The weather on the Cape, over the past week, has been pretty shitty-cold, windy, and raining. Dismal actually.
Yesterday, while driving along 6A, the Cape’s Cranberry Highway, for only a couple hours, the sun broke out in its full glory.
Ahhhh. Click.
As you would expect from someone like me, I took full advantage of the winter sunbeams and shot, here and there, with little rhyme or reason, like a crazy man.
Click. Click. Click.
What I experienced yesterday and what I seem to experience often, each and every time I pick up my iPhone camera, is the complete, universal, deep joie de vivre I feel in the process of photography.
Underscore the word….”process”.
It’s the process of photography and not always the product of photography, where I find this keen and buoyant enjoyment.
I love the feeling of a camera in my hands. I love looking at the world through a lens. I love noticing light, color, and design. I love exposing and composing things that often go unnoticed. I love struggling through the art of seeing. I love, seemingly, freezing time. I love the magical process of subtraction, rather than addition, in my photographic pursuits.
I’m rarely enamored with the actual subject matter I’m shooting, as, say, a photojournalist might be.
I’m more infatuated with and enchanted by what that thing I’m photographing is going to look like in a Photograph.
Garry Winogrand, a renowned photographer, once eloquently expressed his perspective on photography: “Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed” . In other words, the essence of photography lies not in capturing the literal subject, but rather in revealing how it appears through the lens—a transformation that occurs within the frame itself.
Winogrand’s approach emphasizes the dynamic interplay between the subject, the camera, and the act of seeing. Each photograph becomes a unique exploration, transcending mere representation to create a new visual reality.
Winogrand, like me, and millions of others, was in love with the process of photography too.
It’s the hunt, the chase, the curious capture experience that does it most for me. Click.
Sometimes, oddly, the capture experience itself, is so powerful and overwhelming, that I forget to even look at the photos I shot.
Again, its the process and not the product of photography.
Yesterday, I had a friend call me on the phone. She was looking for some emotional company. I did my best to show her my sympathetic support.
After exchanging some quick pleasantries and niceties with her, it struck me that my company is, over and over, overwhelmingly, photography.
Photography completes me. Photography is my joie de vivre.
Click.
Jack
