The Photographer

Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art. – Freya Stark

My photography professor, a sarcastic young Israeli with a wry smile and a smoking habit, asked us to define the DSLR camera.  What separates it from the point-and-shoots responsible for Facebook photos everywhere?  The answer, he said, is that it allows the photographer to look through the camera and see the image through the lens before he captures it.  This is essential when every aspect of the photograph is under our control — the composition, the amount and duration of the light to which the image is exposed, the focus, the depth — each quality is a conscious decision made by the photographer and can mean the difference between a photograph's future in the gallery or in the recycle bin.

When you travel for the first time, you set out with a lens that doesn't know what it means to be turned.  You realize you've been on automatic focus for twenty years, programmed to adjust to the lighting conditions of where you are.  You get comfortable, only having to make tiny adjustments; but until you change the quality of light passing through the camera — measured by the ISO value, of course — you deny yourself certain abilities for which you were created: to respond to different qualities of light, to open or contract the focus of your lens, to allow in more or less light according to the outside conditions.

Then you fly to the other side of the world and find yourself completely out of focus.  You get stared at (frequently and shamelessly), trampled upon, and forcefully spoken to in a language that sounds like someone repeatedly and violently stubbing his toes.  You stand out, keenly aware that all eyes are on you, and you try to go about your business with as few embarrassments as possible.  All the while, you adjust.  Some things, you recognize as familiar but are somehow different in this new light; others, you've never seen before, and significant changes have to be made before your young eyes can make sense of them.  Soon, you look back at what was once familiar, and you find that your focal point has shifted.  You sense that something has changed, and it isn't what you see that has changed.

A true photographer doesn't take photographs; he makes them.  He controls every aspect of the process of "drawing with light," and the resulting image is to his credit.  What happens, then, if we allow the Light of the World to operate us?  Let Him focus our eyes, control what goes in and out in His timing, and use us to create a work of art for which only He is responsible?  Imagine the exhibition of His work.

Here's to focusing on Him.

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