tufted duck evening sun

Just an evening pic of a duck, the slimbridge centre provided the reflection colours, and the low evening light through the walkway the highlights on the duck.

 

Quite happy with this photo, its revealed a little more of their nature to me than usual. Try it yourself and you'll see what I mean. Catching a pic of one of these guys while not diplaying tends to leave a really flat uninteresting image thats shows no personality and gives you no sense of the animal. (yes , I am going to blame cameras for that because my eye can see it every time) Hopefully I just caught the edge of personality here.

 

I know a lot of people who arent quite as engaged with animals as I am , well, they look for iconic pictures. Descriptive of form, really sketch outlines of animals with photographic detail, almost book descriptions for twitchers. Me, myself, and I however, i'm after everything but that. Being a photographic standard sketch and paint artist anyway, I can draw the cliche from memory alone, I don't need a photograph to do that for me. I'm not looking for the camera to fill in a skill I don't have. I just want it to record the life in the animal, to help bridge the gap between it and myself, not merely record the fact that it has existed or merely blueprint its design.

 

Photography in essence is not really about recording, because actually it doesnt do that. We do that. We impart our perspective to what is no more than refracted light, so for me as an observer of life and nature I find the use for photography elsewhere. Think about it for a second. Its not just what the camera records, because the camera is blind, it has an eye, but it sees nothing, it feels nothing. It knows no relevance, it has no context, conversely the photographer has everything, the gift of life, the gift of being able to percieve life, sentience, context, situation, to know the relative persistance and passing of time and the consideration of hopefully an ever changing human perspective, and if very lucky, a good deal more..

 

Ok, i'll try to show you what I mean. Ever looked at an etching of an extinct species? You can see roughly what it looked like, and perhaps you might think no more about it. A child however or someone who has a sense of what has been lost, who wants to feel what the animal is like to be around, know its essence, its atmosphere and its world, to try and extend oneself to the animals perception and to reach empathy, may still, having seen the image turn to you and say "so what was it like then?" The kid isnt blind, he just finds the format of image he sees before him as a blank recording.

 

The child in me wants to give the child in others that feeling of knowing something more intimately. I guess thats what the misery in extinction is for many of us, its why we collect bones, unveil life stories, read gigatons of accounts, and worry so very much about things being lost. Perhaps when I know extinction and loss is coming so badly , through photography I want to keep a touch of lifes glow alive.

 

Maybe it is an exercise in futility, but we need it anyway. In the meantime it can at least mean those of us who have a more subtle appreciation of beauty than a mere sketchplan of life can at least still make contact with the things in life we love to feel, from sickbeds, from insular lives, lack of funds, and whatever else might prevent ourselves or other getting to location to feel it for real, and purely for the sheer unadulterated joy of it.

 

Remember to tell your photography lecturer that when he gets a bit anal about technicalities . ;) From nature to portraiture, from weddings to buildings, from landscapes to inner scapes. Design is design, and life is life. They are not supposed to be seen the same way, though they do of course influence and blend together much of the time.

 

Maybe you can see it, maybe you can't , but I know that ducks face will keep me smiling a little while yet. For a moment he popped out of his own design and said "hi, i'm alive!"

 

"See me?"

 

My silent reply through a wry grin is always

 

"yes, I see you, hello there"

 

I hope it puts a smile on your face too.

 

Maybe it is a touch of anthropomorphisation at work, but any intentional scientific nullification of persona aside for a moment, the only eyes with which we have to see are entirely human, and we have to accept that and learn to work with it. Find ways to widen our vision, learn all there is to learn, and hopefully make our empathies ever more accurate, more true, valid, and helpful to all species.

 

Durrell, Attenborough, Scott, The BBC natural history unit entire ,and many more, often nameless, perhaps less famous but equally gifted people over the years, they knew and still know the validity of this, in them humanity finds ways to reconnect with what is lost in a commercial life and perhaps I one day hope to contribute as they have, encourage others to do the same.

 

I hope I find a way to refine what I see. Find a way to perform to a high enough standard to do the work. Carry on the legacy of the wonderfully infectious virus they implanted in me as a child through their books, programmes and dreams in my own small and totally inadequate way. Their gentlemanly respect for all life. Its really only the start of my journey after all. I care about my photography because I care about nature. I don't want to get it wrong.

 

I don't want to be the guy that produces "animals do the funniest things" and have a moron presenter make children laugh at animals sufferring from stereotypical behaviour.I'm sick of swearing at the television because a couple of moron tourists are dancing leg shuffles next to a camel, a polar bear or an elephant that is going out of its skull from boredom like its something to be laughed at. I know this is the self soothing rocking that people with severe mental illness suffer from in animal form. How can anyone find it funny? Are we so primitive as to find it entertaining?

 

I want magic and respect, inspiration to be at the heart of everything I do. I want to make people feel too much fondness and respect to want to destroy for a few pounds and dollars, even by omission of action. I want to pass on a genuine love, as pure and as enthusiastically, and as genuinely as it was passed to me. Without religion or mad fervour, but just have people set their compass on what is real and true.

 

Hey, even a miserable git like me is allowed to dream.

 

Yeah, I know, I'm a sentimental sod. ;)

 

 

 

Done