point of view

Each of us sees the world from where we stand. 'Tis a singular point of view, from which high perch we survey and measure all that passes before us. That we cannot always see over the hill, to the far country of an other's view is but the nature of our existence. Thus, I extend you the courtesy of my doubts, and hope for the same. We each inherit the same rights as another. We walk beneath the same sun, breathe the same air - we are siblings beyond documents. We share a small but precious rock, wheeling through the abyss of space, with no roof overhead. We want this blink of time to have some meaning beyond ourselves, thus we create. We fear that it does not, thus we war. We are but the drops from which waves are made. Tossed by tide and winds we pass - all together - through the moments of life. It is a testimony to the imagination that one can think of us as separate.

Photo: Sun Worshipper, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

At some point, we each get to ask - what do I photograph? and why? What is it that draws me out of my shell, focuses my attention, draws me in? This is, thankfully, quite variable and dynamic, and thus we are presented with an ever expanding horizon of what interests us at a given time.

What in the past was ignored as merely a decaying garden implement can later excite in a myriad of ways: metaphorically, geometrically, etc. Most of which are, frankly, quite boring to anyone else on the planet :) Occasionally though - and seemingly against the odds - interests cross, magically resulting in an epiphany shared and wowie-zowie your photo gets 'explored' on flickr, or makes the cover of a photo magazine, or you sell a print.

And so, the question is, should we chase the shared moments - Steiglitz's equivalents if you will - or allow them to bubble up from the world around us...?

Is the prize more rewarding than the seeking?

Photo: Staff of Life, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

An author I greatly admire, Pema Chodron talks about the need to "move gently toward what scares us".  In life, I find this to be sage advice, for I often find my own preconceptions scarier than the realities I presume they portray. Street photography is a unique way of interacting with the world, and I highly admire some of it's adherents such as Andre Kertesz, Walker Evans, Gary Winogrand, and of course Cartier-Bresson. Alas, I am very 'wet behind the ears', as the saying goes, a neophyte. I struggle with the method, how to be discrete without being 'furtive' or deceptive. How to approach, how to build rapport? It is worrisome to attempt, difficult to achieve anything, far from my 'comfort zone', and the fear is that I am wasting my time. Thus, I move, gently toward what, well, makes me uncomfortable :)

Photo: Walkabout, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

a day at the beach

I sat on the beach, collecting stones. I pulled a stone that was already rounded from an ancient sea when the soft sand it sat in turned to stone, ages upon ages ago. I sat because I had lost my thread, and when that happens I need to orient myself to something much bigger. I sat because I had held the hand of a stranger through the last minutes of his life, both of us pawing at the futility of it all. I sat, picking through the stones that fate had assembled beneath me. What countless summers have caressed these stones? Here but a blink, what foolishness I am, meandering between doubt and hope, stumbling about the stones.

Photo: A day at the beach, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

When attempting to describe the Chapel at Sea Ranch, people invariably resort to such heroic euphemisms such as "an elvish barnacle-hat UFO encrusted with coppered scales..." In truth, it is a beautiful structure, gracefully referencing elements of land, sea, and the myriad lifeforms in the surrounding environments. Sit inside, and you will feel a quiet, abiding reverence for all things alive.

Photo: a bit-o-the-whimsy, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

It's not often mentioned, but most photographer's shots - mine at least - fail. And when I say most, I'm mean easily over 90% - in my case one in 10 would be pretty good overall :). Sometimes I get on a roll and hit a few in a row; but usually, something goes wrong. Sometimes, its the obvious: the thumb in the picture, here holding a yellow filter and hoping to shade the lens from the sun's rays. Other times, it's the darkslide, or the forgotten level, the wrong iso setting, the bumped tripod, or the untightened knob; the list is extremely long of ways in which I have - and continue to - ruin otherwise perfectly good images. But, the worse kind are the kind where I've suffered a lack of intent; when the image was made more or less out of habit, aye there's the rot.

"Wherever you go, go with all your heart" - Confucius

Be thou blessed, may you never take the scene for granted, may you never look without seeing, may you never stand without awe before the countless moments of magic all around us.

"If I never meet you in this world, let me feel the lack." - from The Thin Red Line

Photo: Failed, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

Sometimes, a place can take your breath away - you stand mute, eyes darting, unable to articulate your feelings in all but the most brutish of terms. The mouth becomes dry, and a weight of time bears upon the chest - at the most extreme, a sob attempts to well up past the defenses, a tear forms. What is ascendent in our deep selves - our secret hopes for the divine - this place we stand in, tempts us to celebrate, to give voice, to raise up our songs unto the very heavens which, for all we know, may be inhabited by nothing more than our hubris.

From Lassus to Leadbelly, the cry of our song comes from the deep wellsprings of our pain, the haunting loneliness of a vast and unending universe. And if there is no God, then we will create one in our own image.

Photo: Ascendent, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

O'er the methane seas,
sailed the tentacled thieves,
blasting a fugal tune,
'neith a Jovian moon,

and the barnacled sheen
of the mermaid queen
led many a man
to his wat'ry doom

tales 'twere told
in rhymes of old
were but the pale
facsimile of the truth

and many a salt,
swooning with malt,
sings regrets of the
actions of youth

O' I hear a knocker,
in Davy Jones' locker
a canker in the
womb of the sea

She'll spit him back up
and he'll raise his bony cup
and give a gallant toast
to his family.

"Me ma was a tart
me pa was a fart
and gave never a mind
to their progeny

I raised myself up
drank from the bloody cup
and stood toe to toe
with those better 'n me

'twere your last breath
as you stand it's your death
if you get between
what's coming and me

I give as was given
to dead and the livin'
and stands no man
between God and me."

---

OK, so-so poetry, but the point is, IR images
hinting at what the world might look like
through other alien irises seeing different
wavelengths...

Photo: Through the eyes of others, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom

Sudek

"I remember one time, in one of the Romanesque halls, deep below the spires of the cathedral [St. Vitus]--it was dark as in catacombs--with just a small window below street level inside the massive medieval walls. We set up the tripod and camera and then sat down on the floor and talked. Suddenly Sudek was up like lightening. A ray of sun had entered the darkness and both of us were waving cloths to raise mountains of dust 'to see the light,' as Sudek said. Obviously he had known that the sun would reach here perhaps two or three times a year, and he was waiting for it." - Sonja Bullaty

For me, Sudek is a mentor - a vague faraway force, whose muted axioms lay hidden in the layers of his deceptively simple work. I assert that you cannot take a better photograph of an onion than Sudek - his glow with an inner light unseen by most mortals in possession of an imaging system be it digital or film - though perhaps an old master of oils could equal the effort.

A glass on the windowsill. I flip past seeking the images my over-saturated eye has come to expect and need as 'art' - and yet I return thinking - but it's just a glass of water, how could the muse be reflected in that? and then I notice that somehow through a distant mirror, Sudek has winked at me, led me into his little room, shared his facility with the north facing window's miserly light, implanted a bit-o-the-equivalence, slyly, sneaking it under the door of my pseudo-refined artistic editor/conscience and tweaked my nose with a cryptic smile. I, who will willingly drive hundreds of miles to take photographs, have to acknowledge that Sudek travelled far in his little room.

Photo: Neo-romantic, ©2010 Timothy A. Sandstrom