Place

I’ve been thinking about the idea of place lately. How places call to us, draw us. Sometimes we can answer the call and actually travel to that place, but usually we can’t and have to make do with traveling there in our minds.

Maybe this is why all my life I have taken photos of places, much more than photos of people. I’ve always envied people who could take photos of people––that gift of being able to connect with someone and put them at ease with having their photo taken, that opening of self that the camera somehow, magically, captures. I’ve never had that. I’ve always felt apologetic and even furtive when trying to photograph people. But places––I’ve always tried to photograph places, I guess so I could try to bring them away with me somehow. Hoping that the photo might be able to evoke the actual place from far away.

Sometimes it can happen. I guess it depends on that moment the shutter clicked––did I get it?––and then later, what we bring to the photograph, doesn’t it?

Drink in the photo with your eyes, and then close them and try to engage every other sense:  hear the distant rush of a waterfall across the valley, a kinglet’s enthusiastic burbling song, the buzz of a bee in a blossom; smell and taste the faint mineral whiff of mountain water, the spicy scent of alders; feel sudden warmth on your face as the sun comes out from behind a cloud, the cool brush of a breeze that’s just breathed off a glacier.

We do our best to get back to the places we love.