Jane Reichhold is a major American haiku poet.  She has this interesting thought:

‘And the way you know a haiku is lurking about is if you see something and say oh!  I want to show that to somebody!’

Substitute ‘photograph’ for ‘haiku’ and you have the starting point of this post.  You see something interesting and there is a connection demanding to be completed.  It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be a child smiling, a shadow on a wall, the great American landscape scene, you get the idea.  I’m sure you have experienced this too – you see something and if you have your camera you make the photograph.  Because you have to.  If you don’t have your camera with you, it becomes one that got away.  I can vividly remember one from nearly 40 years ago.  I was in a restaurant and a few tables over an older woman was leaning toward the waitress who was leaning toward her to take her order.  There was strong connection for me to that moment.  I didn’t have a camera with me.  And as you can tell, I wanted to share that moment with someone.   That’s a second connection asking to be completed.  We make a picture and we want it to be seen.  We want people to see it and appreciate it.  This is an offering, something to be responded to. 

I have no idea how many pictures there are today on the internet but think about this: in 1853, just 14 years after it was was formally described, there were probably 3,000,000 daguerreotypes in existence.  Not many of us would choose to make a daguerreotype today.  Life with a digital camera is so much simpler and as a result there are orders of magnitude more digital pictures today than there were daguerreotypes back then.  And we want others to see our work so we put them out there to be seen.

Sharing that image, that moment, with someone can have value beyond any ‘reasonable’ expectation.   Several months ago I had to stop at our veterinarian’s to pick up a prescription for one of our dogs.  It was late Friday afternoon and the vet had a few free moments.  She was playing with a pug who was in for an extended evaluation.  I had my pocket camera with me and got this shot.

I worked on it over the weekend and brought two prints to her the following Monday, one for her and one for the owner.  When I arrived on Monday morning the staff was looking somewhere between professional and somber. A man and woman were in the waiting area, both obviously facing something pretty difficult. The man was biting his lip and the woman was crying nearly hysterically. I dropped off the pictures and left.  I later found out the man and woman were the owners of the pug. The dog was 17 years old and had been at the vet’s  because she was failing. She got worse over the weekend and now it was time to put her down. I’m very thankful I was able to give the prints to people who needed them.

Keep shooting.  Keep sharing.