Do you always carry a camera?

                                                   
          
One Sunday morning in February, I repeated what has been a happy ritual for me for a very long time; I took my dogs for a walk. Although the dogs don’t seem to have a particular day that they favor, as their routine is firmly established, a faithful stop by the walnut tree to see if the squirrel is out and then bounding off to the path that circles the meadow, I favor Sunday for the quiet. This particular Sunday morning was especially so.

The winter air was frigid, and the cold wrung out the air’s scant moisture as tiny crystalline snowflakes that hung suspended and dazzling all around me. Braced by the wintry temperature and captivated by the morning calm, I was puzzled when a rhythmic whistle, a sound that was at once familiar and out of place, came toward me from above.  I looked up and out across the brown stubble of my neighbor’s cornfield.

Fifty feet above the rolling field, pounding the air with powerful synchronous wing beats, were two tundra swans flying directly toward me. Now in many places, seeing tundra swans is common, but in my own yard at that moment, they were as unexpected as a rare tropical bird.

I stood spellbound as they passed overhead through a halo of glittering ice crystals, stark white against the pale morning sky. Only the sound of the wind whistling through their long, white primary feathers confirmed that they were not an apparition. Seconds later, they banked over the treetops and were gone. 

The intensity of the moment passed and my focus softened. The morning’s stillness returned.

 “I love this place,” I said aloud, to no one.

Moments like this, even those from many years ago, live in my memory as a vivid picture. Could a photograph of such an unexpected and captivating event return me there with the same intensity as my memory does? On the other hand, perhaps I would have lost the moment fumbling with camera settings and the experience would have become a recollection of frustration.

It is true that a being a photographer has made me more observant so that, even without a camera in my hand, I am always looking for that perfect composition. Keeping your senses in tune with your surroundings also means that you will see things that others miss. Call it an obsession or simply practice, but seeing the world through a photographers eye has made me appreciate the beauty all around me, whether or not I get a photograph.

Creating an image to share an experience is why we take photographs. For me, better to go out with the purpose of creating a photograph than to let the camera get in the way when life hands you a moment of astonishing and profound beauty. Better to simply enjoy and remember those moments that we happen upon when we least expect them. 

©RW Domm 2014
  www.robertdomm.photoshelter.com