It's the Little Things
After being a song writer for so many years i've learned a few things. With exceptions, of course, when you write a really good song, you know it. You've gotten enough feedback, you've known what it feels like to open up and exhale something as beautiful and as close to truth as you've ever known. I've learned that no one can say exactly the same thing exactly the same way.
It was a dewey morning in Bellingham, WA, at my then partner's family farmstead, when i noticed a tiny little weed in a dormant barrel planter in the yard. Each one of its tiny little arms had perfect balls of dew at the ends and it was like a magical fairy christmas tree, radiating an unbelievable amount of light and joy and beauty....to no one but me. I pushed a button, and that beauty was captured, my own story added to it, simply by being there, simply by noticing.
The joy of photography is unparalleled for me. I can feel the same kind of rush as I do with song-writing, but photography is somehow more pure. It's far less of a struggle to get to "the heart of the matter." There's no way for ego to really enter into it. The picture was already there. I just took it.
I don't have a fancy camera. For what I do it hasn't been that important. I work with what I have, and for now enjoy being able to have a camera wherever I go. I do plenty of photographing at music shows and other events, but I shoot when I want to and can put the camera away when I choose. I'm the unexpected photographer, and, for now, prefer it that way.
It's a fine line. If i'm always in photographer mode, sometimes I can miss the experience at hand. I try hard not to regret missing a great shot. I try hard not to let photographing the life around me take the place of living it.
