The cell phone buzzed my thigh while I was crouched in the tall grasses. "Where are you?" Robin asked. "At the Fill. I couldn’t look at any more pictures on the computer, so I came down here to take some." "That sounds self-defeating. Any good birds?"
The grass is waist high, and under the trees the equisetum is nearly as high. If I were more enlightened, I might not need a camera as a mechanism to focus my awareness on the landscape. But I’m not enlightened, so I use the camera as a means to see deeply into where I am. When I go out I want to take a new photograph, something I haven’t seen before. In a way, that’s what I want to do everytime I pick up a camera. That I succeed only infrequently does not appear to dissuade me.
This time I find myself sitting a lot, and the horizon vanishes as though I have descended into the landscape. I look at the layers in front of me, through the camera. Mostly it’s out of focus, and I play with pushing myself closer to grasses to make it even more out of focus. Except for maybe something through this green screen, that sharp bit that maybe makes a picture. I don’t know if it will, but the pursuit is fulfilling enough.
I stand up, and see that the grass is waving in the wind. What will happen if I shoot it slow? The day is too bright for me to be able to see anything on the LCD, which is a relief. I will have no distraction, and no attachment, to my play. I handhold at a fourth of a second for a bunch of shots, then think, maybe if I’m on the tripod, I can have some elements that will be still. I wonder what will happen if I do that?
I’ve been slowly traipsing along the edge of the marsh, along Lake Washington, when I am surprised by a Great Blue Heron just 20 feet away on a floating log. It doesn’t rise up with a great "Croaack" like I expected it to. It just stands, regal and patient. I have a 300mm with me and, as I’ve been doing this screening-through-vegetation thing for the last hour, I shoot the bird this way too. When I step to the side and look at him through the viewfinder in the clear, the feeling is less mysterious. It looks like a zoo shot. I stay with the mysterious green veil and watch. Again, the camera is a means to slow myself down, and become more fully aware of where I am. The log is rising up and down a few inches with the waves of the lake. The heron keeps his head absolutely steady , using his neck to absorb the up and down motion. It curls and uncurls like a spring. I didn’t know that about herons before this moment.
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