Timefulness

I've written previously about one of the core themes of my work, and that is the concept of trying to capture the sense of the passage of time. I do this, because it seems to me that serenity, the essential element of my work, is well-represented by the passage of time in a place. That's what I mean by the it's-not-in-the-dictionary word "timefulness." Now, I don't want to over-bloviate about this—I acknowledge bloviating; I just don't want to overdo it —because it's a pretty simple idea, really: leave the shutter open as long as the composition requires or merits, at the technically correct settings, for a scene that has some intrinsic compositional worth, and see what you get. Sometimes one gets the mental and emotional equivalent of a functional paperweight. But sometimes, there on your screen, you see the very way that it felt to watch and feel the sun come over your shoulder, to see the bungalows bathed in gold. glowing through the mist on the water, to feel the water gently tugging at your knees.

The morning I made this image, I was primarily shooting in the 180 opposite direction, toward the sun. It is a classic sin of amateur landscape photographers, including me, to forget to look around. It's the only way to prevent the "I didn't realize . . ." regret. On this morning, no regrets. The work is titled Paul, because when I saw the bungalows glowing on the water, I said to myself, "This must be the Polynesia that Paul Gaugin saw."