"How do you take a photograph like that?"

I was at my local camera club meeting the other night.  It was the new year get together and an opportunity to show our stuff!   In the past, I've looked forwards to the opportunity with fear and trembling which best serves to get me all tangled and knotted up.  An ego-boost pure and simple, I know.  But what is one to do except recognize that we all seek praise.  This time around though, I was determined to approach the event with a different intent, to have no expectations and to put all that "praise and glory" stuff aside  or, at least be mindful of it as it came up.   I managed to manage several brief moments of mindfulness in between the "brutal observations" of the critic who ruthlessly tore apart every other image and photographer before mine and me and the equally familiar and equally fantastical expectations of praise and adulation for when my stuff FINALLY graced  the screen.

In other words,  I was stuck in the ego far far away from "mindless mind," where all the good stuff occurs.

However, finally, my stuff appeared.  13 images chosen to show a little more diversity in my work, some walls to go along with my trees and flowers.

The images were movin right along and we were getting into the heart of my recent work, and some of the images I am particularly pleased with.........and vulnerable about as they feel so raw still when I look at them:

.....such as this one I call: "In the Cool, falling rain."  When one of the club members suddenly asked:  "how do you take a photograph like that?"

The question was and is a  good one.  In the moment, however,  it caught me off guard. I wanted to be mindful, and thoughtful  "with patience, observation, and playfulness," I offered.

This was not an untrue answer but it was not the whole answer either.  There is more.   In retrospect, a more complete answer to that question is:  "You don't.  You don't take images like this,  They come to you as gifts....I didn't take it.  It gave itself to me. 


doc rob

Serendipity

 I'm pretty sure most photographers have had the experience of discovering some hidden jewel amongst their files or their negatives and not having the slightest clue, cue, or memory of ever having seen it much less consciously taken it.   I think of such occurances as "orphan images,"  and there are some common traits these stand-alone-images share.  For starters there is only one maybe two image(s) instead of the normal several or dozens the typical photographer takes, and what I usually make when a suitable subject gets my attention.  Secondly, when you do finally see one it demands your attentiveness, it tickles your curiosity, brings a little smile to your face.

"Orphan images,"  I am coming to see are likely to be harbingers, messages from the muses, and glimpses of new ways of perceiving the worlds we  indwell  as our lives unfold and as our art grows.  I have a couple of images that fit that category.   I bet most photographers do.

 " Orpheus," here to the left, is an orphan.  One of a kind.  When I first saw it my jaw dropped and my mind quieted down.  Orpheus, as the story goes, was an argonaut and partied with  Eros, Athena, Dionysus, Hermes, Helene, and Persephone.  He was privy to all their tales and secrets.  Like who was doing who?

This "Orpheus," however, shines forth in some super-nova like light.  When I saw it I was stunned!  How could I have possibly missed this extra-ordinary back ground, this painterly light???  How could I have been mindless of this unusual bluish dahlia? 

But, I did.  Sometimes art is like that.

Life often is.

You catch a glimpse of it passing by, a shadow of another world just a heart beat away and hidden in the between,
you gotta look for it in the gaps, listen for it in the silence and celebrate it when it appears. Even if you have no clue what it means or what to do with it.  Orphan images can have a way of foreshadowing things yet to come.

This is a multiple exposure, I am sure of that but thats all I am sure of. 
doc rob








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