Day 12 -- Seeing in the Dark
Day 12! It's not very here-and-now of me, but I've come far enough in this daily posting enterprise that I'm beginning to wonder what happens after this, after my 21 consecutive days. Namaste, self--meaning, chill.
Seeing what will happen in the future is akin to seeing in the dark. When I run in the mornings these days it is dark most of the way. But I can see some things--cars, trees, animals, bikes--and from the incomplete information my eyes gather, my mind constructs a reality. Common sense tells me what later light reveals, that is, that I shouldn't believe everything my mind is telling me when it's an hour before sunrise.
Seeing incompletely is not unpleasant, by the way. The pre-dawn world has a softness to it that feels very accepting of my early morning presence. As is evident from at least the three or four past years of this blog, I always carry my camera phone. So, during the darker months the temptation to try to capture what I see in a photograph is too strong to resist. Again and again I take a shot in the dark, and again and again I'm dumbfounded when the resulting image is less than clear.
Happily, I long ago left my artsy photo persona behind. That gal, the one who got her MFA in photography and yearned to be taken seriously as a producer of fine images, has been replaced by a less sophisticated, more wide-eyed person. It was no accident that even during my "aht school" days I took a lot of soft-focus pinhole-camera photos. I love the sharply delineated in photography, but am even more drawn to the impressionistic.
It's okay for my camera to see as I see, which is, on the run, in a frozen moment, incompletely comprehending. If the resulting images don't please the serious photographer, well, okay (and I haven't always thought that's okay, believe me). Regardless of what my actions create, I can't stop trying to see in the dark. I can't stop taking blurry pictures--I can't stop taking downright bad pictures. I'm doing it for me. It's a visual way of preserving the well-look-at-that moments that I treasure. It's one means of being here now.
Seeing what will happen in the future is akin to seeing in the dark. When I run in the mornings these days it is dark most of the way. But I can see some things--cars, trees, animals, bikes--and from the incomplete information my eyes gather, my mind constructs a reality. Common sense tells me what later light reveals, that is, that I shouldn't believe everything my mind is telling me when it's an hour before sunrise.
Seeing incompletely is not unpleasant, by the way. The pre-dawn world has a softness to it that feels very accepting of my early morning presence. As is evident from at least the three or four past years of this blog, I always carry my camera phone. So, during the darker months the temptation to try to capture what I see in a photograph is too strong to resist. Again and again I take a shot in the dark, and again and again I'm dumbfounded when the resulting image is less than clear.
Happily, I long ago left my artsy photo persona behind. That gal, the one who got her MFA in photography and yearned to be taken seriously as a producer of fine images, has been replaced by a less sophisticated, more wide-eyed person. It was no accident that even during my "aht school" days I took a lot of soft-focus pinhole-camera photos. I love the sharply delineated in photography, but am even more drawn to the impressionistic.
Exhibit A, taken this morning. It's blurry. It's crooked. But it shows the lacy young leaves of spring that the tree around the corner shyly displayed as I jogged by. (Oh my. This is my third tree photo in four days of posting.)
It's okay for my camera to see as I see, which is, on the run, in a frozen moment, incompletely comprehending. If the resulting images don't please the serious photographer, well, okay (and I haven't always thought that's okay, believe me). Regardless of what my actions create, I can't stop trying to see in the dark. I can't stop taking blurry pictures--I can't stop taking downright bad pictures. I'm doing it for me. It's a visual way of preserving the well-look-at-that moments that I treasure. It's one means of being here now.
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