A Common Dragonfly: Playing with Macro Photography and Musings About Art, Poems, and Photography

There are special moments in life where you yearn to have your camera with you but you do not have it with you. If I am not wrong, the writer Julia Cameron in her TED talk likens the poem as something physical that moves like the wind through the air, the poet needs to always be ready to write down the poem. The implication of this is that the poet is merely a note keeper and not an artist, that is, the poet does not create the poem he/she merely writes the poem down. I feel photography is similar in this regard. The world out there is not under the control of the photographer. As a photographer, I merely look at the world and if I have my camera ready at hand, I can capture something memorable. If I do not have my camera ready at hand, I can merely stand there and take the sacred moment in, like the scent of a wildflower. Fleeting, so fleeting. This is the moment when a dragonfly landed right in front of me.

Title: Focus

My mind tries to focus when things move fast. Insects and birds rarely give you a moment to focus, adjust, reflect, think and act. The moment needs to be captured without thought, without reflection. I am not a professional photographer but I am sure this is a general problem: I have more photographs that are unusable. Out of focus, object not centered, blurry, too dark, over-exposed, and so on. Maybe it is poetic in some sense, the fact that photographs have metaphorical graveyards of folders and hard drives full of unusable photographs. Or maybe this is only my problem. I am not sure.

Title: Balance

Title: Adjust

With the newly released (or almost released) Nikon Z9, the idea of limited capacity falls away. Or, the old idea of taking only "some" photographs withers away. If you have not seen the new Nikon Z9, or if you are not following the news, here is a small summary. The new Nikon Z9 can take so many images with their new processor that the buffer never really runs out, and without any mechanical shutter, you are unaware of how many images you take. The feedback from a normal DSLR or camera with a mechanical shutter - vibration in your hand, the sound, and so on - falls away. You are unaware of how many photographs you are taking. Think about the graveyards, the dead and useless images, the duplicates, the ones that did not make it.

Title: Balance II

Title: Focus II

This leaves on with a question: What is art? No one knows. But what I am interested in is the photographic aspect thereof. In her book, Regarding the pain of others, Susan Sontag writes that war photography cannot really be aestheticized. That is, taking images of, say, war victims in an artistic manner takes some of the pain away from the victim and emphasizes the ability of the photographer. Can the same be said about wildlife photography? Can I take a "too artistic" photograph of a dragonfly? Or asked differently, when does the photograph become art and not a photograph anymore?

Title: Am I Art?

Title: Adjust II

Am I Art? asks the photograph above. What is art? If anything can be art, where does photography begin? The photographer, as I mentioned above, for me is like the poet. The wind (read: poem) hits him/her in the face and he/she merely needs to write it down. The photographer, in a similar position, waits for the dragonfly to sit still so that he/she can take the photo. It is a digital form of note-taking. Is this art? If the poet is merely someone who waits for the poem to arrive ready-made, and the photographer someone who waits for the world to settle down in front of the lens, where (or what) is art's function?

Title: Counter Adjust

Title: Adjust III

Title: Focus III

Title: Out of Focus

If you have read all of my musings, thank you. If you are here just for the photographs (it is after all a photography community!) welcome down here. I hope that the vivid colors inspire you to slow down and appreciate being able to see color. And to see the beautiful insects in nature. All of these images were taken with a Nikon D300 and a Tamron 300mm Zoom/Macro lens. I used the macro function on the lens. The musings are also my own. A verbal montage of random ideas. If you have similar thoughts, please comment below and we can continue the open-ended questions. Stay well, and happy photographing!