When I'm out walking the dogs near sunset I walk by a patch of tall heliotropic sunflowers. Maybe butterflies hang out there at that time of the day, or maybe the low sun presents their wings to advantage. I must have looked silly chasing camera-shy butterflies around the patch, with a rather confused dog attached to me. They certainly are good at escaping just a second before you get a good photograph. The eye and brain flutter over the sunflowers as well as the butterflies, and at some point in the confusion, they all seem like the same species.
This is great fun, and I was lucky to get such a close-up. And yet it looks like a standard postcard or Olan Mills studio portrait of a butterfly. How dreadful it must be to be a professional photographer! The customer looks at his end result; the subjective experience of taking the photograph means nothing. How unfair: the experience was living. The end result of work is dead; it's what gets pinned to the page. But I guess any kind of work is like that. It's one of the reasons why work is over-rated.
Great shot of the butterfly, Boonie. It's true what you say about all the work that goes into a photograph, work that the viewer may not appreciate. But you'll always be able to look back at that photo and conjure up all that went into the making of it.
ReplyDeleteAn experience congealed.
Thanks Joe and Tracey. I hope I look back at photos and conjure up what went into it, like you said. Captions help. But then my captions get longer and longer, and first thing you know, they've become a mini-essay!
ReplyDeleteYou're well on you way to becoming a real photographer... you'll find a photoblog easier and less time consuming. :))
ReplyDelete