Where's my camera?
May. 29th, 2002 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrThis morning at 5:45 I pulled on my "Frodo Still Lives" T-shirt and running shorts and slipped out the front door for an aerobic walk around Lake Hiawatha (god, I'm so virtuous). The sky was perfectly clear, and the air was cool and damp and smelled of lilacs. Down by the golf course and lake, the mist had pooled in the hollows, blurring all the edges and transforming the landscape into a forgotten corner of Middle Earth (an illusion which was punctured by the emergence of two men walking the course--good lord, at 5:50 a.m.? I resented them bitterly for being there).
The whole scene reminded me of my great lost photograph of twenty years ago. I was studying at Cambridge University in England. I was bicycling to a tutorial at about 9:00 in the morning on a golden late September morning. The light was buttery yellow, and smoke lingered in the air because someone was burning leaves. As I was riding past a manicured field, I almost fell off my bike in surprise. Emerging through the slanting yellow light, muted by the coils of leaf smoke, was a double line of school boys in black ankle-length school robes. I could hear their treble voices in the morning air. I think they were the boys who sing with the King's College choir, on their way to rehearsal. The light, the boys, moving mysteriously through the smoke, the golden September moment--I have never wished more passionately for a camera. Of course, I didn't have one.
I went back the next day with a camera, hoping to capture the moment, but of course it was impossible. The light was different, and there were no burning leaves.
I remember reading a story once written by an AP photographer, about the great photograph he didn't take, that he thinks could have won him a Pulitzer. He had been called to a house where a man had accidentally hit and killed his grandchild while backing out of the driveway. The photographer had gotten the information and then wandered into the house, hoping to use the phone. He rounded the corner, and stopped abruptly at the sight before him in the kitchen. There at the table sat the old man, with the sheet-wrapped body of his grandchild before him. His back was to the photographer. Through the window, he could see the parents, leaning against each other in grief, the policeman examining the tire. As he watched, the old man leaned forward and put his arms around the body, a parentheses of grief.
Quietly, the photographer got out his camera and checked his light filter. He had film loaded, the light was perfect. The story was all there: the quiet clock in the corner, the old man's grief.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't take the picture. He just couldn't intrude on that grieving man that way.
I liked reading his description of the picture--and I'm glad he didn't take it.
Connie Willis' story "The Last of the Winnebagos" (that won the Nebula, didn't it?) is a great story about the lost photograph. I cried at the last paragraph, when the photographer deliberately exposed his negative to the light. Read it to discover why.
If there was a moment you could have captured if you'd had a camera, that you still remember 10, 15 or 20 years later, what would it be?
I know what my Dad's would be--it was in Cuba, but I'll leave it to him to describe it, if he likes.
Cheers,
Peg
The whole scene reminded me of my great lost photograph of twenty years ago. I was studying at Cambridge University in England. I was bicycling to a tutorial at about 9:00 in the morning on a golden late September morning. The light was buttery yellow, and smoke lingered in the air because someone was burning leaves. As I was riding past a manicured field, I almost fell off my bike in surprise. Emerging through the slanting yellow light, muted by the coils of leaf smoke, was a double line of school boys in black ankle-length school robes. I could hear their treble voices in the morning air. I think they were the boys who sing with the King's College choir, on their way to rehearsal. The light, the boys, moving mysteriously through the smoke, the golden September moment--I have never wished more passionately for a camera. Of course, I didn't have one.
I went back the next day with a camera, hoping to capture the moment, but of course it was impossible. The light was different, and there were no burning leaves.
I remember reading a story once written by an AP photographer, about the great photograph he didn't take, that he thinks could have won him a Pulitzer. He had been called to a house where a man had accidentally hit and killed his grandchild while backing out of the driveway. The photographer had gotten the information and then wandered into the house, hoping to use the phone. He rounded the corner, and stopped abruptly at the sight before him in the kitchen. There at the table sat the old man, with the sheet-wrapped body of his grandchild before him. His back was to the photographer. Through the window, he could see the parents, leaning against each other in grief, the policeman examining the tire. As he watched, the old man leaned forward and put his arms around the body, a parentheses of grief.
Quietly, the photographer got out his camera and checked his light filter. He had film loaded, the light was perfect. The story was all there: the quiet clock in the corner, the old man's grief.
But he couldn't do it. He couldn't take the picture. He just couldn't intrude on that grieving man that way.
I liked reading his description of the picture--and I'm glad he didn't take it.
Connie Willis' story "The Last of the Winnebagos" (that won the Nebula, didn't it?) is a great story about the lost photograph. I cried at the last paragraph, when the photographer deliberately exposed his negative to the light. Read it to discover why.
If there was a moment you could have captured if you'd had a camera, that you still remember 10, 15 or 20 years later, what would it be?
I know what my Dad's would be--it was in Cuba, but I'll leave it to him to describe it, if he likes.
Cheers,
Peg
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2002-05-29 05:20 am (UTC)And, have read that story, and I cried too.
*sigh*
As for what I would have photographed but didn't...it would be something I've forgotten, that I should remember. Probably a moment with the grandmother I barely knew but seem to recall loving so much, a photograph illustrating something I loved about her to help me remember.
Everything else, I pull up the photographs in my memory, and they're enough. (I keep those things close; I'm the only one who needs to remember them, so a photo outside my head isn't necessary.) Does that make any sense at all
Taking photographs with the heart
Date: 2002-05-29 05:43 am (UTC)I've often said this to my girls, when they're being cute, and I don't have a camera handy, "I'm going to take a picture of this with my heart." They've learned to hold the pose for me so I can do so.
Peg
(no subject)
Date: 2002-05-29 07:55 pm (UTC)A picture that I wish I could have taken . . . Well, like I said, my dad's such a shutterbug . . . but I wish that I had some of one particular great-grandmother, from whom I seem to have inherited the writing bug. I don't know what she looks like and I wish I did. Just to see if I got anything else from her as well.
That said, sometimes I think that pictures taken with the heart are better. Especially when the moment is very personal; some things don't need to be preserved for all time.
Stacy
Georgia State University w/ my Dad
Date: 2002-05-30 04:49 pm (UTC)