#photography process

Which variation is your favorite?

Santa Fe

Cyanotype on watercolor paper

Albarrán Cabrera    —–    Instagram

The Mouth of Krishna

The Beauty around Us

Every so often, once a week or so, sometimes, only twice a month, I take my trusty “big girl camera” out for a walk around the ponds on the property where I’ve lived for the last thirty-two years. You’d think I’d know the landscape and the scenery well by now, and I do. I know where to find the acorns, the grape vines, the persimmons, the ragweed, and the goldenrod. I can anticipate where I’ll…

I started with forgetting everything I knew about photography. Or trying to, anyway.

Forget the rule of thirds, forget leading the viewer into the frame, forget foreground, forget creating a sense of depth. Forget trying so hard. Shoot fast. Allow yourself the experience of cringing at the results.

Because everything with that is part of the idealism that causes us to bury our heads in the sand and not see what is in front of us. Make it beautiful. Make it more wonderful than it actually is. This is the Facebook generation where if you are not whining and bitching, you are living the perfect life with your perfect kids.

Instead, focus on the ugliness. The ugly of the industry behind the field, the garbage, the bleak and mundane. Don't turn away. You don't have a model? Be the model. You can’t shoot at magic hour? Tough. Don’t tell me you can’t shoot midday.

This quest for beauty, for the interesting, for the things that are remarkable; instead of this inspiring me to try harder, to push myself, to grow, it has instead stunted me. This idealism is what has stunted me. Nothing the way it is will ever be good enough. And as long as it isn’t no one will ever be able to tell you aren’t good enough.

Well, what if good enough is not the point? What if the point is not to take professionally aligned images.

This is what I lost. What art actually is. It’s not that 14mm lens that is now as I write on a Purolator truck headed to my house as much as I obsessively claim it is (oh, it is, it IS, come quick!) in my head. It’s not that lovely two to one ratio lighting. It’s not converging lines and angles and perfect timing. Oh, I still will aim for a beautiful shot or two, but that is not all art is. It’s not all photography is.

This image is a key image for me as representing the start of this project.  The field with the ugliness of industry in the background, and fleck of garbage lying in the dried mud ruts to mess everything up. The rabbit which you might see in a field that has to share its home with the garbage and the blight humans have made of it. But it’s not a natural rabbit. No. An absurd rabbit. A human shooting a selfie hiding in a rabbit head, sporting a dress of field flowers that will never grow on this patch of land at least in the foreseeable future.  

I had ridden there with the rabbit head tied to a basket on my bike. Shot this one on my iphone.  Cars honk at me as they go by. This is probably what I’ll become known for in this town: that crazy woman with the rabbit head.