Fall on the Tusket River
Fall Ramblings
As I was wandering with my daughter along the banks of the Tusket River earlier this week, I got thinking about what it is about photography that draws people to it. Perhaps cousin Eliot Porter best described it when he said:
“Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment…and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival.” – Eliot Porter
I take images to show people what they may have missed in nature, or to remind them of what they have seen and what’s important.
I do so with another quote from Porter in mind:
“I don’t think it’s necessary to put your feelings about photography in words. I’ve read things that photographers have written for exhibitions and so forth about their subjective feelings about photography and mostly I think it’s disturbing. I think they’re fooling themselves very often. They’re just talking, they’re not saying anything.” – Eliot Porter
He is right – it is the act of wandering around and documenting nature in photographs that is important. To be out and to be at peace with nature. Marsha and I had a wonderful morning recording the first hard frost and the foliage, but we also just had fun being out and about along the shores of rivers and in the woods.
No iThingys.
Just us.
And our cameras.
As another cousin once famously said:
“It’s not what you look at, it’s what you see” Henry David Thoreau
