Saw a Rainbow, Made a Photo…
I Almost Didn’t Though
I saw a rainbow the other night. It was big, it was full, and the light from the setting sun was illuminating it beautifully. I almost did nothing about it though.
Strange someone would fancy themselves a photographer and deign to pass on an opportunity such as this. But, I was driving… And my camera was all the way in the back of my vehicle. I’d have to stop, I’d have to pull the camera out of the bag, I’d have to put a lens on it, find my exposure, etc…
Pathetic as they may sound, they were all perfectly good excuses in my mind, driving home after a day’s work. Passing a parking lot, I saw a woman with her phone pointed to the sky. Yes, she was aiming at the rainbow.
Phones: In some way they’ve ruined the mystique of photography but have helped the art form flourish in popular culture. While “photographers” of the traditional sense spend their days collecting a cherished assortment of lenses, bodies, and arguing the merits of their chosen tools, the rest of the world happily engages in the craft, snapping image after image, free from the mental prison that keeps many of us nitpicking the bark of the trees amid the splendor of the forest.
I’d made it all the way home when the absurdity of my initial decision hit me. So, out of the car I hopped, popped into the back of my vehicle and assembled my camera. Sondering up the street I kept my eye to the rainbow, looking for some elements in my neighborhood to use to help frame the scene. My best bet at the moment was a house, behind it a group of trees, branches spreading into the air — suitable contrast for the colorful spectrum arcing into a purplish-blue evening sky.
Frame it up just right… Snap, snap, snap.
There, that wasn’t so hard. I suppose in some way I’d at least fulfilled my self-indulgent identity as a photographer. I’d taken an actual camera to seize upon an scenic opportunity.
Then, on to social media it went, virtually indiscernible from the rest of the phone-made rainbow images added that night. Well, let’s call this a personal victory, a deeply personal one.
The Hundred Photo Journal is a personal photographic collection, documenting precisely 100 images made. It’s presented publicly for accountability, as I often labor under the delusion people are actually paying attention. All images collected here are made with Fujifilm cameras, my weapons of choice in photography.
