Photographic Exploration and a Universe that Winks back…

Mushrooms, birds, animals and landscapes have composed much of my photography. As of late, however, I have wondered about my connection to people, or lack thereof. This focus on connection has had the camera fall silent for a time, but now my lens seems to find a new focal point.

I have started to see in myself just how very distant I have kept people in my life. At the same time I have also been drawn to photograph people and places, entirely virgin ground for me. I was never drawn to the genre before, yet the desire intensified until one night I awoke at 2 AM from a dead sleep. I had an urgent need to buy the lens I had been looking at for just this purpose.

The purchase was made.

As an interesting aside, this time exactly 1 year ago to the hour my journal noted I had a similar experience with a 2 AM impulse. I woke up and purchased a CNC machine for some crafts I had been considering for the months prior.

The echoes are striking to me.

As I waited for the new lens to arrive I watched a couple of YouTube videos to get back into the mindset.

There was this video about the ‘punctum’ of a photo, an idea formed by Roland Barthes.

The idea is that a photo has a subject and a focal point. The punctum, as Barthes described it, is the surprising, often unplanned, third part of the photo that makes an emotional connection. I’ll come back to that soon.

The day arrived, the lens was here. It was late, cold, and with a drizzle. Having no idea where I was going or what I was going to do, I walked out the door with my camera and lens at the ready.

I walked about a block and a warm glowing orange lamp post in someone’s yard captured my attention. I found it interesting and I took a few photos.

Later as I edited the image something caught my eye that I had not noticed when I took it. In the back right side of the photo is a set of lights that appear almost like the light post but upside down… interesting, I thought, a punctum?

I continued on my walk, hands getting a bit colder now.

I walked down a dark alley along the Aldi grocery store. A window caught my attention with these odd bottles sitting in it reminding me of some kind of secret alchemical shop. Again, I took a few photos.

I searched the photo for some time in Lightroom the following day. Maybe there is no punctum here. But, I still see the photo and my mind can’t help but to wonder what is going on there. Maybe it is just simple bath supplies, maybe incense, maybe something else. I guess it is the mystery that pulls at me.

Almost home I continued around the block. A display of reflected light contrasted on the black cold of night drew my eye once more.

As I sat editing the photo I was adjusting the crop on the image. As I did, I noticed what looks like a 1940s man standing in the bottom of the frame, just right of center. The man appears to be looking up and into the tunnel of light.

Can you see him?

The rain and light had refracted in just such a way that the lens captured it.

I often wonder how moments like this happen. When we perceive something with feeling that might not ‘actually’ be there. Is there some kind of echo boiling up through the fractal, so to speak? Just a simple wondering.

The next morning I continued on my adventure. I still hadn’t captured any persons or moments of connection as I had set out to do.

I came across a man at a local Dollar General store.

I had just had an experience a day before in a local Sam’s Club where a man approached me with a box of brownies and asked me to purchase them for him. I instinctively said no and gave it no thought.

As I walked away though I asked myself, why?

I rememebred an experience I had when I was younger, and how it seems to now color, and instinctively drive, how I approach such situations. I might write more about that at a later time.

For now, it is enough to say this is why this scene caught me. I was fascinated by how the interaction between the man on the ground and those that pass by would happen. How the man’s expression would change. The distance some people would keep, or the generosity of those who did give.

I found it like looking into a crystal ball and seeing how different parts of myself reacted in such situations and the emotions triggered by them. It was as though I was taken back to that moment at Sam’s Club and offered a way to better understand the experience, and reconsider patterns set into my psyche long ago.

The whole of the experience made me ask myself. Does it matter if it’s a scam? Perhaps generosity in itself, scam or no scam, is a light. Could there have been a moment of connection there at Sam’s Club that I missed because of old held patterns? What might I have learned about myself through that connection? Might I act differently next time?

What struck me about the experience was that I couldn’t help but to feel like the universe was winking back at me. At first in a nod, and then more directly. As though to teach me photography can be so much more than it has been.

I’ve always used photography to capture natural beauty. But maybe photography can be a mirror into the self, a different way of being present in the moment and seeing what is right before our eyes.