For years I have been traveling with a companion who loves taking photos. However, I, myself used to generally dislike cameras. I detest being photographed and felt for a time that somehow cameras seem to halt the flow of fun as they “document” the moment. Yet also over the years I have begun to appreciate more and more looking through old photos and remembering the moments and places captured in them.
Actually, I have always had access to cameras. My father was a photo aficionado in his younger years and would even develop and enlarge his own photos. He was the photographic recorder of our family life as early as I can remember. I didn’t mind being photographed then. I suppose I just began to hate it as I grew older. My first camera was a “Brownie” camera–a little brown plastic box. I also had a tiny little “novelty” camera which was only about three inches long. It had miniature little rolls of films that could only be enlarged to about “2" x “2". These were fun but I was never that interested in them beyond just taking the occasional round of photos, after which I would forget I even had a camera for a good long time. It was my father who bought me a small Kodak “instamatic” camera for my first trip to Europe when I was 18. I used it to some extent, although looking back, I took a good many photos in the first week or two, then generally lost interest. My photo collection is rather meager from that trip. It was in fact around this time when I began to dislike taking photos. My friends would continually halt all action while we froze for the camera, and overall this seemed more annoying than rewarding. By the time I took my second trip to Europe seven years later I didn’t even bother to take a camera. My traveling companion brought a camera herself and I figured that I would simply rely on her photos of the trip. But in the end I don’t think that I ever got copies of her photos and I now regret that I have no record. It was only after my daughter was born I began to actually use the camera again, and at that, mostly passively. I relied on my husband to take pictures–he was the one who really had an interest in photography.
Flash forward to now. I began traveling more a few years ago and I have been increasingly enjoying the photographic process (well, I enjoy being behind the camera but still never enjoy being in front of it). I think it was my companion's enthusiasm that got me excited about doing it myself. I began with composing the most visually interesting or attractive scenes–simply just capturing the moment in a particular place. But over time I have begun to expand my subject matter and to see certain patterns in what interests me photographically. I became more interested in details and abstract shapes, for instance. I began doing photographic essays of particular subject matter. I also realized that my tendency is to avoid photographing people. I can go to the Forum in Rome and make it appear as though I was the only visitor there (and that actually takes a good deal of skill and/or tenacity). But oddly enough, a few years ago when I was organizing my photos of Venice I discovered that the most interesting shots were actually those of people–in the setting certainly–but the figures and their activities made the photos more interesting.
I have slowly discovered the art of simply capturing how a gesture or posture plays off the setting somehow. Consequently, I now allow myself to photograph people occasionally. I also notice witty photos appeal to me. Photos seem interesting when they tell some story, or in some way lead into a thought. Often a photo doesn’t record the intensity we feel as we observe something physically, but on a rare occasion it does. There can also sometimes be a stunningly crisp moment in a photo, when the light glows or some intensely dynamic or beautiful instant is captured. And even more occasionally an unexpectedly stunning photo moves beyond the scene itself. So is this art?
What is “picture perfect”? By what criteria should I measure what constitutes my “best” photos of the summer? Is this catching the most attractive angle of the scene? Is it finding some witty interplay between objects? Is it when the clarity of detail, color and light are simply glowing? Is it when–just by chance–I see and snap a photo containing a moment that even the eye can’t freeze in time...where the play of wind, the sun’s reflection, or the movement of objects simply tells its own story? Some photos are about place, some about time, some about joy or loneliness. Some are about exuberance, about shapes, contrasts and tensions. Some photos seem composed, others totally serendipitous.
I’ve begun to think that there is no real perfection that can be defined. But rather, I can simply see an image here and there that seems to be more pleasing than the others. Thanks to the digital age I can take thousands of photos without much cost or thought, and over time this gallery of images teaches me a great deal about my interests and aesthetic. I am slowly discovering the “best” ones–or at least my “favorites”–and I'm surprised by the variety. Here are a few examples:
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