She sets up carefully: a sheet of black card for the backdrop, the shutters angled to shape the light, the plamp ready to hold the anthurium steady or pull leaves out of the frame. She likes to get the shot right in camera so thinks about the composition, what’s in and what’s out, where the focus hits, how the light falls.
And yet, in this meticulously constructed scene, the unexpected happens. A petal drops. A cloud crosses the sun. The reflector topples just as the light was perfect.
She clicks anyway. The flower leans awkwardly, the shadows fall in unexpected ways, the vase looks crooked. The image isn’t like the one she imagined, but it carries something she hadn’t planned for.
Photography, she remembers, isn’t only about getting it right in camera. It’s also about letting go – allowing the scene, the light, and the unexpected to have a say … the blur, the shadow, the crooked vase.
When she clicks the shutter again, she does so with curiosity. The image is imperfect, but it has something the more carefully crafted ones don’t – a sliver of truth.
A gentle reminder that sometimes more interesting things happen when you let go.
And then she opens the files on her computer. Out of focus, shadowy, crooked. She sighs. All very well to wax lyrical about imperfection, she thinks, but she still doesn’t like them.
Not yet, anyway.
Musings from the cold 