Nothing Without Art: January 5, 2018--What the Camera Saw

So already, when it comes to the visual world, light changes everything, and light is ever-changing. That's why I almost never walk around my neighborhood--the Wollaston section of Quincy, Massachusetts--without my camera in hand. Usually, what I seek to capture, and manage to capture from time to time, is an effect of light on something quotidian--like the Lutheran Church I see from my living room window that gleams in the late afternoon sun from late November to late February.

Sometimes, my camera sees more than I see, presenting me with a photo that says, "Here's what you think you saw, and what you also saw." I think if I were a photographer--somebody who really knows how to use their vision, craft, and materials to convey beauty, meaning, and feeling--and not simply someone who takes pictures, I might be surprised by the pictures I've taken less often.

But I love my experiences of photographic shock and wonder. For example, I knew last Wednesday's sunset, especially when the late afternoon shadows kicked in, was nothing short of spectacular. 

But while I was taking the photo, I didn't realize how much the swath of white extending from the photo's upper right-hand corner to its lower left-hand corner created movement--or was it flight?

As I look at the photo now, I realize it's not just the clearly delineated blue, white, black "stripes" that create the flow behind the scrim of naked tree branches: it's the shape of the bright white area.

What did that white area remind me of, with its two arm-like protrusions and its pointed "head"? Was I seeing a ghost* following a diagonal flight path? a thunderbird, the emissary of spirit world known to few of us who are relative newcomers to this continent? the ghost of a thunderbird embarking on a journey to a lower world? The shape seemed right for an angel, too, though I personally don't think of angels when I imagine the Divine within or among us. Another theory, inspired more by science fiction than anything else: the reverse track of a comet moving with calm, caring intelligence across a darkening neighborhood.

The truth of the matter is that I thought of none of these things, none of these beings, when I took this photo: I just hoped my camera would allow me to see something again that I thought was beautiful and about to evaporate into night. Sometimes when we think we're holding on to something--in our photos, on our hard drives, in our hearts or minds--we're actually holding on to more than we think we are. Maybe that's true more often than not.

* Photo-shopped photo featured in the following blog post: Weird Jon. (2013, October 19). Axworthy flying ghost--Gravedigger's local 16 [Web log post]. Retrieved January 5, 2018, from http://www.gravediggerslocal.com/2013/10/axworthy-flying-ghost/