gdanmitchell
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stanj wrote:
Same of course could be said about photos of birds, buildings, trees, and so on. Yet we still do it.
Actually, from my experience with the total eclipse, I don’t think they are the same.
For one thing, the experience of totality is extraordinarily special, unusual, and infrequent, while we have plenty of opportunities to both experience AND photograph birds, buildings, trees, and so on. In fact, I do the latter.
Example: I photograph birds during the winter months here in California. Photographing them is typically a daylong experience, staring before dawn and ended at dusk. While there are moments of intense photographic work, there are far more moments of just looking, waiting, listening. (OK, and napping. I have to get up at 3:00AM.) So the photography doesn’t interfere with the experience or vice versa.
Same with trees. The tree sits there, not doing much. There’s rarely a need for speed. I could photograph it now. I could photograph it in five minutes or an hour later. Or I could come back tomorrow. Heck, it might even be BETTER to come back tomorrow.
Same with buildings. There’s rarely any urgency about photographing them.
In fact, with each of these subjects and many similar ones, it is often _necessary_ (or at least useful) to work in a more deliberate manner… and to spend some time just experiencing the thing before photographing. I might stare at that building a long time, wander around considering angles and light, decide that it would be better to come back later, pondering its form, waiting for the right people to fill the scene. Same with trees and birds.
And in th end, I at least aspire to photographs that reflect my own relationship to these subjects.
This is emphatically different than the eclipse. Note, by the way, that I’m not saying, “do not photograph the eclipse!” What I am doing is sharing that this photographer, who went there with all of the usual equipment, ended up feeling strongly that hte experience of the eclipse was so powerful and unique and the photographic potential for producing something meaningful and unique so limited… that I do not regret in the least my focus on the experience rather than (yet another) picture just like all th others.
Anyway, for those who wish to try photographing it, there’s some useful information in this thread. And if they get there and are overcome with the utterly astonishing experience of the eclipse… there’s no shame in stepping away from the camera and just experiencing this marvel.
YMMV.
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