La Macchina Fotografica

I looked out my window late yesterday morning. High clouds. Normally I like to make photos early in the morning when the air is fresh and the sun is golden—when the world is my own. But high, wispy clouds mean magic in photography so I broke my own rules. I went out with my camera in the latest part of the morning.

Cirrus clouds diffuse the sun just enough to soften and fill shadows. They add drama to sky. Painters know that cirrus clouds are the most difficult of clouds to paint. Their delicacy is elusive. In photography we must take care with when pointing the camera to sky. Blown-out highlights are the death of wispiness.

While I’ve noticed the cottony light of cirrus skies for years, I have come to realize that there is more to the magic. Reflections take on new drama and depth on days like these. Gone are the harsh specular highlights that can ruin an image. Surfaces glow instead of sparkle. There is always something new to learn about light. It is a magician who never reveals all the secrets. The sorcerer unveils the truth with time and contemplation.

Yesterday I found the Larkspur Palms again. The sky turned them to towering monuments of grace and drama. I found angles and perspectives that I’d not known before. It was the light that whet my appetite but it was also the emerging truth the comes with familiarity with a subject. Too often we seek the unfamiliar with photography, forgetting our own backyard. The truth can be found in the familiar. Revisiting a subject over and over is like peeling an onion. I’ve only begun with the Larkspur Palms.

In a scratchy dream I learn to fly. In effortless propulsion I glide through air and space. “Why haven’t I tried this before?” I ask myself. Somehow I reach an oasis of palms. Lanky and swaying, they acknowledge my arrival. They are rooted, yet free—something I make note of as I land on my feet and look up.

In my altered state I realize that these palms are familiar. They are the palms of Larkspur. I stay for awhile, something akin to a picnic. Then I propel myself off again into the pearly fog of my dream. I soon awaken in my bed, now firmly tethered by the gravity, space, and time. For a split second I wonder why I can no longer fly. Then my cat whacks me.

When one embraces a place in a dream, its reality changes. It becomes hyperreal, of a different dimension. Having forgotten the rules of dream-flying I place my feet on the floor and put on a fresh pair of socks. New socks in the morning are one of life’s great pleasures. The cat nudges me and prances off. In that moment I decide to visit the Larkspur palms, which are within walking distance, in the town next door.

I have admired the palms for years, mostly passing by in my truck. “I must photograph them someday,” I say. During my walk on this day I approach them from a different perspective, one of a freshly-minted dream. I look up and they sway at me just like they did the night before. I wonder, for a moment, if the dream is still on. My feet, feeling the somber weight of gravity, tell me otherwise.

No, the dream has surely left. But, it has given me a gift of insight and I see in a less-rigid way. My day to photograph the palms has arrived. I seize the moment and find a tiny smidgen of bliss…