Tag Archives: photography

When Only One Will Do

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SingleBerry3837click to enlarge

One of the little known off shoots of photography is the niche shooter. The person who dedicates his photo career to the specialized shooting of just one subject until it takes over his life to the point where he can only do one thing and that is photograph that obsession that has become his life’s work.

In this case, it is the photographer’s single-minded pursuit of the perfect berry, in fact not just the perfect berry, but the perfect red berry. Yes, in the beginning he may have started out shooting somewhat promiscuously, he was young and his vision unclear, and shooting all types and colors and shapes of berries allowed him to gather all the experience possible. But the hardships of berry shooting, the long nights spent curled up next to the berry plant so as to have the best light possible in the morning, the storms and danger from wild berry eating beasts of the forest snuffling around waiting to rob him of the perfect image by eating his subject, none of this deterred him from his passion.

Soon due to his constant efforts, his vision began to clear and the needed clarity brought direction and unfortunately, obsession. His other work suffered, his life outside of photography, what there was of it, fell away and he became an outcast, lost for months at a time, constantly searching for the elusive red berry that would complete his life. He spent many hours thinking, planning, dreaming of how to get the perfect shot. He went back to his mentor’s teaching, looking for that one clue that would allow him his success. He had studied under the noted, but terribly mad, Scottish berry photographer, Morgan Singleberry, who later was famously killed while trying to wrestle a perfect blue berry out of the mouth of a feeding grizzly, near a little village called Smoomiak on the edge of the Arctic circle in the late 50’s. There is a little bronze plaque placed where he died with the simple words “Hér liggur mállaus rass” which means “Here lies Dumb-Ass” in Inuit.

However his parting advice to our photographer still echoes in his mind after all these years. “Ye dinnae hav to shoot them all, laddie, when only one will do” and so his quest continues, year after year, alone, frightened, terrified actually, that he will die before his life’s work is done, looking for the perfect berry, no not just the perfect berry, the perfect red berry.

Moorish Window

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MoorishWindow3367

One of the best things to do when you are a photographer is to simply wander around looking for the unexpected and in Santa Fe you find the unexpected almost everywhere you look. While walking down a back street I came up to a wall that stretched for the better part of a block that enclosed someone’s property. It was constructed of the typical adobe that is Santa Fe’s soul and other than being beautiful on it’s own there wasn’t much to distinguish it from any other adobe wall you see. But as I walked along, there it was, the unexpected, an incredible fantasy in cast iron set into the wall where hardly anyone but a wanderer would see it. Why would anyone put a fantastic window like this here, where as beautiful as it was it seemed out of place when viewed from this side. As I stood there looking at it a shadow passed by on the other side and I suddenly understood. There was a garden on the other side, there had to be. A deep rich secret garden, filled with shadows and dark green foliage with a fountain glistening in the dappled sunlight. The window was for those on the other side, placed there to catch a glimpse of who might be passing by without being seen themselves, a portal from the cool refreshing unknown to the hot dusty street.                                                             For a photographer the back story of an image can be as pleasurable as the image itself. The possibilities are one of the things a photographer sees even when they may not be there.