It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve been working on my photo project focusing on autism. So far I’ve visited eight participants, some of them two or three times. I’d like to share some observations on how it is to actually do this as compared to what I imagined or expected.
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I’ve been this forest once.
The majestic canopy silently growing in the night. The ever-changing winds of winter. The moon and the stars.
The deep shadows of trees beneath trees. The trembling leaf ready to fall. All life unfolding quietly.
The beating heart of the woods.
Sometimes I remember being the forest.
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Photography cultivates a certain awareness and attention to detail. You walk on the street, all senses awake. There’s this detail here and that situation over there. You can see things developing into something that could be a good photo. You anticipate. You position yourself in the right place and wait for the right moment.
Sometimes (in fact, many times) that place was far from being the right one. And the right moment passed before you could react. Or never arrived. But the experience is still yours to enjoy. It wasn’t pointless.
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There’s something miraculous about things that we dream of, that exist entirely in our heads, and that at some point become tangible because we act on them.
In fact, we do this countless times everyday. I wake up and I think about brushing my teeth. Then I actually do it (although it may take a while if I happen to have a hangover). It’s a small gesture but it’s out of my head and out there in the world. It’s so common. And yet it’s miraculous.
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This is my last post for 2022. December is often a month of reckoning, revisiting, and trying to make sense of what happened.
I need to accept how things are in order to go ahead and be prepared for how they could be.
I need to make peace with how things are in order to be able to turn them into what they could be.
Aren’t we all?
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Thank you for all the gifts The ones that I asked for, the ones I didn’t ask for The ones I didn’t even know were there That cup of cocoa That night train across the mountains That uncontrollable anger Those boxes under the Christmas tree The dark butterflies of helplessness in my stomach Those uplifting words just when I needed them Those crushing words that still resonate in me You were doing your best, I know I received them all Bound as we were by this Unbroken chain of transmissionContinue reading
Textures speak to that deeper part of us that reacts and wakes up to sounds, touch, color, light and shadow. No words needed. Words can describe, explain, interpret, justify, but the emotional connection is already there.
Running my hand across the bark of tree trunks as I find my way into the forest, my eyes closed.
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I started out, as most of us do, being overly preoccupied with sharpness and focus. Of course, there’s a place for sharpness and focus and some compositions require them more than others. But there is also lots of scope for playing with them and sometimes leaving them behind. This is true even for documentary photography, where selective focus and graininess can produce amazing results.
For this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, Sofia dares us to show how we play with exposure in order to create mood, movement, and emotion. I have selected a few photos shot a few days back, in Brussels, at a procession organized for Dia de Muertos. I remember following the same procession three years ago, before the Covid pandemic.
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This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Amy, is all about mountains.
In the mountains, I’ve felt at peace, exhilarated, grateful, exhausted, scared, lost. I walked endless trails that took me way out of my comfort zone. I found myself up on the mountain, in the wild, as it was getting dark, wondering how will I make it back down. I found myself in danger (just because I’ve put myself in danger) and felt my life hanging on a thread. I found myself so incredibly at peace with everything out there, me included. I felt that I belong.
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There’s something discreetly glorious in this lazy October sunset.
Backlit fallen leaves and mushrooms. The almost imperceptible breeze. The buzz of insects slowly rising through the forest like a mist.
I am sitting in a small forest clearing with the sun on my face. There’s nothing I can add to the scene, nothing that can be improved. I am only witnessing the moment.
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