Raymond Carver wrote, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”; Haruki Murakami wrote, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”; and in the few paragraphs below, I talk about what I talk about when I talk about photography.
In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard wrote that, “…beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
The Dillard quote comes from her account of seeing a mockingbird hurtling toward earth when, at the final second, it opened its wings and settled lightly to the ground. Just as there is an instant when the mockingbird rights itself and gently lands, there is also an instant when a photograph comes together. The goal is to see and be in the moment.
It is the photographer’s job to document that moment when “beauty and grace are performed.” It’s the least we can do.