Robin has a term for me when I’m in a particularly heightened state of acquisitive vision. "Your eyes are on," she’ll say. We’re in slow traffic late in the afternoon. The shadows on the concrete wall to my left are varied and interesting to me. "Hand me my pack," I say. "Could you take out my camera?" While creeping forward, waiting on the light, I snap various configurations of the shadows out the car window.
It brought to mind a time I was around a group of colleagues, National Geographic photographers most of them, sharing war stories. "So, how often have you taken a photo out the car window?" was the query making the circle. Someone piped in, "You know it’s a really good shot when you’ve turned off the motor."
Walking with Robin to the movie, I pretended to be in conversation when I was really trying out the various configurations of light and shadow I was seeing. We were early, so I could linger. Most of what I would try out wasn’t going to work out, and wouldn’t make the "first star" level when I did my sort that night. That wasn’t the point. It’s like charging up your eyes, getting more sensitized by the act of taking photographs of not-so-interesting stuff so that when the stellar arrangement does present itself, you’re capable of responding.
"Your eyes are on," Robin said to me. "I’ll go buy the tickets. See you in there."
(The day's take can be seen on my Flickr page)
Comments