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My favorite falling rock
How to make inanimate objects come alive
When I was a kid, I had a pet rock. It was black and smooth and shiny. I also had a pet rabbit. She was more interesting, but I could not keep her in your pant pocket as I could my pet rock. Then, there was a phase of collecting minerals, shells, and rocks as keepsakes — much like taking photographs. Rocks are tactile reminders of geography in the same way that pictures are visual reminders of places we visited. Both are representations of a specific place in space and time.
“Touch” or tactile perception is one of the five senses, just like “Sight” is. I consider both equally important, but we are much less trained in using and memorizing touch. I can only remember a few dreams where a particular Tactile Perception stood out, but many of which I remember vivid color scenes. While we have sophisticated cameras to record visual perceptions — even in the infrared— we do not have an instrument to record touch or texture.
How do you take compelling pictures of immobile rocks?
I have a favorite pair of falling rocks. They sit on the slope of the cliffside at the Cape of Good Hope. They have been there for eons—the larger one propping up, the smaller one, like a father to a falling son. I do not think they will ever move. The…
