Through a Crystal Eye: "The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box."

Wednesday 27 April 2011

"The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box." - 365 Project, Day 58

It was a very warm and muggy day today and as I was enjoying my couch about an hour and a half before I write this, some sparks of light caught the corner of my eye. Looking outside, I see lightning flashing me. As I grabbed my gear and dash outside, very light rain starts. I set everything up, and, as goes the story of my life, the party is over when I knock on the door.

Trying to capture lightning is a bottle is, if one doesn't know already, just as difficult as it seems (especially, as in my case, if the lightning has passed. Photography can be a great pleasure, but frustration is also a tremendous part of the experience, for better or worse. How many pictures have been ruined by flash, or bad focusing, or simply because of bad timing, one way or the other? More than a few pictures I've taken, from my recollection, should have been re-composed, re-metered or re-focused, but alas, such is not a possibility. The only consolation is that these photographic experiences get assimilated into my own brain in the hopes that I shall learn from them and not, to the best of my meager abilities, not repeat them.

The pictures today don't seem like missed opportunities, apart, of course, from my own.

Frank