The Projections: Perspective of Life

Last Updated on November 18, 2017 by Patrick

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
Charles Lindbergh.

As I hike in the mountains I see many things, many views unfold before my eyes, I witness many beauties. And some, I see as insolite situations, offbeat and frightening at times. They happen either in the environment I inhabit for a brief period of time or afar. I’m either in the forests, in the valleys or above, on the ranges. I am a witness of light in many states, in many shades, in many ways.

The landscape becomes like the eye of the land. I see it and it sees me. Perhaps it looks through my eyes as I move it moves as well. As I feel it feels as well. It’s like I see through the looking glass.. like a gaze within.

Just like in life, you know. You’re in the middle of it and can’t see the big picture, whereas if you’d be behind it, below it, above it or in front of it, you see something else, different things. These impressions governed by light, for without it we wouldn’t see, are dancing around you to give you a chance to feel yourself. They are not made for you to be them, but to be above them, scouring and scrutinizing while flying over them, or overfly them, like an eagle over its prey from a far off distance, high in the air.

Air moves around in the vast space. The photographer in nature tries to compress this space, this land he sees, through a long lens. Even in the tightest of compositions there are millions of details all playing a part, a role in the art of framing. He can squint through the viewfinder and he can see the widest of the most compressed frame in the smallest of windows of know-thyself opportunity.

A door is knocked off spewing light inside. It is in the form of fruits and veggies glowing on the floor. Boy, have I looked for them and yearned them all this winter climbing the mountains! Although, it is not winter yet, just late November, it is for me, for some years now. I understand, now, what to do: look from above and from afar. The view is absolutely spectacular and yet, not frightening anymore. I can see everything that happens out there. Now I know what happens in me, here.

Photography, ultimately, is seeing. It’s more than an exercise, it is the modus operandi of the artist.

As long as there is light onto this Earth, everything is photography. Now I know. We don’t paint, we light things up, but real painting is avoiding light in the process only to used it to reveal the painted canvas. As the egg that is brooded in darkness with the warmth of its mother’s body and the love.

We see with light and we see because of light. This is really interesting. Everywhere and anyhow our opened eyes move, during the vigil state, we photograph. There is even such a thing called photographic memory and I wonder why it is called like this. This is really it, because we look with our eyes, we photograph and every blink of the eyes is like clicking the shutter. Why do you think the camera was made inspired by the anatomy of the eye?

So, the camera is like an eye. Can we consider the camera being the third eye, since we already have two of them? It is just one, actually, unless we are using one with multiple lenses. The intention is to record, to capture, to catch and store significant moments forever. But can a photograph live forever?

Memory is out there in the archives of Nature. I can feel it, since it plays in my mind, from time to time, as well. I only have to educate my mind to see and compose clearly. What I imagine I also distort or correct (according to me) in and with a photograph. The photographs I make reflect the photographs in my mind, distorted or corrected, twisted or adjusted realities to my liking. This is personal and beyond this, intimate.

There is such a thing as the intimacy of the mind. I can explain. In my mind I am with myself, alone with many alone ones in me, states of mind I created, composed and portrayed, as I said, to my liking (I tend to emphasize this to remind myself of its reason to exist). Want, intention and action is the driver on the film. Three in one. And this film is a very subtle sheet of energy like a thin eggshell I’m in. I haven’t hatched yet.

If I hatch, I wake up and photography will be no more.. no more than happenstance created by anybody else than me. But until then, I still correct, adjust, whatever, to my liking, what I see. I describe with light what I witness, but get this: with my light. And cut…