Misrepresentation

If I was truly hardcore I would've pulled a Parr and gone out today in the rain and howling wind to shoot photos. Probably some interesting scenes out there. But I don't really enjoy getting wet and I especially don't enjoy my cameras getting wet. Looking at my photographs you'd think I lived in California or something. Oregon's infamous wet weather rarely turns up in my work, not because it doesn't rain here but because I'm usually inside on days like that. So in that sense my photography poorly represents the world I know. Which shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, photography is by nature selective. Every photo is an edit of reality. But considering the type of photography I do --I go out each day into the world and record what's interesting-- it's interesting that such a large chunk of reality has gone missing. It makes me wonder, what else am I missing? Photos of myself asleep?

It's the photographic corollary to the parable about the guy looking for his lost watch under a street lamp. Someone asks him, where'd you lose it? A few blocks that way, he says, but the light is better here. Bada-bing!

On the subject of light and weather, it's only in the past few years that I've come to appreciate Oregon's light. My photographer friends raved about the light here but the dampness and dim skies didn't excite me. I waited for sunny days to shoot. Now I avoid the sun. I love to shoot in diffuse light. You can shoot straight into sun because, well, there isn't any sun.