Forest Sunrise ~ Fall 2009
To take photographs means to recognize — simultaneously and within a fraction of a second — both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photographs are not rational in the sense that they are something to be talked about, reduced to language. No, they are to be experienced at every level of engagement from the creating of the image to the construction of meaning from the image through viewing. Yet, the photograph is not merely an emotional engagement with the visual. The making of the photographic image requires careful planning so that one might be in the right place at the right time ready to interact with one’s subject at the moment that the image occurs. Photographs, like all subjective medium, like all acts of intentionality, are first to be experienced visually, then emotionally, and only after that through expressive language.
The day the image in this post was created I specifically went looking for wooded areas with abundant morning fog in the air. I wanted to create images that day the captured the early morning sun streaking through the dense woods. I planned to be in Western Illinois, around the Rock River near Oregon, Illinois to photograph that morning. In order to arrive when the light would be just right I planned to leave my house at around 5:00 AM. The perfect Fall morning light ranges from around 7:00 to 8:30 AM. The Image in this post was created near the end of that very limited time frame. We took the dogs for a brief walk from a spot bounded to the East by dense forest and to the South by a valley below the ridge upon which we were walking. Light was streaming through the trees and, because of the morning ground fog, creating streaks of light as it cut through the forest itself. There I was, in the right place at the right time. Careful planning.
At the same time, I had to choose images to shoot. I had to apply my vision to the otherwise overwhelming landscape and compose an image through the viewfinder of the camera. The photographic image is, by its very nature, reductive. It reduces the three-dimensional universe into a flat two-dimensional plane. Further, it reduces the universal to the particular by picking out an organized image from the chaos of the larger canvas from which one must choose. Other reductive aspects include the choice of color or black and white, the infinite possibilities available while processing an image prior to printing. In short, the photograph reduces reality to artistic interpretation by the photographer and meaningful construction by a viewer.
If one misses a shot, it is gone forever. That shot can never be recreated; the existential moment that the photographer attempts to capture is a single occurrence never to be precisely repeated in the entirety of the existence of the universe. Once missed, the precise moment can never be recreated. This does not preclude similar moments or even more satisfying moments but, clearly, what is missed is gone forever. Because the existential is experienced outside of time, there is an emotional tie to the moment one chooses to capture. Moments are embedded in memory as traces of the existential. The photograph makes tangible the trace, makes the photographer’s vision accessible to anyone caring enough to look. In this sense, the photographic image is revealing of a piece of the photographer’s vision, a window into the existential experience of the other.
The Forest Sunrise ~ Fall 2009 by Roger Passman, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
