Connecting with your Subject

Throughout my photographic journey, I've come to realize, as everyone else who makes art realizes, I connect with some subjects and not with others. I'm partway through the book "The Zen of Creativity" by John Daido Loori and I'm enjoying it very much. His description of connecting with your subject before you shoot it brought very much to the surface what I was trying to do before, but I was previously doing it on a subconscious level.

I'm now consciously developing a relationship with an old dock downtown where I live, along with some old pilings around it. I've shot that dock from every angle I can think of. I have not, however, had enough guts to climb out on the other old dock next to it because even though I can swim, that water is frigid and I don't want to have to replace my camera equipment. Heaven only knows how strong that dock is.

I'm taking photos of this old dock and the one next to it in every season and in every weather condition and the water around them is an entirely different color depending on the time of day. Sometimes the water is green because it's overcast and the algae on the retaining wall and the rocks and the old pilings gives the water its color. When it's afternoon and sunny, the blue sky overcomes much of the green and the water is a beautiful blue. Sometimes the color lies in between. My favorite condition of all, however, is when the old docks and pilings are in dense fog. They seem to be floating in space and are quite other-worldly. The only thing that shatters the silence and peacefulness at the shore in very dense fog is the occasional freighter horn. Trust me, if you don't hear the thing creeping up on you and she sounds that horn while she's going by before you see her, well, you had better not be right at the edge of the dock because you may end up in the water from an involuntary startle response.

But back to my dock, I suppose I should not have favorites, but like Charlie Brown and his Christmas tree, I favor the poor broken dock over his more in-tact cousin. I get more comments and views on the more "perfect" dock, but my poor broken friend gets more of my attention every time I go there.

On a happy note, someone finally bought the historic inn right next to these beautiful old reminders of boating past, and is going to restore it. It has been vacant for a few years and needs some work, but the buyer is supposedly motivated to keep the charm and eventually open it for business again. I will be very happy to see the inn come back to its former glory - it's on the National Register of Historic Places - but I can't help but wonder what he will do with the old docks. Will he have them removed? Will my rickety old friend be taken away and replaced with something shiny and new? People used to dock there on a summer day to eat at the hotel dining room after a day out on the river. Since my friend is broken and unstable, I think he will probably be replaced, but until then I will continue the relationship and when he's gone, at least I will have several portrait of him to remind me of his silent, stately beauty.