It felt a bit like I was photographing dance...little kids at a wedding, dashing around with paper parasols, laughing, playing chase, moving like they were on a stage. Munchkin phantoms. Now you see them, now you don’t.A photographer friend whose work I have admired for a long time--and who speaks very eloquently about his photographs--says that the years have taught him one very special lesson: he can sense when he is in the presence of photographic potential. He says the making of his photographs is fairly easy. What is difficult is the time in-between, waiting for images to reveal themselves.
If perhaps my friend’s words strike you as artistic mumbo-jumbo, I must tell you they’re not mumbo jumbo to me. This is what we do, we photographers: We watch. We wait. We trust that we will recognize something special when we see it.
In my humble opinion, the found moment trumps the contrived every time.
I shared the above image with a couple of photo editor friends. “Cute kid,” seemed to be the reaction. No mention of dance, no mention of the moment preserved. It’s entirely possible that the image is special to me because it was fleeting. It’s difficult for me to separate the image from the experience of making the image. Perhaps one day I too will look at the picture and think “Cute Kid.” Only time will tell. One thing is sure, there are more phantoms in my future.
I’m watching and waiting.
