EYE CONTACT

EYE CONTACT

During the summer of 2011, a very large female preying mantis took up residence next to our front steps. For several weeks she was a fixture in the leaves of a plant next to the railing. She was a formidable looking creature who didn’t seem to be in any way afraid of us, and her lack of fear was in evidence on that day that this photograph was taken.

The kids had managed to catch her. Now, this wasn’t exactly any big feat – firstly, the kids are avid and skillful bug catchers, and secondly, the mantis, with her aforementioned fearlessness, hadn’t been hiding in the bushes, but had instead been sitting proudly and confidently on top of them. Anyway, there was much excitement and a perceived need for documentation, so out came the camera.

A mantis is a big bug with big eyes, an insect that moves with seeming purpose and intent, and it would be all too easy to attribute to it a set of human motives. The scientist in me knows better than to anthropomorphize the mantis in this photograph, knows that it is impossible for me to know what was going on in her mind, knows that the gesture in her right foreleg was just a result of her balance shifting as she seemed to calculate whether she could step from Ingrid’s hand to her face, knows that I can’t fathom her thoughts as her eyes gauged that space.

Yet even so there is eye contact between the two of them, and while I can’t know the mantis’ mind I do have a fairly good idea of my daughter’s. Whether the mantis perceived a fellow being looking with kindness across the space between them is an open question that can never be answered. But I can be certain that when Ingrid looked across that space, she saw the eyes of a fellow being looking back at her, experienced a greeting and a friendship made, felt a spark of recognition and a sense of empathy. And maybe that’s enough.

CLIFF DRIVE, APRIL 2011

CLIFF DRIVE, APRIL 2011

The saying goes that, “A picture says a thousand words”; but until fairly recently it was usually easier to say a thousand words than to make a photograph.

Cell phone cameras have changed all of that. As cell phones with built in cameras have become ubiquitous, the use of photography for quick, utilitarian image capture has become commonplace, and it’s often easier, more succinct, and more fun, to send a picture message than it is to spell something out. My photograph, “CLIFF DRIVE, APRIL 2011”, was shot using a cell phone camera and sent as a picture message to say, “I’ll be home in a few minutes”.

As tools for making serious photographs, cell phone cameras have a lot working against them. When magnified beyond a few inches in width, the low resolution of the photos they produce rapidly reveals itself in the form of pixelization that doesn’t have a whole lot of charm. They tend to have a lot of shutter lag, so you have to try to substantially anticipate the moment you want to capture, which creates real problems when you’re trying to shoot a moving subject. And because they’re optically slow, they demand long exposure times, which often results in smeared images.

But if you’re willing to embrace their faults, rewarding results can be achieved with the images that they create. The blur that you’re stuck with when you shoot a moving subject in moderate light with a cell camera readily lends itself to an impressionistic treatment in the digital darkroom; and the portability of a cell camera lets it go places where other cameras might be too bulky to be taken.

The same sorts of things go for bicycles. Just as cell cameras can be discounted as not being tools for “serious art”, in our culture bicycles are not seen as a means of “serious transportation”. They have limitations that most people aren’t willing to put up with; but if you embrace their limitations you’ll find that they take you down a road less traveled to places where you wouldn’t otherwise go, and from them you will see the world from a point of view that is unique and rewarding.

CROSSROADS - Rock Dove, Pencoyd Bridge, KCMO

CROSSROADS

Rock Dove, Pencoyd Bridge, KCMO

I was out with my brother and my niece, taking her Senior High School photos, and we found ourselves on the stairs that lead up to the north end of the Pencoyd Bridge, the old railway bridge that was resurrected and relocated to provide a pedestrian crossing over the railroad tracks north of Union Station. The stairway is enclosed in an open structure of metal plates, and looking through these plates I was presented with this very exciting composition. We had other things to do, so I didn’t take a lot of time thinking about the shot; I just saw it, shot it, and got back to the business at hand.

Later, looking at the photo, I was really excited by it, except for one thing. Smack in the center of the photo, there was this pigeon sitting on the bridge with his back turned to the camera.

I tried to crop the photo so that the pigeon wouldn’t be right in the middle of the frame, so that he’d be artfully placed a little off center or something, but every time I tried I’d end up reverting to the original framing of the shot, as seen through the camera viewfinder, because the composition I’d created really was just what I wanted and cropping the image detracted from the energy that I felt in the photo. I thought about going back and re-shooting the photo, but that seemed like cheating, and anyway, I was getting pretty attached to it, even with the pigeon sitting there in the middle.

I had a friend once who was a world-class birder. He taught me that the pigeon’s real name is “Rock Dove”. In the city they make due scavenging garbage ­­– everybody hates them, and they get called “rats of the sky” – but before there were cities and garbage, the pigeon’s ancestors nested on cliffs and made an honest living off the land. Not that I want the flock that used to roost on my porch roof to move back, but when you look at pigeons as rock doves they’re not so bad.

So finally, I just decided to accept the photo, pigeon and all. He’s not so bad, really; he’s just a guy in the middle of a whole lot of crossing lines of chaos and motion trying to figure out where he’s heading in the world. I can kind of relate.