Vision, focus, lighting, heat

I spy with my gecko eye the reason why in this digital age we still need poetry. Does the camera lie? Is vision not from our eye? Does the subject defy the abilities of our camera?  Are tweaking efforts doomed to fall short of reality?

Leaving school on a blazing afternoon at five p.m., the North Texas sky was dramatic.  Thunderheads were building like weightless popcorn, but the chance of real raindrops from those clouds was next to nothing.  The camera image is way too chilly of a blue, and the clouds look too dark to taunt me with no measurable precipitation.  The photographic image just doesn't match my experience, no matter how much I Photoshop it.

After a recent Girls Night Out/Opera Lecture, but before our Baba Ghanoush buffet at Fadi's, we saw a splendid Maxfield Parrish sunset over Mockingbird Lane from the North Central Expressway.  My Texas sky feels like a super-saturated Hollywood musical picture show with Gordon McRae bursting into song.  There's a bright golden haze on the meadow, but there's nothing like a dame. There's no place like home, either.

 

Humphrey Bogart, Mike Hammer, Guy Noir and I were looking out the patio window the other night. The security lamps had turned on to illuminate sidewalks between condo buildings. It only took a minute for the geckos to come out from their hiding spots to await tasty insects drawn to the light.

I haven't mastered the photography secrets to capture shady reptiles in deep shadows near intense artificial lights.  Only poetry can explain both the subtleties and the glare.


© 2010 Nancy L. Ruder