Cartier’s Panther: New York City
Chasing the Light: Chasing History
One day many years ago I was strolling as if I was a ghost among the throngs of Fifth Avenue holiday revelers. My left eye caught a glimpse of something sparkling. Millions of people made noise: I scampered across the avenue. I wanted to see the source of the glint in my left eye.
I felt naked: My camera draped over my neck: I walked tippy-toe as if along the Northern Cape Province in Kimberley, South Africa. I imagined I spotted The Millennium Star.
Met Life Clock Tower: New York City
That twilight evening I was younger than I am today: my youthful exuberance believed I had discovered something I needed to capture.
I pressed, I urged myself to make this photograph before it vanished in history’s memory.
It felt as if I was on a safari: I heard something in the bushes: I saw the sparkle of my prey. My camera moved to capture what initially was a glint: In the moment the blue was dazzling.
I work very hard to make a photograph. Sometimes I will hear the needs of the client: Sometimes I will hear my own aesthetics: Whatever it may be, I prowl around my intended capture until I feel there remains one solution:”Snippety-Snap-Snap”.
Architect Toyo Ito:: Hotel Santos Porta Fira in Barcelona
Sometimes I may overwork an idea and get caught in Copernicus’s Epicycle: circling around the intended shot so many times, I can hear the fear of losing the light into the darkness: What an unfathomable risk that would be.
I cannot allow the burden of making a successful shot sway my choices: I just need to be alone in my mind: to dance in the quiet of my mind: Then I must shoot:
If I allow myself to dance: If I feel the quietude: The moment will relax: The picture will become part of the dream I imagined.
I remember one day in the Museum of Modern Art. On one wall there was Picasso’s “Guernica”. On the other side of the wall was Rousseau’s “The Sleeping Gypsy”.
I scanned the rooms looking for security guards. Then I secretly touched the Picasso and the Rousseau.
That very moment was so electrifying that I realized the rest of my life would be about the moments in my eyes:
I began to imagine what it might feel like to sneak a touch of the world’s great art> I wondered what an emotional charge it could be to caress the best the world has to offer.
I turned my energies to architecture: I realized my eyes had to capture for my own personal history what might be the most exciting architecture.
The United Nations: New York City
My mind toured the globe: My mind toured continents, countries and cities: Not only would I experience the rise and fall of cultures, but my camera would have a compelling conversation:
My camera would capture Niemeyer, Hadid, Gehry, Kahn, Wright and hundreds more> My camera would through my pictures listen to their conversations: It is my camera that needs to capture what might be great.
I could be the whale that sings, breathes and swallows all of the krill that swim the seven seas: Imagine the stories that I could tell: the adventures I might experience: The one day, one moment that my camera might see.
My camera is like the jeweler who looks through his lupe and identifies a diamond’s vein of blue. My camera is the one who gasps, “Aha”. My camera is the one who makes sense of my days as a photographer.
It is my heart that shakes…It is my heart that shakes as I race to capture the light before it turns into the darkness.