Beaumont Newhall said, “Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer – a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.”
The sun rose with ferocity while the twelve miles to work passed between 15 and 55 MPH. Heading north along a two-lane road, reduced speed through various stretches of Sterling Highway construction gifted time to be attentive to the eastern horizon. I wondered if the workers in conversation, or directing traffic, were aware or even inquisitive about the wind blowing clouds creating gaps of light zigzagging and bouncing from mountain to sky, blowing up in orange, magenta, indigo and banana, just beyond the roadside focus. I didn’t have much time to be spontaneous, yet knew the dirt driveway beyond the turn to the dump was Arc Lake, an easy in-and-out to pull over and stop. Even for two minutes, or 30 seconds. I did, and left Seth Godin talking in the Tahoe, while alone, I soaked in the light, and cars buzzed by at 55.
Throughout the full day, I thought of beauty seen, anticipating those six iPhone x photos I sensed might have documented my morning experiment in seeing. For certain, that sunrise pause ignited my inner light of awareness, filling my chest with Monday beauty. Washing evening dishes, I reflected on this day, and the significance of photography to me. I gently questioned gaps, especially in skills and equipment. What’s the emerging inner invitation? I know that first I’m a writer, have been since as young as I recall. Give me a pen with ink and paper—it’s kinetic flow. Yet, I think too of cameras I’ve known and loved—my granddad loaned me his for a 5th grade field trip to Lion Country Safari, then gave it to me after the photos were developed. Never really making time to deliberately take classes or focus on deep skills, I’ve been mostly curious to document what is significant to me—to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.
More than landscapes, I prefer faces, especially caught unaware. In my communications and story-telling work with the school district, thousands of photographs over eight years are a thread of connection and communication. But it’s the faces that are most compelling to me. I especially love eyes, and have learned, that when I see the person in front of me, and they feel seen by me with only the camera mediating space, energy flows in the lens. I anticipate the day when I will better flow with the technical side of this craft as second nature, since I do experience a vast gap with capacity, skill and quality equipment. And I keep playing, pushing my gap to see, even as a more primary voice compels express—write. Perhaps a camera gives me eyes to see, and my heart translates to voice digital expression.
Tonight the privilege of an iPhone camera and living in a landscape of freedom and outer beauty fills me with responsibility, even guilt, when I curl up with two dogs, seeing again, the sunrise and minutes of vivid light. I think of the young faces in images to edit tomorrow for the school district website, and that file of some I’ll never share, for the raw angst of a moment in time, revealed in the eyes when my camera doesn’t lie. And as I write, I think for the hundredth time of the @gettyimages images I can’t not see by @jbmoorephotos on Instagram—a record of things he is seeing and experiencing in these times. It’s been a few hours since that dinner of cucumber salad and those images took root in my heart and soul. I feel my heart fracture in the darkness and the light. So I breathe, curious what this awareness wakes up to reveal in this 21 day heart and soul lightroom experience of #DisruptTheGap.