer to just Being. Just seeing and taking notice of things without feeling like I have to do something to be a part of it- being part of it just by being physically there, being a human, existing. Not needing the captured image to feel like I received the gift. Not needing to acquire the image to give/offer as thanks. I have learned real gratitude, I have learned real being.
