Heroes Not Zombies

I was driving up the road from Comillas to the sequoia forest early in the morning and as I turned a corner the patches of mist lying in the valleys caught my eye, so I pulled in to a lay-by and took this photo. In fact, I took several photos, and also took a few moments to gaze from side to side and into the distance, just taking in the whole landscape stretching out before me.

As I look at this photo now I see even more than I saw when I stood at the side of the road. Yes, of course, I still see how several valleys are holding the morning mists, giving the impression of white river, and maybe a soft white lake. And as the range after range of mountains recedes into the background I notice, as I have done many times before, how the distance is, so often, a shade of blue….although at this moment, the early morning autumnal light brings a green tinge to it all.

But now I notice the electricity pylons, the ones in the foreground with their insulators catching the sunlight, and the more distant, much larger ones in the top left of the scene. I see a fence, where someone has claimed this little patch of planet Earth for themselves….something we humans have done for centuries, producing borders, privatising the commons, creating a distinct “mine” and “yours” (or, at least, “mine” and “not yours”!). I see a handful of houses, and a van. I see a road sign telling drivers to keep to less than 50 km per hour….a rule somebody has decided to impose, no doubt with the intention of keeping pedestrians safer. There’s a sign with the name “Valoria”, a tiny village of a handful of houses.

I love taking photographs, particularly of anything which catches my attention. I find that when I upload them to my computer and take my time with them, I invariably notice much more than I did when I was actually there. It’s not that the photographs are better than being there (in fact, if I hadn’t been there, I couldn’t have taken the photo anyway), but they enrich and enhance the experiences I had at the time.

I think it’s good to slow down. It’s good to take your time before you press the shutter and take a photo. And it’s good to return to the image you’ve created, time and again, to explore, to savour, to enrich.