Light always plays a part to a greater or lesser degree in any photograph. Sometimes, as was the case the morning of June 30 when I captured the image in this post, light becomes a compositional element in the photograph.

But light can be a fickle subject. She is prone to fool your lightmeter, claiming for herself center stage, causing your camera to underexpose your main subject.

Light also can be elusive. While she is eager to show herself in all her glory, she will do so for but a moment. The photographer must act quickly to capture her on film before she slips away to hide in the full glare of the sun.

A photographer will be well served to learn the secrets of natural light.

In 1978 I started playing around with the old cameras I had found in a cabinet in my dorm room in college. A friend and I captured this image while walking around Fairfield, Iowa, with my old plastic Ansco Anscoflex twin lens reflex camera, the one with the large dish flash attachment that took real flash bulbs, a box of which I found in the local used junk shop. I really enjoyed that simple camera, but alas, they don’t manufacture film for it anymore - it took 620 roll film. This is how the photo, a self portrait, appears in my picture album from that era.

I am reminded of the Russian-made Diana, a plastic, 120 format cult camera, a new version of which I just saw for sale in Urban Outfitters. The Ansco Anscoflex was my answer to the Diana.

Schism II (shown below) incorporates the photograph, Schism, but includes a handcrafted weathered oak crucifix as a base for the photo, and a wreath of vines (crown of thorns?) as a frame for the image, adding layers of meaning not available from the photograph standing alone.

Welcome to Nirvana (shown below) uses the photo of the same name as its basis, but the photo floats within the open space of a Japanese Torii gate, which I constructed using weathered oak, as its context. It is as if the traveler (the small figure in the lower right corner) has just passed through the Torii gate to come face to face with the object of his longing. Also, I used a subtly colorized version of Welcome to Nirvana to create this piece.

To see a clearer image of the underlying photographs, visit the Focus on Religion gallery at www.wmgphoto.com and click on the thumbnail images.

A friend and I have just returned from our annual pilgrimage to the Bach festival in Bethlehem, PA. Discussing the generally recognized sacred nature of Bach’s music and our own individual thoughts and experiences in listening to the live performances, the following idea arose:

Just as a cello is made up of strings, a box of wood, and the air in the box (among other components) and these components taken together, when played by the Cellist, create sound that has an effect on the environment, and the cello is but a component of the orchestra, and the orchestra is but a component of the orchestra-choir collaboration, we too, as listeners, whose emotional chords are plucked ever so effectively by the music, begin to vibrate. It occurs to me that I am not big enough an observer to see that the vibration of my own emotion, like the vibration of the strings on a cello, like the sound emanating from the living, breathing orchestra (watching the players as they respond to the conductor, it seems that they rise and fall as one like the heartbeat of a living being), is nothing more than a component in the performance.

The conductor moves his baton, the strings of the cello vibrate with the bow, the strings of the harpsichord vibrate when plucked, the vocal cords of the choir members and soloists vibrate, all sending a wave of sound into the air (and how wonderful it was to be sitting in the air that was disturbed by the single note of the harpsichord and to realize that classical music, like jazz, can be like a desert to me when played on the radio, but a lush garden when experienced in live performance). The wave of sound overtakes me and I have an emotional response in one moment, and in another moment I am impelled to close my eyes and find myself in a state of mind I associate with the practice of Transcendental Meditation.

Both my friend and I had strong emotional reactions to various of the pieces performed. If the “vibration” of our emotions (not a physical vibration, but something I am not big enough to see because it is an effect beyond the realm of my sensory mechanism) can be viewed as similar to the vibration of the strings on the cello or the vibration of the vocal cords of the vocalists, might not my participation in listening to the music be nothing more than a component in the performance when viewed from an expanded perspective.

If indeed there is a “vibration” of emotion, then, like the sound of the cello contributing to the performance, by virtue of living and responding to this beautiful music I am nothing more than a component of the musical performance. With this perspective, I can imagine that every phenomenon is nothing more than a component in a sacred orchestral piece. Is it possible, informed by this point of view, that at the moment I put my attention on Bach’s “Mass in B Minor”, for example, that piece can be viewed as the music that overtakes the universe (cello contributes to orchestral music contributes to orchestral-choir collaboration contributes to my emotional response contributes to how I interact with the world contributes to how the world exists (at least for me))? And if this is possible, might not the same be said of any other successful work of art, or indeed any other point of focus?

In looking through a friend’s Flickr gallery of photos from a recent family wedding, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of images, some of which had the faces of the subjects severely underexposed because the camera metered on the background light. Why, I wonder, were those pictures included in the gallery? I understand that many people simply dump the contents of the memory card from their camera onto the website; however, I am less likely to find the pictures that photographer really wants me to see if I have to slog through tens or even hundreds of mediocre images to separate the wheat from the chaff. I soon tire of the chore and might never see the “keeper” images.

I have also seen edited photo galleries where someone will post two versions of the same shot. Maybe one is cropped a little bit more, or one is black and white and the other color. I become confused: what is this photographer’s vision? Which image best conveys your sense of the subject? By seeing both versions, I don’t know which is the best effort and which the throwaway, and that steals the thunder from both of them.

One commentator to Magda Indigo’s blog post suggests that there should be a web site where people post only their greatest images. In my view, your audience would be well served if you treated whichever website you use to share your photos as just such a forum, one in which you post only those images that you feel to be among your best photos.

You may read Magda Indigo’s thoughts on this subject by clicking -HERE-.