The photographer within

What will you will see in the pictures? I participate still in the moment. I feel so very priveleged for the opportunity to shoot in this present while desiring to step back in time for more pristine views. I doubt it will be this way, this good again. I wanted to share this experience and at the same time to organize for myself. Such irony, as I hate travel guides and many travelogues myself.

My photo I brought back helps remind me. I photograph to focus and think about what is. My goal to see, rather than look, is present even while the camera mediates the moment between me and the scene.Through the lens I might enter the moment and place in a new way. It’s a technology that allows me to be casual about the details and absorbing for myself what is real since I walk away with a memory on a chip. These are the two edges of the photographic sword, giving and taking

I sort, delete, edit and reconnect with the place and the moment. Sometimes I notice something missed in the moment: An eagle in the sky, a cloud glow, a smile that I might have mirrored more fully just then. I ache for the sense of being there again, and nearly touch it. Maybe that is what I am seeing, what I am trying to touch. Looking at a friend’s pictures, this may be what is missing, why its often so hard to touch the moment and gravity of what was.

So many of these places could absorb a lifetime of viewing without giving up their entirety. I imagine the seasons and wonder about the fall of turning colors, the falling fresh snow of winter, the break up in spring, the glow of the aurora borealis in the artic night. I fail to comprehend the effects. I realize I passed through a traveler and left yearning for the fullness of time in the path left behind.

At home once more, I absorb and consider the light coming and going on these mountains, on those islands and upon the channel out my window and from my home. The smiles of family, friends and community are alive and available. The fullness of life is with us all if we open ourselves to it and I found traveling and changing the sights has the advantage of prying open that window again to allow me more fullness. Its is a privelege.