From my Sunday column to my customers.
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation.
He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be.
But he would not be in it.
He would never be in it.
-Wendell Berry, The Vacation
The cliché picture for all canoeists is this POV shot of the bow of a canoe. There’s a reason; it puts you in the moment for people who view it. A pretty sunset doesn’t hurt. At least it’s supposed to put you in the moment.
There’s a million similar shots on the internet. Try a Google search. There’s a Facebook group called view FROM my canoe. There are even stock photos of POV bow shots from Shutterstock and Adobe.
I like taking photographs. I still have film cameras, including Mamiya C330pro TLR, which I abbreviate as the Brick. It’s about as heavy as a small brick and about the same shape, but it’s fun to shoot if you’re willing to set up a tripod and compose a photograph, being willing to take it all down if the light is bad or it’s not quite right.
Sometimes when you’re focused on getting the shot, you run the risk of not seeing the place in real time. The availability of digital cameras, let alone phones, means it’s easy to lose focus and record your moment instead of being in it, moving swiftly toward the end of [your] vacation.
Going back and looking these pictures, there are a few that bring me back to the place where I captured the image, but there are hundreds where I look at them and there’s no emotion; no sentiment. I’m not sure I was really even there. But I got a picture of it. Great. What a waste of pixels.
This weekend Stephanie and I are in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan for a long weekend (more on that to come). Mostly I’m trying hard to take fewer pictures and look at things more, to try to be here.
I wish you a day of being present. It’s a practice, and I’m still working on it, and most likely, always will be.
Happy Sunday,
Darren