I really must make it a practice to NOT look at any image for at least a year after taking it.
Case in point: This photo.
It was taken almost two years ago as a part of a series I was hoping to do in the Patriarch Grove (elevation 11,000 ft) of the Ancient Bristlecone Pines found in the White Mountains accessible from Big Pine, CA. These trees are ancient (many over 4,000 years old!) and are favorites for photographers and artists for their gnarly, twisted shapes. Looking back, I remember having a hard time figuring out how to capture them that day. All the photos I took of the “whole tree” were blah, the lighting was off and on due to a brewing mid-August thunderstorm, and I just wasn’t feeling them - they were boring and certainly didn’t capture anything about what I was experiencing. About an hour into it, I decided to take a break and hiked around the grove, reading the interpretive signs on the nature trail (I’m a sucker for anything marked “nature trail”). Reading the signs, I found out that the bare tops of the trees were somehow biologically significant - I can’t remember how exactly, but that they were instrumental in the survival of the tree. That little tidbit gave me an idea to just shoot the tops of the trees with the stormy skies as a backdrop. That was all the inspiration I needed, and I went back to work and ended up having a really great time photographing the tops of the Bristlecones and feeling the revelry of an afternoon well spent – and thinking I got some really fabulous photos.
Back at home at the computer, I was totally disappointed – the photos did not look like anything that had existed on the back of my camera that day or in my imagination. I can’t remember specifically what I didn’t like about them, but since this has been a recurring theme in my photography, they probably just didn’t match whatever vision I had in mind for them. I remember playing with them a bit in Lightroom, but giving up - bummed for sure, but still having great memories of an afternoon spent at one of my very favorite places on this planet.
And then I basically forgot about them.
Fast forward to now.
I am starting to prepare a small installation for an art show in September, and at this point I am planning on showing 50 photos I have taken over the course of this seven-year photo journey, so I am going through everything I have and seeing what will fit the theme of this installation. In doing this, I came across these Bristlecone Pine photos taken that day – almost two years ago…and was blown away. Are they some great achievement in the long arc of photographic history? Well, no…but I love them, this one especially. I first looked at it and thought “What’s behind the tree?” And then saw it was the stormy sky that thundered and threatened torrents of rain and hail that day (but never did anything) and saw how it framed the haphazard lines of the tree, and I was sold. I don’t remember the vision I had for them, but who cares? I see them for what they are now.
This happens to me a lot… I go out on a photo expedition, take a bunch of photos I think are great, load them on the hard drive, hate what I see, and forget about them. Time passes –at least six months – and I stumble upon the rejected photos and love them. Why? Aside from probably unrealistic expectations of myself, I forgot what I expected out of them and see them as they are, which was a product of the subject, a little technical know-how, and being under the cast of an artistic spell - not some grand idea I had invented. I am getting to realize that when I combine the best of my efforts - the combination of these three things – I can create some gems, whether I know it at the time or not.
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