All it takes is one … and sometimes not even that.
Charlie Waite recently had an article on the Light & Land website entitled, “Does The Camera Separate Us From the Experience?” It is a response to comments made by some that photographing the landscape somehow separates the photographer from the immediate experience of the landscape surrounding you at the time of making the image. The article is well worth reading and, of course, is an argument that the act of photographing does not separate the photographer from the landscape, rather quite the opposite. And he’s right of course, not the least because he quotes Henri Cartier-Bresson in the article (“photography is about ‘putting one’s head, one’s heart and one’s eye on the same axis’”).
Ann and I have not been doing enough (read: any) photography lately, and for all the wrong reasons. So a bit back, when we decided to go out for lunch in downtown Braga we also decided to bring our cameras along. Not the full kit mind you, but me with my Q2MR and Ann with her x100v. Given it was late in the day and we’d just stuff ourselves with Thai (mediocre compared to the best we’ve had), I can’t really say that the photographic juices were flowing. But we took the long, very long route back to the parked car, and did so slowly, carefully looking at our surroundings to see what we could see. And what more is photography, really, than the act of seeing. So it wasn’t a terrible walk. And I actually stopped a few times, and even made a couple of images.
We were watching a video last week by a photographer (I forget who, not one of our usual) that was talking about lessons he’d learned from Ernst Haas, an Austrian-American photographer whose work I am familiar with. The guy on the video quoted Haas as saying, “I don’t photograph to see new things, I photograph to see things new.” I think that quote touches on the point Charlie is making. When you’re thinking about photography, not just about making a pretty picture, you approach things differently and you wind up seeing the same things differently. You don’t need to be in some foreign or exotic land to make good photographs, you simply have to see what is there and figure out how to make a photograph, if there is one to be had. And as I’ve said repeatedly, it’s much easier said than done.
Does a mushroom picker appreciate the forest any less than a person hiking? Is a person hiking to do a 12 km loop on a trail in one day appreciating the landscape any more than the family that might hike 1 km, but stops to look at bugs on a bush, turns over rocks in a creek to see what’s under the rocks, or climb a tree because that’s what one of the kids want to do? Do the binoculars a birder use take away from the experience any more than the camera for a photographer, or a botanist who is carrying sample bags to later identify the various new plants she’s seeing? I don’t think so - each provides a means of exploring the landscape, something that simply cannot be experienced or grasped in its entirety regardless of “how” you are in the landscape. And for many, what matters often is the experience of being in the place, in the moment, and doing something you love.
Even if it doesn’t produce much, or even anything at all. Fortunately for me, one of the images turned out ok. A simple detail of a ring on the door (perhaps it was a knocker, but it didn’t have a strike plate, perhaps a ring to hold the door open . . . I don’t know, it doesn’t really matter) combined with layers of peeling paint and aged wood. Just textures, shapes and tonal values, some of which I hadn’t truly appreciated until I examined the image on my monitor (is the lighter-toned paint on the area around and below the knocker the result of something from the metal or just somehow not weathered as darkly?).
In some ways, that is the beauty of photography. You don’t always see it all while you’re making the photograph, try as you may during the making of the image. It pushes you to see what’s around you, and then sometimes reminds you of how much you missed as well (both good and bad).
The other image . . . , well, I decided not to post it. It really wasn’t very good - plenty of shadows and textures, but it was lacking. And I decided that one decent image is enough.
Which got me to thinking about how much I enjoy this process of seeing, seeing anew and then trying to photograph it. Regardless of what it is. And the truth is, when you’re in that mode, there’s a pleasure to it and sometimes you don’t even need to make an image (or make a successful one), it is that experience that matters and has value in itself. Yes, one can be frustrated with the results, or when you don’t feel like you’re seeing what you know is there, but I almost always feel better when I’m engaged in the act of seeing what is around me. Isn’t that enough reason for us to do things?