"Consciousness sucks. I think, therefore I suffer."
-- from the movie "Being John Malkovich"
A friend of mine once told me the story of his community college photography professor pursuing his “life work.” Like many photographers, this unnamed professor idolized Ansel Adams, and one image in particular: Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. It became his obsession to reproduce this masterpiece through his own lens. For a dozen or more years, he traveled to Hernandez; he found the exact spot where Adams has composed the original; he timed his trips so that the moon would be in the same phase and position; and then he waited, waited, waited for the exact same conditions. He eventually got what he wanted, coming very close to duplicating that legendary photograph.
What a profound waste of time and energy! I like that classic image, too, but I spent $50 and got a nice framed print to hang above my fireplace. While this professor was trying to duplicate the image himself, I had a dozen or so productive years as a photographer, visiting many fascinating locales and producing thousands of images (all of them unique). Few of those images—maybe none, actually!—could compare to Moonrise, but they were 100% mine, and producing them helped me grow as an artist.
(originally written August 4th, 2004, sitting on the shore of Rock Creek Lake in the Eastern Sierra)
[ photograph above: Keeler, 2003 ]
