Wasteland

Driving back from my shooting on Monday, where I mostly took photos of the springtime color and the flowing water in Brush Creek, I noticed that at the other end of the creek things were less pristine.  The trees were old and spindly instead of colorful and the water seemed to flow more slowly, and with less sun glinting off its surface.  I'm new to photography, but one of the things that I enjoy most about it is the way you can find beauty even in the ugly stuff--a landscape can be striking on camera whether it's lit by sun and marked by plenty or defined by its darkness and shadow.  To me, this is perhaps the greatest similarity between the two disparate arts of writing and photography--there is always the work of trying to make beauty, no matter what you attempt to convey.  My father--a photography-lover himself--told me that there is what you see and what your camera sees, and the art lies in making the camera see what you see.  The sentiment helps me when I'm trying to capture scenes I find beautiful--I ask myself, what is it that's striking me?  I think it's also a powerful question to ask myself when I sit down to write.  That is to say, how do I make my readers see what I want them to--what I believe they must see?


And, so, do I even need to say it?  April is the cruelest month...

...breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

--T.S. Eliot