About a
week ago, I posted a gallery of pelican photos
on my Web site. A few were white pelicans, which are inarguably beautiful. A
few more were of adult brown pelicans, which have lovely heads of white and
ochre, and grizzled edges to their primary feathers. But the majority were of
immature brown pelicans, whose coloring is brown all over and pretty drab.
A couple
days later, a friend commented on the Pelicans gallery: “This is a bird that I
never considered attractive and only photographed if nothing else was around,
usually sitting atop pilings at the marina .... But you have changed my
thinking by capturing the beauty of their coloring, especially with wings
spread and glinting under the sun. I will look twice the next time I see one.”
This was
the highest compliment I could ask for. My first objective as a photographer is
to get people to see things differently. The real challenge is to show you a new way to
see something familiar, uninteresting or even ugly.
Some of my
favorite photos over the past couple of years are birds that most people, and
most photographers, don’t look twice at.
Take, for example, this crow.
Crows are probably the most common bird we see, with a raucous cry (can’t really call it
a song) and apparently uniform colorlessness.
But one
afternoon as I came back from shooting shore birds on a sandbar in Port Royal
Sound, this bird perched on a branch and watched me pass. The lowering sun caused her feathers to
shine, and you can even see a subtle purple on the wings.
If that catches your
attention, are you willing to look more closely at this bird, maybe read up on
it and learn that crows may be among the most intelligent and socially
organized of all birds? I hope so.
Another
example is the vulture. Again, a very
common bird, carrion eater, nasty looking curved beak, wrinkled featherless
head. To many people they are ugly. But
when I saw this black vulture resting atop a power line pole in South Carolina's ACE Basin, I saw and tried
to capture the bird's dignity and even sense of purpose (who else cleans up
after us, after all; think about roadkill).
One of the
most strikingly "ugly" creatures I've photographed was this snapping
turtle, which
was making its way beside the dirt road in Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge
in Delaware one day last spring. I learned later that snappers often travel
some distance over land to find sandy soil in which to deposit their eggs.
There is
something primitively sinister about this animal, but I find myself drawn to
the eyes, wide, dark and aqueous. I do
not see a threat there, but rather a certain amount of awareness, curiosity and
fear. Your mileage may vary. In fact, contrary to common wisdom, snappers
normally flee when they encounter humans out of the water. This one just sat
patiently while I photographed it, then continued its search for a nesting place.
Although
the renowned photographer Edouard Steichen once said that “Photography is a lie
from start to finish,” I don’t for a minute believe that these photographs
misrepresent the subjects in any way. My goal is to represent my subjects so faithfully
that the viewer immediately recognizes and at once is startled by what she
sees. In at least one case, it appears I
may have succeeded.
The next
step, which will be the topic of a future blog post, is for the viewer to
realize, at least unconsciously, that the moment of recognition is the same
experience she has when looking into a mirror.
