Oct 22 2008
Writers: Don’t Be Seduced by Photography
My first love was writing. Then I was seduced by photography. I should have resisted.
I have always loved photography. No surprise there – like writing, it is creative. But until a few years ago my involvement was purely platonic. It never threatened my relationship with writing.
Then I had the opportunity to write a series of travel articles for a magazine. The editor asked if I could supply photos, too. I said yes. It seemed the perfect combination of creative endeavors: the written word and the visual image. I invested in a nice Nikon digital SLR camera and a few expensive lenses. Then I went traveling: Egypt, Peru, Guatemala, the Abaco Islands, Turkey. I tried to get off the beaten path everywhere I went. The editor liked my articles and the photos I supplied. Other editors did, too. I enjoyed the work – who wouldn’t?
But then it hit me: My healthy love of photography had become an illicit affair that was hurting my relationship with my first love: writing. In short, I had been seduced by a camera and my lifetime liaison with a pen and keyboard was being jeopardizing.
At first I rationalized the affair, telling myself I could give my heart to both loves without negative consequences. But I was fooling myself. I could feel the stress and pain of, as the song says, being “torn between two lovers.” Instead of traveling with a simple pen and notebook in my hand, and maybe even a small audio recorder, I was constantly grappling with a camera, lenses, filters and tripods – all bulky, heavy and in need of constant vigilance against rain, dust, extreme temperature ranges and theft. Instead of absorbing the people and places I was encountering through the truer lens of my mind’s eye, I was seeing them solely through a camera lens. Instead of thinking new thoughts and having new ideas about what I was experiencing, I was fiddling with aperture settings and searching for the best camera angles. Instead of traveling inconspicuously, like a ghost, in order to observe without changing what I was observing by being observed myself, I was running around pointing my camera into people’s faces, making them rigid with self-consciousness.
It all came to head when I was with my son in a crime-ridden slum in Lima, Peru. We had walked into the neighborhood to visit a family he had known during the two years he had lived in the country. I took a few photos of a group of boys playing soccer on the street as we walked. After our visit to the family, we said goodbye and I turned to leave, but my son stopped me. “They’ve seen your camera,” he said. “We’d better not try to walk out of here by ourselves now. We may get out, but your camera definitely won’t.” I suggested we get a taxi. He said taxis didn’t come into the neighborhood because of the threat of being robbed. We couldn’t leave until we arranged for an “escort” to get us out.
That was just one of the places I traveled where carrying a camera was a definite liability to my personal safety. But I started to realize that it was much more than that. The need to take magazine-quality shots had shifted my focus from writing to photography. And for a writer, that’s dangerous.
Finally, I faced the truth: I am a writer, not a photographer. Thousands of photographers are out there looking for work, and most of them are better than I am. I need to focus on writing.
And so I have made the commitment to do so. It won’t be easy. Every time I see my Nikon and those lenses and filters I want to grab them and hop on a flight to a far corner of the world and let myself go. But I won’t. I’ll pocket my Moleskine notebook and my small, unobtrusive audio recorder. I’ll move quietly and largely unnoticed, without the burden of bulky, expensive and vulnerable photo equipment. I’ll think, have ideas, take notes, record sounds and conversations. I’ll observe life without changing it by pointing a camera at it.
I’m not saying I won’t carry a camera. I probably will. But it will be a small, simple point-and-shoot digital that I can hide away in my pocket to use as a sort of visual journal that I can reference when I need to remember exactly how that funny sign in the café was worded or what that old fisherman was wearing.
For writers, cameras have their place. But they should never take the place of a simple, inexpensive notebook.
Be faithful to your muse.
PS. Try your hand at Monday’s Word Shot. Put your words out there. Show off a bit.
Oh god, how I struggle with my loves. I’m a high school student, and am quite proud of myself for actually making some effort by concentrating on a single elective for as long as possible. You see, I’m seduced by how good all my loves make me feel about myself, for I appear to have a steady stream of beginners luck in every field I look at. This is probably because I am young and unhealthily enthusiastic, which makes up for lack of talent. Yet I thought writing was only one of those touched upon enthusiasms, until in seventh grade–a ridiculously small class of four– my english teacher told us to write a poem. I never looked back from the field of dreams that composed itself from my mind, a place of cats and ravens, and animal kings. It is where I feel most able; they are the shoes I walk in; to places, roads of histories, the research of suspicious government activities, and an ability to translate mathematics into a word picture. I find the last capability most useful.
I’m a visual artist, not a writer, but I can still see the problems with taking photos rather than experiencing our environments. With a camera in hand, we unconsciously experience the world as a photograph. We see things framed, flattened and frozen in time. An example…the majority of visitors to the Grand Canyon very little time outside on the rim taking in the views (don’t quote me on this, but I think it’s less than 10 minutes). Most of this time is spent taking pictures of the framed views they’ve seen in other pictures before. A common scene is to witness 30 people with cameras in hand, walk to the ledge at “Moran’s Point” and snap a shot of the same thing that Moran painted with such expertise. They then get back into the bus, and head to the next view point to do the same thing. It becomes the ultimate mediated experience. Of course, photography has it’s place, but for those of us who see things as a painting, or experience things with words, we should use the camera wisely.
I know it’s a late reply, but I’m new here so you’ll have to forgive.
Up until recently, I was strictly a graphics person. Video, pictures, drawings, etc…and up until a few years ago, I have begun to have a much deeper understanding of the art and science of writing as well as a great appreciation.
all I have to say is a picture may be worth a thousand words but sometimes a thousands words are more beautiful.