Photo Reflection: Image and Form

For me, there is a vast difference between taking pictures and photography. Taking pictures involves joyfully snapping away at whatever pleases the eye and other senses with the net result of capturing a span of moments in time. This is good and just fine, of course. It's intrinsic value is that the moment happened and it was saved, thanks to technology, for future enjoyment. Photography, however, contains all this and so much more. The photographic process has a life of its own. It breathes, becomes, and in a flash of seconds may be gone forever. I don't "do" photography, but rather submit myself to it as practice. It involves all that I am at any particular moment, spiritually, physically, emotionally and intellectually. (Knowing this, I sometimes think to myself what a miracle it is when I create an image that has value on its own!)

Being present to a photographic moment involves more than cameras and settings. When I'm shooting with people, especially children, there's a dance of the moment that involves trust, reverence for time, light and a willingness to go where the setting may lead. The truth is, I'd be a wealthy man today if I had a buck for every time I missed any one of these necessary ingredients. They're fragile, fleeting and unpredictable and well they should be. How many times have I not had my camera with me? How many times have I missed the real photographic moment because I came and saw and took what I had predetermined to be the image I needed? That, I suppose, is the challenge and tension of approaching photography as art.