The alluring thing about photography is often its gift of freedom. Freedom from the need to explain, elaborate, or create more than it is. A photograph can be just a photograph; a moment in time you can’t go back and change. Not with my editing skills, anyway.
Words, on the other hand, can be so trying to extract from the ether. I can pick up my camera, make a few adjustments and snap a simple picture. The same cannot be said for opening a new document on my computer. The machine currently boasts of 34 “Untitled” beasts in various stages of incompleteness, all open and waiting for me to remember what spark of confidence prompted their initiation. They sit frozen in growth like the victims of Pompeii, wondering when my inner archeologist will believe there’s something worth digging for again, dirt under nails, words ready to be unearthed.
To be fair, I also have hundreds of unedited photos in the same stage of wonderment. In a strange way, though, they already represent a more advanced stage of accomplishment. Sure, it may take me weeks (months) to give them that final editing polish but, in their raw form, at least they exist. For this reason, I am thankful for my camera, this brilliant machine that somehow understands my vision and is willing to take me half-way there. If only my computer were so intimately engaged with my thoughts, to allow the message I feel so innately to appear on the screen, over-exposed, slightly askew, but captured nonetheless.