Painting With Light

Back here I mentioned that one of the things I wanted to do with my Hour-A-Day was to mess around with my photography. I may not have mentioned before, but I'm Rather Good with the old camera lucida. Since I moved to my current abode 6 years ago I havent had a darkroom ,so my photography has slipped by the wayside. Its time to rectify this situation.

I recently read Portrait In Sepia by Isabel Allende. In it, the heroine of the story discovers her love of photography. Her description of what photography means to her rang so true with me that it prompted me to get my shit together and return to the medium that allows me to express what excites or moves me in this world.


If you observe an ordinary object or body very closely, it is transformed into something sacred. The camera can reveal secrets the naked eye or mind cannot capture; everything disappears except for the thing that is the focus of the picture. The photograph is an exercise in observation, and the result is always a stroke of luck... The camera is a simple apparatus, even the most inept person can use it; the challenge lies in creating with it that combination of truth and beauty called art. That quest is above all spiritual. I seek truth and beauty in the transparency of an autumn leaf, in the perfect form of a seashell on the beach, in the curve of a woman's back, in the texture of an ancient tree trunk, but in more elusive forms of reality. Sometimes, working with an image in my darkroom, the soul of a person appears, the emotion of an event or vital essence of some object; at that moment, gratitude explodes in my heart and I cry. I cant help it. Such revelations are the goal of my work.

With the purchase of a rather cool digital camera, and now a decent computer with decent software, I dont need to closet myself away in a darkened room for hours at night to be able to produce my art. I can sit in my loungeroom, with the wood fire going and Spudly at the boob, and exercise my creativity while being sociable at the same time.