Since, over the past few years, becoming a practicing humanist (good without god, or perhaps, a politically softer way of saying agnostic or even atheist), I have come to radically reject the simpleminded and, in my opinion, the shortsighted, belief system of Christian dualism-God/Devil, Jesus/Satan, Good/Evil, Heaven/Hell, Righteousness/Sin, Good nature/Evil nature, and list goes on and on and on.
It’s way too simplistic and superficial. It doesn’t work for me. And, I might add, it doesn’t work for millions of others too.
This either/or proposition might be a great lesson for Sunday School but it doesn’t fit into the way most of us live our lives.
Life is complicated, full of subtle differences and distinctions between, almost everything that matters.
I surely can’t speak for everyone but, in my own life and experience, my existence is anything but black and white.
I am not black or white but gray.
And I am gray in all that I think, do, feel, and photograph.
You have heard me, many times, and with great vigor, call myself, a “beautiful mess”.
I am that and more. I think many of you are too.
We are beautiful shades of gray.
What’s even more to the point, in this conversation, is that we are not pure white, not pure black, but an endless variety of gray tones and shades.
Permit me to bring this back to photography.
When your camera records light, any light, from anywhere, onto a light-sensitive film plane or a digital sensor, it is recording, in fact, reflected light.
In other words, light travels in a straight line, from its source, and bounces or reflects off the subject or object you are photographing, back to the film plane or sensor.
So what your camera is recording is, in fact, reflected light.
What subjects do photographers really shoot? Simple, reflected, or reflective light.
Here’s a mysterious, but very scientific reality, cameras don’t, for the most part, “see” color.
They instead ”see” an infinite variety of black and white tones and shades.
Sounds a lot like humans?
As a matter of fact, camera meters, all, of them, big and small cameras, dedicated and phone cameras, are calibrated to 18% gray-the midpoint between pure black and white.
So whether you know it or not, your camera is working, hard as hell, to make sure everything you shoot, and I do mean everything, is an 18% gray tonal value (yes, even when you are recording color)
Back to life. I know it’s easier for most people, to make a choice between this path or that path.
But what if there aren’t just 2 paths but 20 paths, 200 paths, 2000 paths, and 2 million paths?
What is life, as know it, on planet earth, isn’t so black and white but thousands, even millions of nuanced, subtle, graduated, modulated, shapes and shades of gray.
And I’m not just talking about 50 shades of gray but 50 million shades of gray-grayish, silvery; silver-gray, pearl-gray, pearly, gunmetal gray, slate-gray, smoke-gray, smoky, sooty. You get my point.
I don’t know about you, but looking at the world through a gray lens, seems so much bigger, more inviting, with more options, less confusion, and less restraints
Join me in the pursuit of gray.
Click
Jack
