With a pen and camera
According to noted author, Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, “we wander for distraction and travel for fulfillment.” I suppose combining both then becomes photography. There are distractions that are worth photographing and there’s a sense of fulfillment when I travel. It could be far flung or just around the corner. In either case, both distractions and fulfillment find a place in what you see, hear, feel and smell during your promenades.
We wander for distraction, but travel for fulfillment.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc 1870-1953
Once in a blue moon, something is handed to me and it just so happens I “click” the shutter at the right [emotional] moment.
Just a few short weeks ago, I wore a windproof fleece to block the chill delivered by a day more suited for October.
The past 2 weekends we’ve had high temperatures, humidity and some damaging winds. And to make it much more interesting, anything green bloomed across the area.
I have in previous posts referred to sentience a number of times or the fact that we are sentient beings of the highest order. These days, I tend to question, even validate “highest” as an adjective tied to humans.
When my in-the-moment connection is in synch with the outside world, I like to think that my level of sentience moves a small amount towards the positive. In other words, there comes an awareness that acts like a salve to life’s shortcomings and imperfections. This synchronous feeling, this salve of awareness if you will, helps me see—and feel—beyond the obvious. It helps identify connections.
As the baby-boomer generation ages, I hear more stories about couples who either pass away within days of each other if not months. A few articles have mentioned some couples dying within hours of each other. There’s no denying the strength of connection between these couples. And we see it in other living forms as well.
Yes there are man-made confluences [plant grafting, creating chemicals and synthetic materials, gene splicing and modifying, mixed breed dogs, etc.], but if we’re honest about all things living, there are undeniable connections that inexorably bind one to the other. Amazing.
Simplistic thinking? Sure, simply because I don’t have the urge—or even the brain power—to make this more complex.
With respect to Huey Lewis and the News for their song of the same title—and to rebels, romantics and nonconformists of my generation—photographers have long known of the practical beauty of a square image. It’s symmetrical and requires no effort to turn a camera to a vertical position, then back again to horizontal.
The square is neither in landscape nor portrait mode. It just is.
Photography and writing—as in life—consists of details small and large. When I tote my camera, I’m alert to details that shape the so called “big picture.” It’s easy to get caught up in the bigger items [buildings, cars, trees, signage, e.g.] while things far smaller [cracks in the sidewalk, flowers, bird on a wire, e.g.] are thought of as incidentals to the place and moment I’m in.
But now and then, I tell myself to pay attention to details that are inconspicuous as well as innocuous. Such details remind me that in my own life, bigger, faster, more costly, etc. is not always better…
A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.
Joseph Campbell, American writer, lecturer and mythologist
I have often wondered how two lovers can be true to each other if they don’t know how to write…Your letters present to me a perfect picture of your everyday life, they are almost as good as if you were sitting on my knees with your arms around my neck and telling me how naughty you have been during the day and sealing each sweet avowal with an elliptical kiss…
Washington A. Roebling, from a letter written to his fiancee, Emily Warren, April 1, 1864
Carlo Centeno 