The View From Here - February 2011

Bixbee Bridge. Big Sur. 2011.

THE VIEW FROM HERE

Photography and Refuge

I photograph seeking experience and comprehension. My instinct to explore coupled with desire to comprehend the planet as best I can keeps engaging me in this earth around me.

I seek solace in the natural world––under stars and watching the rhythm of the coming and going of the sun and night. In that exploration my heart is most at home, even more than home itself. The wander can put logistics, even safety on edge, but the engagement is riveting.

Out along the Big Sur coast just yesterday, I realized once again that for me, a contentment rests in the moving and seeing, taking in the world, letting it process through my heart and work toward holding photographic impressions. It is what I enjoy the most about photography, the being there.

For all of my love of the finished print, and all of the energy I pour into their making, it is still the experience out in the world that is unquestionably primary, vital, and the reason for all of this fascination with image making.

Working in the office, even on photographic tasks, much less business, web page or promotion, all has to be sustained by the initial engagement with heart and eyes. That is not easy to do, as the making of the photographs rarely pays as well as the organized results, skills built and process communicated.

But as my mind wanders through the years, streaming the motivations and challenges of this now 35 year career in photography, it has always been the making of the image that was primary. Nothing else even comes close.

That process of exploring form, design, light and color––the seduction of the seeing design and order becomes an emotional refuge, a precious place of beauty and perhaps even purity that rests in the interplay of heart and art.

Gulls and Surf. Big Sur. 2011.

Creek and Sand. Big Sur. 2011.

Big Sur

It's hard to talk about a place I know so little of, but since that's where I'm at, and not where I intend to be, I thought it might be worth vamping on a bit.

It was a beautiful sunny day, a kind of day we delight in being out and about if even only for the few hours spent. Sometimes in that sunshine is also the kind of day where the light is the most normal of all. The old adage comes to mind about the more uncomfortable the photographer is, the more likely the light is compelling. I was very comfortable in yesterday's afternoon sunshine, the cliffs and sea were clearly beautiful. The photographs made in such circumstances often emphasize design, with the quality of ordinary light playing less of a role.

It is peculiar though, how often the warm sun on my skin is the same condition where I make the most ordinary photographs. Sometimes it seems searing heat, fog or storms and bitter cold make for stronger images. That is not unexpected, as the more familiar and comforting sunshine is exactly the conditions under which we are most compelled to be outdoors, thus almost by definition the most ordinary and common views.

Fog Bank, Pacifica, CA. 2011.

It is often in those somewhat marginal conditions that the light is strange, wondrous, sometimes even magnificent, certainly unusual and therefore frequently engaging. It often tunes me back to the amazing gift we carry of our eyes and heart interacting with this precious earth.