Essential mysteries of photography in Daydreaming on the Porch

Photography is fascinating to me because it’s both descriptive and symbolic at the same time. Descriptive because it shows you something that looks like the world and symbolic because the best photographs not only show you the world but also seem to reach beyond it, to speak of something more. A great photograph touches all sorts of things—other perceptions you’ve had, other things you’ve seen or remembered or felt. It’s that density of meaning that fills some photographs with feeling and makes them profound.

Leo Rubinfien

I don’t know what I’d do without photography. It’s my great escape and passion. All my life I’ve taken pictures: in my early youth as the family photographer; in high school experimenting with a 3-D camera; in all the newspaper jobs as well as in my teaching and public relations jobs; during travels across the county in the 80s photographing the amazing landscapes of this country from coast to coast; and now for the past 20 years, as an avid photographer and chronicler of my surroundings in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve filled my Flickr pages with countless architectural, small town documentary photos, garden scenes, landscapes, bird photography, sunsets, flowers – anything and everything that interests me whenever I’m out walking in the city or in the parks and nature preserves I love so much. I take my camera everywhere; I use my iPhone camera. It’s such a major preoccupation for me that I can’t imagine not taking pictures. Rarely does a day go by when I’m not out somewhere with my camera.

What Leo Rubinfien said about photography above speaks deeply to me and articulates what for me is the essence of photography: I want to record and document the world I love, particularly Nature in all it’s magical, astounding, mystical beauty, and by doing so reveal to myself and others what I value, where I’ve been, and what I want to share with others.

I’m fasciated by light and shadows, and the illumination of trees and landscapes in late afternoon, my favorite time to take pictures. In a sense, when I have my camera I’m looking not only for something to surprise me and marvel at, but also for some element in a composition or scene that is new or unique but which at the same time draws me to it instantly, spontaneously, intuitively. I can look at it later and take in the meaning, the subtleties, the feelings they inspire. I take the photo because it comforts, calms, inspires and taps into some deep part of my unconscious, my psyche, my very soul. I see lighted portals and paths everywhere I go at the parks and gardens. My photographs are a part of me that I want to know again and again, and remember. They speak to me about feelings and memories that I hold dear, and about possible futures that I can only imagine now.

I’ve posted below some favorite photos taken in the last two months. I haven’t gone far to take them. They are all from places nearby, “the terrain of the heart,” so to speak.