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Through the Trunks
25 September 2023
Whatever "it" is that makes an image appealing is, well, elusive. "It" may not even be a singular attribute but different "its" for different people.
Through the Trunks. Olympus E-PL1 with 14-42mm II R kit lens at 27mm (54mm equivalent), f8, 1/250 seconds and ISO 200. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
As a photographer, you scan the image you've captured with a critical eye. You know what can be enhanced and what's fine the way it is. You may experiment a bit but those experiments tend to be refinements that eliminate issues with the image.
And then there are those images that surprise you. Like this one surprises us.
We aren't going to argue the beauty of this image. Not the exposure or the composition or any socially redeeming value.
But we just love it.
It's certainly a special spot for us. Every time we walk by this spot, as we did last week, we look at it over our shoulder and we have to stop a minute.
This is the park Mom took us to when we were too small to walk ourselves. She and her childhood friend Pat, who had a son my age named Brian, would roll their first-born in strollers through the park talking about what to make for dinner that night.
Pat's husband returned from the Korean War a damaged soul. Mom, a devote Catholic, knew the church forbade divorce but Mom inhabited the real world. She stood by her friend. Pat eventually remarried happily, giving Brian the home he deserved. Every year the two women would exchange birthday cards and phone calls.
When Pat died, Brian wrote to Mom to thank her for the friend she had been to his mother when it really mattered. And all through her life.
Maybe walking by this spot something happened one day in our strollers. Maybe the women stopped and hugged each other and bent down with tears in their eyes to kiss their baby boys and carry on.
Things don't always turn out the way you want. But you keep strolling along and you may yet find your way through it.
Maybe that's what this image says to us with its tall dark trunks casting deep shadows broken up by bright sunlight.
You'll get through.