Autumn and More

This Autumn I’ve selected images that I captured around Cochrane this past Summer and Fall.  What I saw was more than colour—they were, in my eye, beautiful scenes.

Beauty is, I think, one of those things that isn’t easy to define, but when we see something beautiful most people can’t ignore it.  Beauty is part of our self-consciousness and only human beings can recognise it.  It isn’t a casual thing that you might choose to be interested in or not, like chocolate or Scotch Whisky.  (I had to sneak in a couple of my favourites.)

Everyone is open to the experience of beauty, but sometimes that experience is missed or cut short.  That can be due to the busyness or excitement in our lives.  I experience this often when I’m capturing images with my camera.  I’ll see a scene that I think is beautiful, spend thirty seconds realising how I feel attached to the world through what I see, then my thoughts shift to the technology of recording my image.  After I capture my photograph, I walk on, thinking how I might publish it.  The thought of the beauty I first noticed becomes lost in my desire to get back home to process my new images with the technology of today’s equivalent of the old darkroom.    

Morning calm on Mitford Pond

Trail Walk in Autumn

The Majesty of Alberta

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Over the years, I’ve made some changes to my photographic practices.

I try to not to walk on immediately after noticing a beautiful scene and photographing it.  I wait, then turn a full 360° to assure myself that I haven’t missed some other beautiful or interesting scene at the same location.  Engaging more fully in the moment has often opened my eyes and thoughts to much more than what I first noticed.

Another thing I’ve learned from other visual artists is to purposely return to locations I’ve previously photographed to see if something has changed.  Over time, an ordinary but pleasing scene can be transformed into a beautiful image.  The difference can be the lighting, the season of the year, or the presence of people or animals.  As a case in point—in previous years I have made photographs of two of the above locations shown in this essay.