Of Moments: Lessons from Photography

It’s the day before a massive rain front begins an assault on my stretch of the coast. It’s a thing of beauty, this system. The five-day precipitation radar looks like the long, long tail of a serpent snapping against the coast and somehow entirely unfurling again, again, and again, the next week, against the coast between Seattle and the North Island.

And, south of us, another beast awakens.

The American people are realizing how dire their situation is. The protests coast to coast are impressive, and it’s not even noon yet. Tomorrow will be even better. Last count I saw was over 1200 protests planned today alone in the USA.

Elsewhere, the Governor of Minnesota reports that state’s incredible photographer Jim Brandenburg has died. He had a book in the 1990s, Chased by the Light, in which he spent 90 days shooting only one photo per day in the woods by his home.

At the time, I was a young bookseller who loved words and pictures. Something about that book profoundly influenced me, even though I’ve never owned it. I often left it out for people to look through, and sold it a lot.

Without having to say it so much, the book taught me a profound lesson about really being where and when you are — that beauty isn’t about being in the most incredible places, but more about seeing the moment wherever, and whenever, you are.

It’s easy to forget that, too.

But it’s a hell of a great life if you can remember that lesson. I think I’ve done all right with it.

I don’t know who I’d be had I never crossed the works of Jim Brandenburg and Ken Kesey in my 20s, but I’m glad I never had to find out.

They both taught me that God/greatness/beauty/the meaning of life weren’t necessarily out there but rather are wherever I am. It’s funny I travelled all around the world only to remember that upon coming home again.

In essence, the gift of photography is in how you stop moving through the world and start becoming of it. You have to love the world around you and your place in it if you’re going to make good photographs of it. You gotta see it.

I may not have ever been a landscape photographer like Jim Brandenburg, but somewhere deep inside me, people like him and Ansel Adams and their profound adoration of the world around us always moved me and informed the way I see nature and my place on this stunning, complicated planet.

Thanks, Jim. Rest in peace.