“Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected
to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay."
-Sam
Abell
HOW I GOT THE SHOT: For the first time since I started writing this blog, I am resending a
photo I originally posted in January, 2008, before many of you joined my
mailing list. The location of this peach orchard is very
close to my home and I have returned there on numerous occasions for portrait
shoots and to relive the beauty I found there on that March day in 2006 and
many times since.
Last
month, at the height of the spring blossoming, I scheduled a photo session
there and arrived to find the entire orchard had been cut down. Where the
robust trees had stood a few days earlier, they now lay in neat piles, the
beautiful flowers still in full bloom upon their branches. Immediately,
something stirred in my heart, and after a few gasps, an awkward explanation to
my subjects and a quick reshuffling of priorities, I completed my assignment.
Later,
I began to reflect on why the scene had upset me. I am well familiar with
vanishing landscapes, places whose visual grandeur is limited to a single
season. I also understand that this land is used for commercial purposes. I don't
know whether the trees had outlived their economic value or whether shifts in
other agricultural markets warranted a crop change.
For
years this has been one of my favorite photographs and an exhibition-size print
hangs in my office above my desk. Now that irreversible change has set in, I
realize that my connection to this spot
has as much to do with my success there as a photographer as its inherent beauty.
And therein lays the potent power of photography. A photograph seals our
relationship to a moment in time and place and the act of capturing that moment
in a picture also makes it more special. We do our best to resist change but
only a photography enables time to stand still. Or so it seems.
TECHNICAL
DATA: Nikon D70, tripod mounted, manual exposure,
evaluative metering mode, f16 at 1/125th sec., ISO 4800. Raw file converted to
Jpeg. Lens: Nikon 28-105 mm zoom at 28 mm. Date: March 29, 2006, 4:19
p.m. Location: Bat Ayin, Gush Etzion.
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