sorry for the quiet

I am finally home again after a huge week with Peter Eastway and the most wonderful bunch of people at Narooma. You will have to wait a little while before I share with you the photographs from that trip. I still haven’t downloaded them, let alone looked at them.

The group, in our introductions, kept asking about learning to see better. So I dived in with one of my more esoteric presentations about how to see more. Probably not the best start as I over estimated their enthusiasm and prior knowledge. What they really meant was I want to learn to see and construct photographs. It wasn’t until I really dived into the language of a photograph that I really caught their attention. Anyway I redeemed myself very quickly.

Lesson learnt I am sure. I am thinking next time I really need to start with what really is a photograph? I often squeeze this in somewhere along the line. The concept that a photograph isn’t reality, it is our creation, that it is a flat two dimensional piece of paper that captures a single perspective in time. I really love Stephen Shore’s ideas in his seminal book ‘The Nature of Photographs’. Have you read it yet? If not I’d recommend putting it on your reading list.

Whilst I may have encountered the ideas in this book, we only take in information when we are ready to receive it aren’t we. We can only see what we want to see. I am always reminded of this fact way too often in my life.

Understanding what a photograph is to me has taken me my whole lifetime to understand, and yet I have only just scratched the surface in understanding how they work. Today I am more interested in them as artworks, choosing to let go of the traditional notions of photography. I am an artist, not a photographer. My camera is a tool, a paint brush and perhaps even a canvas. Though I’ll leave the canvas analogy for printing.

My camera is my pen, my pencil and my brush. Drawing in light.

Len the artist.

It is a good thing I went to art school and not design, or photography school. Imagine if I had done commercial illustration instead. OMG. Noooooo.

I am so lucky with my life. Getting to travel, meet photographers, photograph with them.

There was this lovely moment. The group had followed Peter and were watching him work the honey pot shot. A towering pyramid shaped sea stack that was half in the water and out. I have even seen this rock in Ken Duncan’s gallery too.

Len being Len, was off at another part of the beach… photographing a tiny rock that popped out of the ocean waves. Another client joined me. We laughed and focused on seeing the beauty in the unseen.

As we played with our rock others slowly joined us. Then as we moved on, still others came to see this tiny rock.

It was so lovely that on the last day a few of that rock were printed. Masterpieces if I do say so myself. And where was the honeypot shot? I am still yet to see one of those from the group.

Isn’t it fascinating how we are drawn to the big and the bold? Like bees to the honey pot. I can just see Pooh Bear there.

"I always get to where I'm going by walking away from where I have been." said Winnie the Pooh

On the Banks of Christies Creek at the Kowmung Junction. Photograph and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2021